Hey Marketing, That’s Not How You Tie Content to Revenue…

A common struggle for marketing teams is gathering analytics on how collateral affects revenue.

Conclusions about effective content are often based on deals won. In fact, the practice has become so common, there are countless blogs declaring it a best practice for measuring “most effective” collateral.

However, this approach is difficult to measure and is plagued with inaccuracies. Here’s why. . .

Most B2B sales cycles can last up to 6 months or longer. Waiting until the deal is closed to analyze content effectiveness can cause two major issues:

1. There are variables that influence a buying decision totally unrelated to collateral. To fault or credit content for the deal’s outcome can produce many false positives.
2. By waiting until the deal is closed to begin measuring the content’s effectiveness, it’s highly likely the content is no longer timely and relevant.

Thanks to the technology that is available for marketers, now is the time to rethink strategies for measuring content effectiveness and revenue contribution.

Rather than measure content solely against the outcome of a deal, it should be analyzed on the delivery from the reps (who, how and when) and its success rate moving deals forward in the sales cycle.

Questions to ask would be: Did your discovery call effectively secure a consultation or first demo; Did your sales presentation and follow up land a second meeting with the buying team or is there a piece of collateral that consistently helps re-engage cold contacts.

The difficult task is to see how your content is used by sales reps so you can answer those questions. You need total insight into sales activities, content shared with buyers and buyers’ engagement…but how do you get that comprehensive data?

Asking reps to create and maintain additional entries in salesforce will only end in disappointment. The only thing this practice produces is defiant reps or inaccurate data.

So, how do you find a solution that…

1. Automates all data entry into your CRM so reps do not have to change their behavior to give the information needed.
2. Tracks every communication, sent collateral, buyer engagement and movement in the sales cycle.
3. Analyzes which collateral makes an impact, real-time, so you can be agile in content management, production and best practices.
4. Compares patterns between content effectiveness in various personas, roles or industries so you can obtain insight as to how and when content is most successful.

Introducing Accent Synthesis Engine. A solution that not only provides this information but also makes it easy to absorb, digest and act upon.

To learn more about how to improve your marketing KPIs and increase your visibility into sales activities and content usage, request a demo or contact us today!