Content marketing is the latest trend to hit the business world, and companies are catching on. In fact, spending on content marketing is projected to increase 15.1 percent throughout 2013 to a total of $118.4 billion.  Content marketing spans a wide variety of efforts: from blog posts and social media engagement, to website guides, articles, and whitepapers.

Strategically planned and carried out in a consistent and responsive fashion, content marketing builds your customer base, increases loyalty, and results in more leads and revenues.

What many companies don’t realize is that the utility of content marketing extends beyond the purview of your marketing department. Regardless of whether you have an in-house team or utilize a call center for fielding customer calls, you can extend your content marketing efforts to increase customer satisfaction and create a better overall experience for your customers.

How Customer Success Helps Content Marketing

What are your customers’ greatest needs and priorities? What kinds of questions or concerns do they have regarding your product or services? How do they typically use your product or service? Your marketing department could spend extensive time finding the answers to these questions by analyzing customer data, setting up a poll on your website, or mailing/emailing a survey for customers to fill out and send back.

Or, you could simply ask your Customer Success team.

As the front line of your business’s engagement with customers, your Customer Success team is intimately familiar with the needs, concerns, questions, and demands of your customers. By mining your team’s collective knowledge of your customers, you can uncover a treasure trove of potential content ideas.

• Use these ideas to generate new content that engages your customers with their specific interests, answers to their questions, and responses to their needs. 90% of consumers find custom content useful, and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.

How Content Marketing Helps Customer Success

The relationship between Customer Success and your content marketing efforts is a two-way street. Not only can your Customer Success team help you generate new content – your content can also assist your team in providing service, information, and value to your customers. Here’s how:

• Find a way to share the fruits of your content marketing labors with your Customer Success team so that they, in turn, can pass that information on to your customers. By providing additional relevant information to the customer, your team can increase the likelihood that the customer will respond in a positive manner. 80% of business decision-makers prefer to receive company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement.

• By providing your Customer Success team with an organized trove of useful content, you can reduce the amount of time your team spends on the phone with your customers. Instead of explaining the solution to a particular issue, your team can send the customer to the correct guide or article that lays everything out in an informative, easy to understand fashion. By making use of this resource, your team can reduce their average call handle time, increase their first call resolution rate, and increase overall customer satisfaction.

When your marketing team creates new content, they share it on your company blog, website, social media accounts, or external websites. By connecting your content marketing team with your Customer Success team, you not only improve the overall quality of your content but you also improve your customer service processes as well.

About the Author

Megan Webb-Morgan is a business blogger for lead generation company, Resource Nation. She writes on a variety of topics including customer support and business management.