How do social media and content marketing actually contribute to sales?

There is no denying that “Content Marketing” has become a buzz-word, maybe even more so than social media; still, many wonder if it’s just a re-branding of traditional marketing activities. Content Marketing is defined differently in many organizations, yet regardless of how you define it, an overwhelming 85% of marketing leaders stated that they fail to connect content activity to business value in a recent Forrester survey.

One of the things that make defining the effectiveness of content marketing difficult is that it’s hard to measure what’s promoting a buyer’s interest in your product. Let’s say your target first notices you from a comment in a LinkedIn Group. Later on, they read your article on LinkedIn and then continue onto your blog to read more. Impressed by your amazing content, they submitted a form for your latest eBook!

Your team gets all excited, jumps and high fives, and marketing automation begins. Over the next six months, you don’t get a click out of that prospect. Until one day, your sales rep has some time to kill and decides to call on some old leads. Who would’ve guessed – not only do they respond, they setup a demo and 6 weeks later make a purchase. If you were to look at your reports on social media, marketing automation and content marketing – the content failed, BUT did it?

Larry Ellison is famously quoted as saying “…lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales”. To which the consummate marketer would respond “…lots and lots of sales people doesn’t equal lots and lots of sales”. In fact, 91 percent of buyers use Google to find the answer, vendor, or product they are looking for before ever speaking to a representative from that company. CMO’s don’t have to justify the need for a website, business cards or product brochures because if a company doesn’t have those things – it’s not a real company.

The same is becoming true for social media, blogs and content – you just have to have it look “grown up” enough for buyers to want to do business with you. But checking the box isn’t the only value social and content provide, take the example of SAP and Oracle. Larry Ellison may feel that blogs don’t have a place in the sales arena but Jonathan Becher, SAP’s Social CMO, might just be teaching him a thing or two about the effectiveness of content – when it provides real value to the buyer.

In a recent Forbes article, Carmen O’Shea says this about Mr. Becher: “He’s deep into conversations in the marketing community, responds to customers and employees over Twitter, and makes himself very accessible. His ability to lead by example and his uncomplicated accessibility really makes people want to go the extra mile.” By focusing on the person-to-person aspect of social and content, Mr. Becher not only creates great content but also encourages sales by “humanizing the brand”. Much like the Mr. Whipple’s, Mr. Clean’s and Flo’s of the world attempt to do but with a much larger expense.

In a recent Content Marketing Institute Article, DJ Miller claims there are five real values to content marketing: 1) Content is lasting and permanent; 2) Content serves two masters: your customers and search engines; 3) Content gains trust, trust gains customers; 4) Content speaks to skeptical Millennials better than advertising; 5) Platforms will change, but content will always remain. Those values don’t exactly create an argument for new business associated to social and content but they do make the case for having a content strategy, so why not go the extra mile and actually tie your content efforts to real analytics and revenue? Sounds great, but how do you do it?

Here are five quick steps to get started with measuring Content Marketing:

1. Identify your buyer personas – start with your top two, then expand from there (if/when you have time)
2. Map out the buyer lifecycle – the whole lifecycle from their first click on LinkedIn, to the final sales call
3. Associate content to specific actions within the buyer lifecycle – even the ones you don’t think they care about, so you can make it better
4. Use the appropriate technologies to track and measure content interactions throughout the buyer journey
5. Get your sales team on board with sharing content through a CRM or marketing platform to make it easier to track

In summary, B2B marketers tend to focus on acquisition content but don’t create and connect content throughout the buyer lifecycle; this makes tying content to new business nearly impossible. This means that marketers have to do a better job of developing their strategy and connecting all of their marketing efforts to measurable initiatives that achieve real business results, whether you call it content marketing or just plain ole advertising.