What is marketing enablement?

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. 

How does marketing enablement work?

Marketing enablement helps to align the goals of the entire GTM organization so everyone has a clear understanding of the organization’s objectives, audiences, and enablement strategy. Let’s take a look at three key areas where marketing enablement helps teams create an effective sales content marketing strategy. 

Project planning for sales enablement content

Marketers need the ability to create an all-encompassing plan that orchestrates marketing activities and content to relevant campaigns and buyers. But this takes intentional strategy and planning. A marketing enablement plan helps marketers create a roadmap for the content and assets they need to create a specific campaign, initiative, or goal. Marketing enablement strategies are often complex because they have so many moving parts and stakeholders. Project planning helps marketing teams prioritize initiatives and allocate resources accordingly. 

Strategic content audits

Content audits are often difficult because of the amount of manual work they include. They often take place across separate tools and systems, and it’s challenging to identify what content is stale and needs to be refreshed. Effective marketing enablement relies on technology that makes it easy to identify old content, refresh it, and store it so sellers have access to the freshest content. This ensures that sellers and others in the GTM organization tell an up-to-date and consistent story.

In-depth insights 

All too often marketing teams hand content over to sellers and that’s it. After that, they don’t know if sellers actually use the content, if buyers find it useful, or if it contributes to revenue. With marketing enablement, teams can track key content analytics and get a comprehensive view of how and when content is shared, who consumes it, and how it influences revenue. These analytics provide marketing teams with actionable insights so they optimize their content strategy across the buyer journey and make smarter marketing decisions. 

What are the benefits of marketing enablement?

Marketing enablement can have a measurable impact on businesses. Companies that leverage marketing enablement to align their GTM teams often experience faster growth, higher profits, and satisfied buyers. Forrester found that companies with highly aligned marketing and sales teams grow 19% faster and are 15% more profitable. More companies are realizing the benefits of marketing enablement, too, with 87% of marketing leaders noting that collaboration is critical to business success. 

What to look for in a marketing enablement solution

Because enablement is so beneficial to GTM organizations, the marketing enablement tool you invest in is extremely important. Marketing enablement technology provides marketers with everything they need to effectively carry out their roles and align their activities with larger business objectives. Marketing enablement solutions cover a wide range of tools and capabilities that are geared for different aspects of your enablement plan. We recommend using a tool that includes: 

• Content management and activation: Support content production, distribution, and governance so sellers have the content when they need it. 
• Strategy and planning: Prioritize initiatives, manage requests, and collaborate cross-functionally in order to create a winning enablement plan.
• Orchestration: Execute campaign strategy, content creation, and measurement across channels
• Analytics and insights: Leverage data and analytics to understand which content is effective with specific audiences and improve content experiences.

The 2023 Value of Enablement Report found that enablement technology is extremely popular, with 82% of respondents saying they use it in their role. And, a resounding 99% of those respondents agree that it makes their jobs easier.

Make your marketing efforts matter

Marketers need to be able to focus on content that drives deals and dollars, expedite production, and empower sellers to access and personalize content fast. That’s where we come in. Seismic’s sales and marketing enablement platform enables marketing teams across the globe with full-funnel visibility and analytics so they can easily identify the most impactful content and deliver more of it—all at scale. Learn how one customer creates and surfaces more than 4000 pieces of content to thousands of sellers. Or, get a demo to see Seismic in action.