13 types of product marketing content for sales enablement

While top-of-the-funnel content attracts attention, sales enablement content helps sales teams explain products, handle buyer questions, and close deals. That bottom-of-the-funnel content, which communicates the functionality and benefits of your products and services, deserves just as much attention.

HubSpot CRM gives sales teams a central place to organize sales enablement content, track buyer activity, and support reps throughout the sales process.

Both types typically fall under the product marketer’s remit, which is why they’re worth covering together.

Table of Contents

• Sales Enablement and Product Marketing
• Types of Content You Can Use for Sales Enablement
• Frequently Asked Questions About Sales Enablement Content

Sales Enablement and Product Marketing

Product marketers typically create more bottom-of-the-funnel content that caters to prospects who are closer to the purchase stage in the buying cycle. These prospects are actively considering your solutions and are looking for product-focused information to help them make their decision. Product marketing content can help convert those truly qualified leads into paying customers.

Product marketers, especially in B2B, sit between product and sales. That position means they own two content jobs: educating the sales team on how to position and sell, and giving reps the collateral they need to close.

Ready to be a better sales and marketing enabler? Below is a breakdown of content types that serve two purposes: moving bottom-of-funnel prospects toward a decision, and giving your sales team what they need to sell more effectively. The two categories overlap more than you’d expect, so treat them as a guide rather than a strict dividing line.

TL;DR: Sales enablement content helps reps sell and buyers decide

Types of Content You Can Use for Sales Enablement

Here are the content types that do double duty, helping prospects decide while giving your sales team something concrete to work with.

Product Marketing Content

Product Videos

Video is one of the most effective ways to show how a product works. This is especially true for products that lend themselves to a visual explanation. They also give site visitors a quick overview of what you offer (like the HubSpot software overview video below) and provide deep dives into specific product features and use cases (like the second video below about HubSpot’s Contacts tool).

Product Pages

Once you’ve produced your product videos, where should they live? Product pages are the natural home. These pages should highlight your offerings and give prospects the information they need to research your product and understand what you sell. How they’re organized depends on what you’re selling.

On HubSpot’s product pages, for example, we provide both a general overview of what HubSpot’s all-in-one marketing software includes, plus a closer look at each tool’s features.

Your product pages should help prospects quickly understand what you offer and why it matters.

In practice, that means they should:

• Feature your individual products or services
• Explain the need each offering fulfills or the problem it solves
• Highlight key differentiators that set your solution apart

Product videos can support each of these goals by showing the product in action.

Product Blog Content

A product blog is a dedicated space for product updates, feature announcements, and company news. Keep it separate from your editorial blog and house it within the product section of your website. Use it to communicate significant product, service, and feature updates alongside noteworthy company news.

It’s also okay to incorporate subtle product mentions into your main blog from time to time. In fact, you’ll notice that we do it right here on this blog. See how we did it in the example below, which is an excerpt from our blog post, “How to start a blog (the right way) and write posts people actually want to read [+ free templates].”

Just keep promotions light and make sure your editorial blog stays focused on what it’s there for: education.

Customer Success Stories/Case Studies

Case studies that highlight the success of your current customers are an extremely powerful product marketing tool. In fact, they could be classified as both product marketing and sales enablement content.

Case studies add a lot of credibility to your product marketing and prove the true value of your products/services. Each case study should cover three things: the customer’s challenge, how your solution addressed it, and the outcome, whether that’s quantitative, qualitative, or both.

For a deeper dive, this case study guide and template walks you through the full process.

ROI Reports

Another great way to prove the value of your solutions is to compile regularly updated ROI reports based on the success of your customer base. If this content type fits your business, compile annual reports by analyzing existing customer data or surveying customers about the results they’ve seen.

Group Product Demos

Beyond educational webinars, group product demos are a strong format for product marketing collateral and worth adding to your mix. For software companies especially, live group demos save the sales team from running individual one-on-ones. They can be promoted to both marketing leads and prospects already in the sales pipeline.

Pro tip: If you record your live demos, these can be repurposed and used as product demo videos and featured on your website.

Product Awareness Surveys

Smart inbound marketers attract new website visitors with industry-related, top-of-the-funnel content. But, because this content tends to be more educational in nature rather than product-focused, product awareness can be a challenge for some businesses.

