Mastering Sales Enablement Content with Beth Osborne

In this episode, we’re talking about how to create a sales enablement strategy that is actually helpful for your sellers and the prospect they’re interacting with on a daily basis.   

You’ll hear us ask questions like, what kind of companies need sales enablement the most? How do you go about building a solid sales enablement strategy? And how do you measure the effectiveness of sales enablement content?  

Joining Dani to break it all down is Beth Osborne, Senior Content Marketing Manager at Marketron. 

Beth brings so many amazing points to the table, like:  

• How great sales enablement content makes the life of your sellers easier.  

• Why your sales enablement content should be developed for anyone who could be a prospect, not just your typical customers.   

• And finally, how a solid sales enablement strategy should be more about building relationships than merely trying to influence a prospect.  

Making the Lives of Sellers a Little Easier 

To kick off the conversation, Dani says, “So, I always like to ask, just because everyone has different language they like to use, how would you define sales enablement? And then tell us why it's important for an organization.” 

“Sure,” Beth says. “So, to me, what it means to create sales enablement content is that I'm delivering valuable information that solves the problem, inspires sellers or gives them some clarity around a situation.  

“It's about, like, ‘how does what we're creating make a local media seller’s day easier or better?’ 

“Salespeople have hard jobs. They're resilient, they're creative, they're persistent and they have to be constant ideators because they're always going to have objections and barriers. So, they need trusted resources that are going to empower them, and that's really the foundation for Aspire, our sales enablement blog.  

“We really conceived it to be that go-to resource for local media sellers, and that's exactly what it is. You know, I meet customers in all kinds of different ways, like I do case studies a lot, and I talk to them or go to events, like the NAD conference that I attended a few weeks ago, and I really love to hear from them that content inspired them or helped them overcome something or even actually helped them win a deal.” 

“Yeah,” Dani says. “I mean, that's what it really comes down to like, ‘Are we actually helping sales people do their jobs better?’ I think that's what it always comes back to.” 

More Informed Customers are Better Customers 

“Okay, so tell us,” Dani says. “What kind of companies do you think need sales enablement content the most? Are there certain ones that you see need it more than others? What are some of the key problems that it's really solving?” 

“Well, I think every organization needs it,” Beth answers. “SaaS specifically, that's been my niche for quite a while. I think it is helpful for any kind of organization that has a longer buying cycle that has multiple types of people making the decisions.  

“I think sales enablement is needed in any industry where you want to educate whoever your audience is and upskill them or make them an expert.  

“We always say that more informed customers are better customers. 

“For the local media industry, which is what I do, we're focusing a lot on upskilling and helping them understand and become confident. Typically, with digital advertising, a lot of people are from traditional TV and radio, and digital still [feels like a little unknown] or what's going to happen with it, so they need that information.  

“We also focus a lot on real life scenarios, which I think any sales enablement content should address. Like, ‘What do you do when this happens?’ or ‘What is a way around this?’ 

“We hear a lot from our customers, ‘well, we don't know exactly what kind of digital ad mix to recommend to a customer’ and we were like, ‘okay, we can take that.’ And we took it and ran with it and we created an interactive tool. So, somebody can go to this interactive tool, they can choose from eight different advertiser goals and then we give them a mix recommendation of ‘this much social’ or ‘this much display’ or whatever.  

“They can then be confident to go to their customer and say, ‘I really think this is a good mix for you.’  

“But yeah, at the end of the day, it's all about this takeaway: delivering whatever somebody needs to be better at their job and understand things better.  

“And for us specifically, for any kind of SaaS company really, or any company, sales enablement content can be a differentiator for you.  

“It can be what your competitors are not doing.” 

“Yes, absolutely,” Dani says. “And you just made me think of this while you're talking. It's kind of like, I've never put it in these words before, but sales enablement is about enabling the salespeople so you can actually enable the prospect.  

“It's not just enabling the salespeople, it really is about, like you said, educating and answering those questions. That is the end goal. And it has to be both of those who are enabled.” 

First Steps for Building a Solid Sales Enablement Content Strategy 

“Tell us a little bit about how one goes about building a solid sales enablement content strategy,” Dani says. “What are some of the steps that someone who's new to this should take?” 

“Yeah, that was the first thing I did in the decision to launch Aspire [by Marketron] was create this content strategy. I love content strategy,” Beth says. “I could nerd out on them for hours.  

“This was a little bit different, because the main goal with Aspire is not promoting a product or service or our brand or anything. Then you have to dig into what are our objectives then? Our objectives are to empower, enable, upskilll, give people great information and ideas. How does that connect to other things?  

“My content strategy has several different pieces in it that I would recommend for anybody creating one. 

“First, you've really got to define who your audience is. We have three different personas that we write to. I had to make a lot of assumptions about them in the beginning. Some of those were correct, some of them worked. That's how things roll.  

“There are other parts of it that are more granular, around voice and tone. I even define words we use and words we don't use. For example, we don't call salespeople ‘sales reps.’ We think that's a little old school. We call them ‘sellers’ or ‘sales professionals.’ We have to typically call them ‘local media experts’ or things like that, rather than use an older term.  

“Then, content clusters. We have four different content clusters on Aspire. What do those mean? How will we convey the ideas under those?  

