You Must Leverage the Knowledge of your Subject Matter Experts in your Content and Marketing Efforts

Watch Marcus Sheridan deliver the third principle of this playbook.

This next principle is very much at the heart of what we teach and how we help companies drive more sales with inbound – if someone doesn’t help produce something being created, they won’t appreciate it as much. 

Think of it this way. There is often a difference between those college students who help pay for their own tuition and those who are lucky enough to have their tuition paid in full by their parents. 

Yes, often they are all hardworking and deserving, but those who also have a hand in paying their way through (in part or entirely) are more likely to not let those years go to waste, as they are an investor in their own success.

To put more of a marketing twist on it, think about when experts are quoted in an article you wrote. They could find the article valuable and never think about sharing it on their social media, but if they are quoted or have contributed to the article in some way, they are much more inclined to want to share it. 

What does this have to do with your subject matter experts and content? Everything.

You see, sometimes we’ve worked with marketing departments and content managers, and they find themselves struggling:

“I don’t know where I should begin. I don’t know the questions our customers are asking.”

They don’t find themselves in this position because they lack talent or perseverance. Instead, their frustration and lack of direction is rooted in a simple fact – as marketers, they are not fully engaged with the customer.

Rather, your sales team and your subject matter experts are the ones having face-to-face interactions with your buyers. They are the ones being approached every day and fielding questions. 

They need to be your most prolific content contributors, providing insights on what questions need to be answered and insights on what those answers are. They need to tell you what conversations are happening so you can give them the content and assets needed to engage in them. 

Of course, content “contribution” and “production” for your in-house experts can come in a few different shapes and sizes. In fact, in our experience, we’ve found there are four distinct types of content producers:

1. Writers (your blog and premium content writers
2. Actors (most sales reps fall into this category)
3. Talkers (great interview subjects for content)
4. Questioners (a mix of sales and customer service)

Once you understand how each of your in-house experts is able to contribute, it will be much easier for your content manager to leverage them in your content efforts. 

(And when they see the amazing content produced that can be used in the sales process and handed to customers, they will thank you for it.)

Let’s put this into action

• Take our course, The Revenue Team Approach to Sales Enablement Content. In it, you’ll learn how to establish your own “revenue team” (made up of members from sales and marketing), how to run effective content brainstorms with your sales team, how to report on the ROI of your content, and much more.