Product awareness surveys tell you what your audience actually thinks you sell. They can also help your product marketing team measure whether product awareness goals are being met over time. Email the survey to a segment of your leads or add the survey to thank-you pages; it’s a great way to collect responses.

For more information about conducting successful online surveys, download our free ebook.

Sales Enablement Content

These are the assets that live internally and keep your sales team equipped to have better conversations, answer tough questions, and close more effectively

Sales Training Sessions/Presentations

An effective sales team needs to stay on top of how to position and sell your products. This matters even more when new features and additions are shipping regularly.

Training content works best when it helps reps apply product knowledge in real conversations. Your sessions and presentations should cover:

• How new features work
• Which use cases each feature supports
• How to position each feature for different buyer personas
• How messaging should change by audience segment

Sales Knowledge Quizzes

How do you know what subject matter your sales team needs to be trained on? Quizzes are a great way to gauge their knowledge of your products, services, and/or features. This enables your product marketing team to identify the areas in which your sales team could use some additional help, training, and product knowledge. It also helps product marketing focus their efforts where they’re needed most.

Overview Sheets

An overview sheet is a document your sales team can distribute to the leads they’re selling to. It may provide additional information beyond what is publicly available on your website and product pages.

These sheets can (and should) also be tailored to individual personas. That way, each sheet speaks directly to a specific buyer’s problems, needs, and challenges. Because overview sheets are distributed to prospective customers, keep in mind that they should follow the same branding and design best practices as a sell sheet.

Competitor Comparison Matrices

Is your sales team often asked, “So how is your product any different than Competitor XYZ’s?” Creating a competitor comparison matrix can help your sales team understand and communicate your differentiation from competing products.

Your matrix can compare factors like:

• Pricing
• Feature availability
• Service or support offerings

Give reps this resource so they’re never caught off guard by a competitor question.

That said, ensure your marketing and sales teams aren’t obsessing about competitors. Customers need to be their primary focus. Competitive information should only be used to educate your staff so they’re prepared to answer questions around how you compare against competitors. It should never be used to bad-mouth competitors or sent directly to prospects.

“How to Sell” Pages

A “how to sell” page is a resource used to provide your sales team with all the information they need to effectively sell a particular product, service, or feature. You can consider each of these pages as the home base for your sales team to learn about what they’re selling. Publish these in a central location that’s easily accessible such as an internal wiki or some other internal file sharing service.

“How to sell” pages give sales reps the questions, positioning, use cases, and product details they need to qualify prospects and guide buying decisions.

Include:

• The problems, challenges, or needs the product addresses
• Questions reps can ask to qualify a prospect
• How the product works and which features it includes
• The buyer personas and use cases it best fits
• Screenshots or images reps can reference
• Competitive positioning tips
• Links to supporting resources like product pages, training decks, and overview videos

Product Digest Emails

Product marketers have a unique challenge: they market internally as well as externally. As the bridge between product development and the rest of the company, they’re responsible for keeping everyone aligned.

Product digest emails keep sales teams informed about new features, updated resources, and the latest sales enablement content. These emails should cover important product updates that salespeople and marketers need to know. They should also link to additional resources, like the ‘how to sell’ pages covered above.

And you don’t have to reserve these sends just for your company’s salespeople and marketers. There’s a good chance everyone in your company would also benefit from learning about what’s new in product marketing land too.

Frequently Asked Questions About Sales Enablement Content

What is sales enablement content?

Sales enablement content is the collection of buyer-facing and rep-facing assets that help sales teams educate prospects, handle objections, and close deals more effectively.

How is sales enablement content different from general marketing content?

General marketing content usually attracts and educates broad audiences, while sales enablement content is built to support active sales conversations, move deals forward, and help reps address specific buyer questions.

Who is responsible for creating sales enablement content?

Sales enablement content is usually created collaboratively by product marketing, content teams, sales enablement leaders, and sales managers, with each team contributing expertise from their side of the funnel.

What types of sales enablement content should teams create first?

Most teams should start with the assets reps use most often: case studies, product demos, one-pagers, competitive comparisons, and training materials tied to common sales conversations.

How often should sales enablement content be updated?

Sales enablement content should be reviewed regularly and updated whenever your product, pricing, positioning, competitors, or buyer objections change.

What are the 5 pillars of sales enablement?

The five pillars commonly include content, training, coaching, technology, and analytics, with content serving as the resource layer that supports every stage of the sales process.

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