“Then, how does this content align to business goals I was talking about? We're not promoting our products. This is a bottom funnel content to get people to convert. How does that contribute to revenue?  

“First of all, our content is not just for our customers. It's for anybody that could be a prospect or anybody that is a local media seller. For our customers. It upskills them, and gets them great ideas. A lot of our content is about, ‘Here's a thing and here's how you pitch it. Here's some great ideas.’ 

“I did one yesterday about the auto industry, about how it's bouncing back. Here are some great ideas to take to your dealership customers. It enables them to sell more digital advertising, which does impact our revenue. From a prospect side, it's developing a relationship and rapport and trust and credibility of, ‘oh, these people really know what they're talking about.’ 

“That's a big part of Marketron's brand promises. We're more than software. We have all these great resources that we want to provide you with so that you can do your best at your job.  

“I think the other parts of the strategy are just metric, which we'll probably talk about later, like how do you know what's working and then how are you going to amplify it? How are you going to share it? How is it going to get to all these people that you want it to?  

“It's a strategy that I look at and refresh, probably quarterly or more often if things change or shift internally or externally. But definitely the key parts are: 

• Who are your personas?  

• What are your clusters?  

• What are your voice and tone? 

• How are you going to measure it? How are you going to amplify it?  

• What does it mean to the business? 

• How much content are you going to produce? 

“That’s all part of the strategy.” 

“That's great,” Dani says. “For those that may not know, can you tell us just quickly what is a content cluster? I know what it is, but I know some of our listeners might not realize what that is.” 

“A content cluster is like your umbrella of content,” Beth says. “It's kind of like themes, I would say themes. Ours are sales ideas, ad categories, creative, and trends. Those are bigger umbrellas. Underneath them we have even sub-pattern type of things.  

“It keeps you connected to, ‘what does the audience need? what are your topics?’  

“So, every month, I'm making sure that I'm hitting all those clusters. Some more than others. Some kind of belong in both clusters. But it also keeps consistency in content production.” 

Dani adds, “And another important thing, we won't get into it today but for those just to note at home, is that often those clusters are something that are building your SEO strategy around too.” 

Metrics that Matter 

“So, you talked about effectiveness,” Dani says. “How do we measure it right? There's a lot of different goals people might have with sales enablement content. So, what are some of the metrics that one might track?” 

“Sure,” Beth says. “So, I call them the ‘metrics that matter.’  

“I do a monthly report and I look at a lot of different things. A lot of it is SEO. It's like, ‘okay, is my organic traffic Is it increasing? Where is it going? How am I ranking for certain words?’ There's all that kind of stuff.  

“Then there's stuff on engagement, and engagement is again like a big umbrella. So, I'm looking at page views, visitor page views per session, average engagement time, etc. But then I'm also looking at engagement on social channels or email or different ways that we've distributed content, to see, ‘oh, this is resonating or this isn't.’  

“And then another big metric for us are Aspire subscriptions. So, we ask you to subscribe and then you get like a monthly email with the ‘Top Picks’ from Aspire. Aspire launched in May of 21, and year over year in 2022, page views went up by 63%, visitors 86%, subscribers 126%, page views per session by 57% and average engagement time by 165%.” 

“Awesome, those are great numbers,” Dani says. “I love it. And it speaks volumes to the fact that our customers and our prospects are hungry for information. They're hungry to be educated by you, and a lot of folks think, ‘oh well, there's enough stuff out there covering my industry’ or ‘they just want to focus on their product or service.’  

“But there isn't anything out there that you've written on that topic. And it makes a difference. 

“Obviously, there's all the metrics you talked about, like engagement and things like that, but when it comes to the ROI, like how did this impact the sale, it does involve having conversations with salespeople, with sales leaders at your organization.  

And asking them questions, asking them what piece of content are you really finding valuable? What do you wish we had? What are those things they think are really effective to get those ROI stories? Or, if they're not there, to figure out why.” 

“Yeah, definitely,” Beth says. “And I also get a lot of feedback from our CDM team, which are their client development managers. They're kind of their digital gurus for our digital clients and they will pass on similar things to me.  

“And we ask our customers what they want. We ask them, ‘what should we write about what? what is bothering you, what is worrying you?’  

“A big thing right now is third party cookies. You know, Google is finally going to make good on removing those and that's a concern for people in the advertising industry! So, we've done a lot of content on it. We have a very small little podcast and we had a guest on who is an expert in the space, just to be like, ‘here's the reality and the truth of this and we want to get you the right information.’ 

“That's great,” Dani says. “Well, Beth, I know you, and I can probably sit and talk about this stuff all day, but I'm going to wrap us up. Before I do, though, is there anything that we haven't touched on that you just want to be sure our listeners hear about?” 

Beth says, “I want to just say for anybody that's in this space, one of the most important things is to have leadership buy-in. 

“I did not necessarily have that in my early career, and I had to prove the value every day, but that's never been the case at Marketron. I knew from day one that I would have autonomy that I would be able to take it and run with it. 

“The other thing, again, goes back to the strategy. Create one and stick to it, but refine it and make it so that anybody could just walk in and be like, ‘okay, I get it, I get what we're doing with our content.'"