The radical transformation of B2B marketing and sales over the past decade — stemming from the growth of digital to the empowered customer — pales in comparison to the changes over the past year. No one could have predicted the circumstances that accelerated wide-ranging changes to GTM strategies and tactics.
Even more surprising? Many marketing teams have yet to crack the code to improve their processes and technology to keep up with new demands. After all, in today’s predominantly digital sales environment, B2B marketing teams face an unprecedented number of requests to create and activate personalized content that enables sellers to interact with prospects and move them through the buying journey. But it’s not feasible for marketers to field continuous requests and create unique content for every buyer.
What is marketing enablement?
Marketing enablement empowers marketing teams with the right tools, resources, and information to effectively create content that sellers can use to educate and engage buyers. It also provides marketers the necessary data, best practices, and technology that enables them to align with sales teams and make strategic business decisions. By turning to in-depth insights, marketers can measure the impact of their efforts and better align with sellers to orchestrate campaigns that drive revenue.
The ultimate goal of marketing enablement is to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing activities. It helps marketers better understand their buyers, create compelling campaigns, and equip sellers with the content they need to interact with prospects. Marketing enablement can drive even greater results when combined with a sales enablement strategy and solution. This creates a go-to-market enablement program that streamlines content planning, organizes sales collateral, and accelerates the sales process.
Marketing enablement vs. sales enablement
It’s important to note that marketing enablement and sales enablement are two distinct yet related concepts. While the overall goal of marketing enablement is to streamline and improve marketing activities, sales enablement equips sellers with the knowledge, content, and tools they need to engage with buyers and close deals.
While they support different areas of the business, they both improve the buyer experience and drive revenue. They also rely on the effective use of content, data, and technology to support their respective team and activities. It’s important for both marketing and sales enablement to have a customer-centric mindset that prioritizes the needs and pain points of their buyers to create personalized experiences.
The marketing and sales divide
The need for marketing enablement has never been greater. This is rooted in the fact that marketing and sales teams are frequently misaligned. In fact, 90% of marketing and sales leaders identify disconnects in strategy, process, content, and culture that hold back GTM efforts.
This lack of alignment creates gaps between marketing and sales. As a result, sellers don’t understand how marketing content is relevant to their sales cycles because it isn’t contextualized for specific opportunities. Marketers often lack this visibility and don’t have the insight needed to identify what content is actually used by sellers and if it drives revenue. This results in lost efficiency and performance across the entire GTM organization. In Seismic’s 2023 Value of Enablement Report we found that
60% of the collateral that marketing creates goes unused by sellers.
63% of sellers say that the content they use isn’t personalizable enough for customers.
97% of reps don’t have access to the content they need.
40% of sellers say that content is irrelevant to their clients’ use cases and industries.
In order to bridge the divide, teams need a marketing enablement strategy that ensures they’re creating the right content to drive meaningful and personalized buyer experiences. More leaders recognize the need for enhanced collaboration and communication, too. Hubspot found that 44.8% of marketers said that sales and marketing alignment has become an important business initiative over the last year.
