Marketing brochures: general, colorful, printed pages containing basic information about your business, products, and services, usually including a phone number or website address, but overall not targeted, not measurable, and by most accounts, not that useful for gaining customers. If this is how you can describe most of your marketing materials - including your website, email blasts, social media, advertisements, and downloadable content - stop what you’re producing. Marketing should be building sales enablement tools, not brochures.

Do your salespeople have educational content to send to prospective customers when they’re reaching out to a lead or prospect? Does your marketing team research your ideal customers when they’re creating marketing materials? Are your marketing and sales teams working together to generate leads and close sales? If you answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, I have some good news: there is a better, more efficient, and more economic way to work.

It’s time to take a look at an inbound sales strategy for your B2B business, which will help align your sales and marketing into one cohesive team.

Why Brochures Aren’t Effective

A brochure epitomizes what is wrong with outbound marketing. It speaks only about your business, your products, and services; contains minimal educational content; doesn’t answer many questions; doesn’t provide solutions; and isn’t very targeted to your audience.

There is a time and a place for general marketing brochures. For example, the front lobby of your business. The reason? By the time someone walks into your storefront, they’ve selected you as a top contender among solution providers. That’s what we call the bottom of the sales funnel. That is the time and place to differentiate yourself from your competitors by speaking about your value proposition and what you can offer that your competitors cannot.

However, your website should be chock full of tools that are not only useful for your prospects, but useful for your sales team as well. In addition, marketing should be creating sales enablement tools that are backed by your actual sales data - what’s worked, what hasn’t, what addresses the prospects’ problems and what gives them the clear answers they’re looking for.

Why Sales Needs Marketing To Build Tools

If you’re arguing that the salespeople should be giving them those answers, you’re only half right; most business buyers are over 70% done with their decision-making process by the time they talk to sales. If you’re not answering their questions and providing solutions online, they won’t give you a chance to do so in person.

Marketing needs to build tools that not only provide answers online, but also can be used by sales during their prospecting process.

Business buyers respond best to educational material. Recent research shows that 96% of B2B buyers who responded to a survey want content with more input from industry thought leaders, rather than content that sells, according to the 2016 Content Preferences Survey Report by DemandGen.

Recommended Sales Enablement Tools

• Blog posts: Informative, unbiased blog posts are an excellent way to introduce yourself as an educational resource to prospective buyers. Whether they are shared on social media or a salesperson emails them to a prospect with a specific question, blog posts are digestible content that build trust with your future clients and are a useful sales tool.
• Premium content: Targeted premium content such as an ebook, guide, checklist, spreadsheet, infographic, or video benefits your prospect’s decision-making process. By sharing well-produced and researched educational resources, sales continues to build the relationship with your prospect by adding value at each interaction.
• Email nurturing: 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. According to a Marketo benchmark study, on average, 50% of leads are not yet ready to buy when they initially come into your pipeline. “Lead nurturing creates automated, ongoing communication with your potential buyer throughout the sales cycle and beyond - maximizing results and revenue for your organization,” according to Marketo. [The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing, 2nd Addition from Marketo, 2015] Lead nurturing is typically done using a number of segmented workflows with automated emails.
• Social Media: Social media distributes and amplifies the content produced by your marketing team. When salespeople create a strong social media presence, it gives them a way to communicate with - both to hear, and be heard by - your audience. It’s also a great forum on which to establish your brand’s thought leadership strategically - by answering questions, offering advice, and sharing meaningful industry research. When the content sales is sharing is engaging and relevant, your prospects will respond positively.

By utilizing these tools in the sales process, a salesperson can build their reputation as a resource to potential buyers when they’re ready to make a business purchase, benefiting your business's bottom line.