Why Salespeople and Marketers Are Frustrated With Content Management — And What You Can Do to Solve That Frustration

80% of content that marketers create is never used by sales.

That’s like a knife to the chest.

But the frustration isn’t one sided.

Salespeople also get frustrated with content management. Maybe the content doesn’t have the right message or sales doesn’t know where to find it when they need it.

There are all sorts of issues surrounding content management.

So, on the latest episode of the B2B Revenue Executive Experience podcast, I sat down with Lindsay Tjepkema and Zachary Ballenger. They’ve teamed up to start a company aimed at solving these content management problems. On the show they gave us an inside look at what they’re building, along with a couple of tips to help you eliminate frustration surrounding content management in your own business.

Here’s what they had to say.

First Things First: What’s the Problem With Content Management?

“80% of content that marketers create is never used by sales.”

LINDSAY TJEPKEMA, CEO AT Casted

The content marketer is often so focused on blogs and traffic that they kind of forget how easy it is to break down an audio recording or a video recording and make that into multiple other pieces of content.

Consider the specific example of podcasting.

Quite often what happens is you record a show, it gets edited, produced, published, tweeted, and posted about. Then it’s onto the next episode.

As a content marketer, that’s a hard thing to reconcile.

And from a sales perspective, there are all kinds of questions — How am I supposed to use this content? Am I even supposed to use it?

So, what can you do about these problems?

Well, that’s where Casted comes in.

So, What Is Casted?

“If you just put someone on a microphone, they’re going to say a lot of valuable things.“

ZACHARY BALLENGER, CPO at Casted

Their goal is to support B2B marketers in creating content that is effective, and accessible.

Let’s dig deeper.

They’re aiming to start with podcasts.

Podcasts take a lot of effort, time, and energy. And sometimes they take a lot of money.

So, why stop at just publishing your show? Create a great show that’s great for your audience. But don’t stop there. Transcribe it, clip it, and make it searchable. That makes the content accessible for sales and easy for marketers to re-purpose.

Casted is dedicated to helping companies walk through this process. They’re aiming to help the marketer take one really great piece of content, like a podcast, and break that piece into several others — blog posts, social media posts, etc. All while making that content accessible to sales.

Ultimately, they’re trying to eliminate frustration and increase the value you’re getting out of each piece of content.

The Future of Content Marketing

“Work together — sales and marketing are on the same team.”

LINDSAY TJEPKEMA, CEO at Casted

To this point, content marketing has been all about the written word.

If you ask any marketer, “What’s the foundation of their content or marketing strategy?”, they’ll probably say their blog.

And if you ask about other content they’ll mention things like whitepapers and gated content. They’ll probably also mention that they try to do a podcast, video, or webinar every now and then. But the focus is on written content — multimedia content simply fits in around the written content.

But if you look at how the most successful marketers are doing business today, it’s all going back to video and audio.

They’re doing video, podcasts, and that kind of media first. Then they’re spinning content out from that.

So, over the next few years we can expect to see more companies using multimedia content first, and written content second.

The Future of Content Marketing

What’s Effective in Earning 15 Minutes of Your Time?

Lindsay: The people that get to know me, what I need, and then offer me value based on that.

People are still prospecting me for a consulting business I ran years ago. So, just take the time to get to know me and what my problems are at this moment. Then try to offer value on that.

Zach: Do your research. And if you don’t know anything and you still want to have a conversation that’s fine — but try to research something.

And be intriguing. I used to work with some SDRs that would do the wackiest things. For example, they would cut up half of a Starbucks card and say, “I’ll give you the other half at our meeting.” Just try to think of creative things that get attention.

Your Grandest Piece of Advice for a Sales or Marketing Professional?

Zach: Don’t forget about the genuine nature of sales. People buy from people. So, let your guard down, make mistakes, and be genuine.

Lindsay: Remember that sales and marketing are on the same team. So, work together.

If you’re a salesperson and you feel like the marketing team is not producing what you need, go *nicely* talk to them and tell them what you need. And if you’re a marketing person and your sales team are not using your content, go ask them why.

Just make sure you work together.

So, if you’re struck when it comes to content marketing, make sure you’re working as a team. Try incorporating multimedia content that you can repurpose into written content. And maybe check out Casted while you’re at it.

This blogpost includes highlights of our podcast interview with Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO, and Zachary Ballenger, CPO, at Casted.

For the entire interview, you can listen to The B2B Revenue Executive Experience.

If you don’t use iTunes, we suggest this link.