Content forms the foundation of all marketing strategy and provides the keystone to capturing (and keeping) a buyer’s attention.

But in a world of increasingly complex sales practices and immensely informed consumers, run-of-the-mill content just can’t compete anymore. Instead, marketers must develop intelligent and almost sentient content that can learn and adapt as it moves through the various points of the sales journey, strengthening its messaging and attracting as many prospects as possible along the way.

And one of the quickest paths to boosting your marketing content IQ relies on closed-loop analytics.

What is closed-loop analytics?

Closed-loop analytics refers to the strategy of employing cutting-edge tools to measure and optimize performance of content across the sales cycle. With closed-loop analytics, marketers can align the content they create at the top of the sales funnel with the techniques that close deals at the end of the funnel.

If you were to think of the sales process as an uninterrupted line that connects marketers to sellers and sellers to buyers, closed-loop analytics would bend that line into a circle, syncing marketers, sellers, and buyers together in one seamless feedback loop.

Here’s a closer look at how marketers can leverage closed-loop analytics to produce relevant content that reels in buyers again and again, no matter the topic.

1. Aggregate sales and engagement data

Creating personalized and impactful content requires actionable insights into how buyers interact with your material. This type of behavioral data — such as what content gets shared and how often materials are reviewed — provides intel that can decide the difference between content that sparks an ongoing buyer-seller relationship and one that collects dust in a prospect’s inbox.

But all of this data is of little use if you can’t access it immediately or organize the findings to customize your messaging. Indeed, CEO and founder of Voicea, Omar Tawakol, notes that centralizing your data is an essential factor in maximizing your marketing potential:

“In order to really uncover the value of data, marketers and agencies need to make sense of all [their] information before, during, and after a campaign has run its course. It all boils down to having access to ALL the analytics in one place” says Tawakol.

The operative phrase is “in one place.” Behavioral data needs to be stored in one easy-to-manage platform in order to facilitate responsive campaigns that take buyer preferences into full account when building and distributing content. A closed-loop analytics system, such as an interdepartmental sales enablement program, will ensure that the who, what, when, and where of your buyers’ journeys remain searchable and transparent at all times.

2. Monitor and optimize content performance

Once you’ve successfully stored your buyer behavioral data in one location, the next step is to harness those findings and use them to your advantage.

By design, closed-loop analytics give marketers an enhanced look at what’s hitting or missing the mark. A comprehensive solution will trace and record all manner of information at each point of the buyer’s journey — from awareness to purchase — while taking the guesswork out of creating new content.  This will allow you to stay flexible and tailor your campaigns to correspond with current buyer trends that resonate.

No longer will you have to send your content out into the world, cross your fingers, and hope for the best. By measuring sales content performance, you can predict your content’s impact with confidence and precision.

Plus, with extensive analytics, editing your materials is a simple matter of point and click:

• Concerned that your latest digital flyer isn’t reaching enough eyes? Use closed-loop analytics to access info on which pages are racking up the most customer screen time and then use that data to revamp the pages that keep getting overlooked.
• Wondering whether a particular pitch deck is completely up to date? Search through your centralized PowerPoint slides and make any relevant changes for your upcoming sales pitches.

3. Trim underperforming content

Breaking up is hard to do, especially when you’re unsure of the consequences. The temptation to hold on to marketing materials for as long as humanly possible is a strong one, but with closed-loop analytics, you can kick the habit of retaining content just because you fear you might need it at a later date.

Performance-tracking capabilities provided by a closed-loop analytics system will let you know exactly which pieces of material generate interest and drive sales … and which are being cast aside in favor of more attractive content. Marketing assets that have been rendered irrelevant or redundant can then be archived, leaving extra space on your servers and extra brain capacity among your teammates to tackle new and improved campaigns.

The same goes for when it comes to different versions of the same asset. Even if you have dozens of iterations of a single piece of content, tools with closed-loop analytics let you:

• analyze every one to review the versions that fare best
• refresh the ones that aren’t quite up to par
• “break up” with those you don’t need

4. Refresh and research content

No matter how much effort you put into your marketing materials, your content won’t always be 100% applicable to each and every sales scenario. As a result, your sales colleagues may have to modify your assets here and there as new intel emerges in the field.

If you’ve been wishing for a way to gauge seller engagement with content, wish no further. Comprehensive closed-loop analytics can provide reporting on how both buyers and sellers engage with your content. With this data, you’ll receive activity metrics on which sales reps use which assets, how those assets evolve once they’re released into the wild, and which pieces of content require a makeover.

As hinted above, you’ll even be able to compare modified versions of the same asset as its passes through the hands of various sales reps, allowing you to take note of universal pain points and incorporate that feedback into your next content roll out.

5. Manage sales funnel from end to end

Seller engagement and customer behavioral data is all well and good — after the fact. If you know exactly what you’re looking for, you can sift through detailed metrics surrounding your content and make any amendments necessary for future campaigns. But what if you wanted to stay ahead of the curve with real-time insight on campaigns happening right now? Tools such as sales enablement solutions that provide closed-loop analytics can help you do that, too.

As Pink Lemonade founder Tina Garg observes, a well-equipped sales solution comes fitted with alert systems that can help you keep your finger on the pulse of your sales funnel — flagging milestones in the selling process or highlighting upcoming sales events.

Alerts can also be configured for whenever sales team members are interacting with content or when modifications are being made to assets in the moment, meaning you’ll always be ahead of the game. This alert features count as just a few of the many ways in which analytics can guide your organization to a potential 29% increase in sales, Garg reports.

Closed-loop analytics can also facilitate dynamic sales guidance that delivers curated information to sellers so that they always match the right content to the right buyer situation.

The best solutions will feature AI-driven insights that power predictive search and provide content recommendations that reveal the marketing materials that will be most successful in any number of sales scenarios. This form of sales enablement keeps marketers one step ahead of their sellers’ needs, giving the entire sales team a set of adaptable blueprints that provide guidance when they need it.

Consider closed-loop for your own content

It goes without saying that this list barely scratches the surface when it comes to closed-loop analytics and just how far it can take you. To get a real sense of the innumerable benefits of this new technology, we recommend taking a test drive of a solution with closed-loop capabilities. Once you’re able to reign in your data and retcon your content to drive more engagement and close more sales, it’s safe to say you won’t look back.