Sales enablement as well as content marketing are becoming more and more extensive especially in the B2B sector. The coronavirus pandemic also has a fair share of contribution towards it. In most situations and organizations, these buzz phrases work hand in hand that has caused a lot of confusion for marketers as well as businesses. To understand the difference between the two, one first needs to understand how these two complement each other at various stages of the sales funnel.

Let us first look at what these two terms mean-

• Sales enablement is an iterative process of providing your sales force with sales enablement tools and resources they need to enhance their efficiency and close more sales. These resources may include information, data, and content that help the salesforce to add value to customer interaction and effectively sell products and services.

• The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as:

“A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

In simple words, it involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to reach and acquire your target audience with an intention to generate revenue by making a sale. Content marketing focuses on educating the prospects throughout their sales journey. The generated content also aids sales training programs.

Since there is a visible overlap, the question that arises is whether sales enablement is a part of content marketing or vice versa.

It is easier to go with the first instance as content marketing is a much broader concept that has been aiding the sales enablement strategy for a while now. Content marketing contributes to the top and middle phases of a sales funnel, whereas sales enablement solutions come in at the middle and the bottom. The content strategy at each stage of the sales funnel is different and designed in a way that the sales representative can sound relevant and valuable throughout the conversation. It ensures that the salesforce is well equipped to solve customer problems and that they come off as experts to the customer.

Content marketing is not limited to the materials that help companies promote their products and services, it is the voice of any business aimed at providing accurate and useful information to their prospects. Sales enablement platforms complement this process by managing the content and keeping it easily accessible. Unlike traditional marketing, content marketing does not focus on reaching a wide audience, instead, it focuses on reaching a targeted audience with the right content.

Today, customers expect the sales reps to not only sell their products and services but also solve business problems. The traditional sales profile which only required you to be able to sell no longer exists. The sales enablement tools also focus on equipping the salesforce with data and information that allows them to add value. Content marketing educates customers before, during, and after interactions with the sales rep. It allows sales reps to focus only on value addition and drive conversations at each stage, which is also an important part of sales enablement training. While it ensures that today’s information-hungry customer is well-educated, sales enablement solutions allow the salesforce to keep the customer engaged throughout the process.