Sales Enablement Content for Small Business Owners

The difference between Marketing Content and Sales Enablement Content

Differentiating between marketing content and sales enablement content can be difficult. Simply put, marketing content aims to generate interest, whereas the purpose of sales enablement content is to convert leads into clients. When these types of content support each other, your content marketing strategy starts to look more like a funnel, through which you can guide (or gently nudge) your leads.

How do I create Sales Enablement Content?

Knowing your clients allows you to identify pain points throughout the customer journey and understand how to resolve them. With this in mind, you can create targeted content that responds to client needs and queries pre-emptively. This type of content is great for sales enablement as its goal is to meet clients at a point of struggle or consideration in the buyer journey.

When it comes to creating sales emblement content, the first step is to map out the journey from lead to customer. This way, you can determine what will help convert leads in different scenarios. For example, a how-to guide or case study can build trust in the latter stages of decision-making and help you convince a lead to convert.

Types of Sales Enablement Content

There are no strict rules to what qualifies as sales enablement content. Moreover, you can often repurpose a piece of content to assist both your sales and your marketing with a bit of tweaking. To clarify, let’s go through some of the most common types of content and their purpose.

Blog Posts

Small business owners often think a blog’s only purpose is to improve SEO and drive visitors to their website. Although that is a welcome by-product, and one to keep in mind when writing content, SEO should not be the main purpose of your blog. We find that businesses whose only goal is to improve their search rankings lose their voice as they struggle to compete for popular keywords. This, in turn, lowers the quality of their posts and results in high bounce rates and unsatisfied website visitors.

As a small business owner, your blog should serve a healthy balance of advice, thought pieces, and stories about your business. The aim is to show visitors the expert knowledge you have of your craft and become a trustworthy source of information. In addition to this, you can write blogs to answer specific questions or address popular topics relevant to your industry. Coupled with a well-thought-out SEO strategy, the content you produce will not only attract but also retain visitors and guide them to convert.

Blogs are also a great way to resolve any doubts your clients may have about your business. Use your blog to address questions you receive often and fill gaps flagged by your current clients. This approach will help visitors get to know you and subside any worries they may have about working with you.

Social Content

Social media platforms are an important part of any content strategy mix. Contrary to popular belief, however, you don’t have to post on all of them to get noticed. Every industry is different, and audiences will navigate towards certain platforms based on their interests. For business owners, we recommend focusing on one or two channels at a time. This will allow you to post regularly and invest more time in creating content rather than scheduling it across every available social media out there.

We know it’s tempting to use all available resources, especially when they’re free, but trust us – you can’t do it all on your own. More importantly – you don’t have to. Start by researching your audience and understand what platforms it uses. Then pick the two that suit your niche best and get started.

If you’re struggling to come up with content ideas, tell your audience a bit about you and share your business story. Don’t treat social media as just a space for sales, but as a platform to connect with people. Show them what you’re about, share some knowledge and participate in conversations you can add value to. It might not always lead to direct sales, but you’ll be at the top of your followers’ minds when they need what you’re offering.

Case Studies

Case studies are undoubtedly your most important asset for sales enablement. They present clear-cut evidence of the results you have delivered to others and are essential to convincing clients to work with you. Use them to tell the stories of past projects and feature testimonials singing your praises to any unconvinced readers.

As a small business owner, your case studies should focus on the relationships you’ve built with clients, as well as the work you’ve done for them. If you are a service provider, you need to convince your audience you are easy to work with and trustworthy. Showcase clients you’ve worked with for a while and ones that have loved your work and partnered with you again. After all, a client coming back for more is the best proof of a job well done.

The best thing about creating a bank of case studies is that you can send them to clients in an instant. Whether it’s a link or a pdf, your sales enablement process will improve drastically if you can react quickly when you’re close to converting a lead. Finally, make sure your case studies are well-written and presented. Remember that the smallest of errors can cost you a client in the final decision-making stages.

Brochures, One-Pagers, and eBooks

These types of content require more work than running a blog, but you won’t regret the time you invest in creating them. They are targeted at leads who are further down the funnel and want to find out more about what you offer. When you are using them as marketing content, we recommend gating these types of content. This means asking for people to provide their name and email before they can download them. Over time, you will be able to build a list of engaged leads that you can nurture towards conversion through email marketing.

How to create long-form content

At this stage, you may think to yourself “I’m already running a business, a blog, and my social platforms, when am I supposed to fit a book in?”. Fair point, to which my first answer would be – if you want to do it all, you’re going to need some help. If you’re not ready to outsource work yet, there’s still a way to make this work, you just need to be clever about it.

To begin with, review all the content you currently have. Then look for patterns and common threads that can tie separate pieces of content together. Once you’ve identified those, structure them logically, add a bit of information to make the content flow seamlessly and you’ve got yourself a brochure or an eBook depending on the size and purpose. Remember, just because you have 5 posts on a similar topic in your blog, doesn’t mean viewers will read them all. Many people prefer downloading a document instead of navigating pages on a website. For best practice, add a bit of extra value to the downloadable that can’t be found online. It can be an extra page with tips, or a glossary of industry terms depending on what your audience needs.

Lastly, brochures and eBooks can be very useful for sales enablement, but one-pagers are the most important out of the three for this purpose. Their aim is to condense all essential information in an easy-to-read format that potential clients can quickly scan. Even if you don’t send them to clients, one-pagers are great to refer to in meetings. Moreover, you can email them as a follow-up after your meeting to summarise the chat.

Sales Enablement Content for Small Businesses

As a small business owner, you might feel like larger companies in your industry always have the upper hand. While that may be true in some cases, when it comes to understanding your customers, you are in a better position than competitors with multiple departments. Unlike companies where marketing and sales are split in different teams, you can see your clients from both perspectives and ensure nothing gets overlooked.

In creating sales enablement content, apply the insights you’ve gathered from clients to fill the gaps in their knowledge. Think about the journey a person takes from landing on your website to becoming a customer and determine how you can support them every step of the way. If you’re struggling to understand the process, ask a trusted client what their path to working with you looked like and start from there.

Finally, my most important tip – just start. If you get it wrong, you’ll learn, if you get it right, great! The more you write, plan, and research, the better you’ll get at creating content. It took me a journalism degree, and years of trial and error to learn how to do this, so be patient, put in the hours, and don’t expect miracles to happen overnight (but be grateful if they do!).

Just drop us a line or book a free discovery call to chat about what you have in mind and how we can help you achieve it.