The radical transformation of B2B marketing and sales over the past decade—stemming from the growth of digital to the empowered customer—pales in comparison to the changes over the past year. No one could have predicted the circumstances that accelerated wide-ranging changes to go-to-market strategies and tactics.

Even more surprising? Many marketing teams haven’t cracked the code to improve their processes and technology to keep up with new demands. 

For example, today, with predominantly digital-only engagement options, B2B marketers face an unprecedented number of requests to create and activate content that enables sellers to move prospects and customers through the buying journey. Yet many marketers still struggle to adequately fill the content-demand gap and align their work to the specific needs of sellers. 

The marketing and sales divide is real

The content-demand gap is rooted in the broader reality that marketing and sales teams are frequently misaligned. Nine out of 10 marketing and sales leaders identify disconnects in strategy, process, content, and culture that hold back GTM efforts​. This lack of alignment creates gaps between marketing and sales where:

• Marketers create content that doesn’t get used by sales
• Sellers don’t understand how marketing content is relevant to their sales cycle, because it’s not contextualized for specific opportunities
• Sellers that are overwhelmed with content often ignore content that isn’t personalized for their audience.

Marketing teams face pressure to bridge the divide between marketers and sellers by creating engaging content that sales will use to engage customers and capture revenue moments in complex sales cycles. 

In reality, the marketing and sales technology at most companies prevent B2B teams from creating the right content to drive meaningful and personalized buyer experiences. That’s where marketing enablement helps bridge the gap.

What is marketing enablement?

Marketing enablement is the process of making marketing teams more efficient by measuring the impact of the work they do. It encompasses the set of technology and practices that empower marketers to improve alignment with sellers. Through strategic insights, marketers can deliver content that resonates and orchestrate campaigns that drive buyers to act. 

Marketing enablement can drive even greater results when organizations unite it with a sales enablement strategy and solution—creating a 1-2 punch that makes upstream marketing activities more efficient while enabling downstream sales activity more effectively. 

How does marketing enablement work?

Marketing enablement helps to align the goals of CMOs, CROs, salespeople, and other GTM participants so that all customer-facing teams can:

• Create, identify, and deliver the right story to the right people, at the right time in the sales cycle
• Ensure that sales and others in the organization can tell a consistent  story 
• Provide sales with the latest (and correct) news and information about products and services
• Orchestrate marketing activity to connect relevant content to campaigns.

What are the benefits of marketing enablement? 

Marketing enablement can have a measurable impact on businesses. Companies that leverage marketing enablement to align their GTM teams often create differentiated experiences for their buyers that yield faster time to close, higher win rates, and more revenue. 

What are the key components to look for in a marketing enablement solution?

Marketing enablement establishes activities that, when executed, will make marketing efforts more efficient. These activities include: 

• Orchestration: Execute campaign strategy, content creation, and measurement across channels
• Curation: Scale content creation and management for stories that matter
• Activation: Package, publish, and promote the right stories with context across channels
• Learning: Leverage data and analytics to understand which content is effective with specific audiences and improve content experiences.

Go-to-market teams will remain under pressure, for the foreseeable future, to create more resonant and engaging content to support sales, often with the same or fewer resources than in prior years. Yet, with a solid GTM strategy backed by marketing enablement capabilities, marketers can deliver the right content and campaigns more efficiently and help sellers be more effective, satisfy prospects and customers, and achieve revenue goals. 

Learn more about how Seismic can help you get started with marketing enablement.