If you are a marketer, you know that sales and marketing alignment is a thing. When marketing & sales work together, it’s a powerful combination that leads to magical results: more customers, more revenue, and higher customer retention.

1. Ways to Use Content to Facilitate
Sales & Marketing Alignment

2. If you are a marketer, you know that sales and marketing
alignment is a thing. When marketing & sales work together, it’s a
powerful combination that leads to magical results: more
customers, more revenue, and higher customer retention. But,
not enough companies are moving toward better alignment.
Salesforce included a staggering stat in a recent blog post:
“According to a report from Forrester Research, just eight
percent of B2B companies have achieved proper marketing-
sales alignment, meaning 92 percent of companies are
operating with poorly aligned, disjointed strategies, visions,
and content.”

3. So how to we fix this? Well, maybe it starts with content. If we can
align both sides in terms of content, it’s at least a step in the right
direction.
And we’re not the only ones who think content represents
untapped potential for sales & marketing to combine forces. We’ve
curated a list of tips to get you thinking about how you can use
content to bridge the gap between what marketing is saying to
buyers and how sales people are interacting with those very same
buyers. It’s all a funnel—from the first message to the first sale
and beyond, and when that funnel is seamless for the buyer, it
helps accelerate their journey.

4. Rally Sales & Marketing Around
The Content

5. KnowledgeTree said, “At the end of the day, both
sales and marketing are working toward the
same goals: bring in new business and increase
revenue. Through ongoing communication and
more targeted marketing efforts, each group can
be satisfied and mend the fence. Working together,
the joint teams can use content to qualify better
leads, create interest and close more deals.”
http://www.knowledgetree.com/blog/2014/02/content-creates-greater-sales-marketing-
alignment/
@KnowledgeTree

6. Make Sales The Customer

7. Michael Brenner is always good for content
marketing wisdom. He boiled down a list of seven
things marketers can do from their end to foster
better alignment and at the top of the list was,
“Marketing needs to make Sales the customer.”
@BrennerMichael
http://marketinginsidergroup.com/sales-alignment/top-tips-for-driving-marketing-and-
sales-alignment/

8. Don’t Recreate The Wheel

9. Before you freak out and feel like in order to achieve
alignment you have to do some major shuffling and
reorganization, breathe. Seriously, get in your best
yoga pose and bust out some ohms. Dave Hubbard,
CEO of Marketing Outfield says, “The goal is not to
boil the ocean or redesign the company. It’s to make
a few meaningful, impactful tweaks to the existing
Marketing and Sales processes; to deliver
measurable positive impact within a short period
of time.” @MOutfield
http://www.business2community.com/strategy/buyer-journey-content-marketing-versus-
sales-enablement-01164181#4HqEkRXLg74K0Oho.97

10. Map Content
To The Buyer’s Journey

11. “The buyer’s journey serves as a roadmap, the
primary decision point and benchmark for all
future content creation. Align content according to
the three stages in the buying journey: awareness,
consideration, and decision-making.”
@salesforce
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2015/02/content-marketing-cheatsheet-5-keys-strategic-marketing-
sales-alignment-gp.html

12. Embrace Content Change

13. “Marketing should periodically review the changing
needs for content with the sales team and have
them actively participate in the content creation
effort.”
@TheSalesLion
http://www.thesaleslion.com/5-steps-sales-marketing-alignment-content/

14. Facilitate An Environment of
Two-Way Communication

15. Marketing and Sales NEED to communicate. Both
sides have a lot to learn from one another. “Clearly,
communication needs to be a two-way street. Both
sales and marketing need to realize that lively
conversation can bring about better-quality and
better-positioned content. This dialogue should
serve as a forum to explore the needs of each other,
not defending a long-held position just for the sake
of a he-said-she-said argument.”
@CarlaJohnson
http://typeacommunications.com/content-marketing-and-sales-enablement-can-we-all-
just-get-along/

16. Create A Meaningful
Digital Dialogue

17. This one is super personal to us, because we eat,
sleep and live it. Interactive Content (which in the
interest of full disclosure, is what we do) gets that
digital dialogue going. “Whereas digital body
language is about inferring things from subtle
behavioral cues, digital dialogue is when a
prospect comes right out and tells you the
information that is most relevant to their
situation.”
@ChiefMarTec
http://chiefmartec.com/2015/04/new-approach-challenge-salesmarketing-alignment/

18. About ion interactive
ion interactive helps
modern marketers produce
engaging, interactive
content that stands out
while generating leads
and revenue.
Find out more!
http://www.ioninteractive.com/blog/10-things-to-help-you-generate-more-leads-from-your-content-marketing