Content data: The secret weapon of RevOps

Here’s a quick explanation from subscription payment SaaS firm Chargebee.

Revenue operations (RevOps) and sales operations (SalesOps) both aim to boost revenue but target different areas.

• SalesOps is simply about fine-tuning processes and tools for the sales team, to help them close deals efficiently. Sales operations is one aspect of revenue generation.
• RevOps is an operational framework across sales, marketing, and customer success. RevOps aims to optimize the entire customer journey, ensuring a smooth handoff between departments and a positive customer experience. It’s like managing the entire revenue pipeline, not just the sales engine.

In short, SalesOps serves RevOps by focusing on a specific part of the revenue generation process. RevOps takes a more holistic approach, considering the entire customer lifecycle.

1. Revenue operations bring teams together teams to support customer flywheels, meaning the whole lifecycle from attracting leads to closing deals and encouraging customer loyalty.  Happy long-term customers are the (obvious overall) driving force for growth objectives, and revenue generation across departments is the goal. Here’s the key – marketing is recognized as a significant pipeline driver for RevOps.

2. Marketing operations support RevOps by concentrating on the machinery behind the marketing team, making sure campaigns, lead generation, and data analysis are efficient. Think of it as optimizing the marketing engine by focusing on clean data management, B2B campaign reporting, tweaking lead scoring models – anything that accelerates pipeline.

A strong RevOps framework is all about teamwork across departments, centralizing data and communication. Here’s a foundational outline to get you started.

1. People and processes

Team alignment through goals

Break down silos through shared goals, metrics, and regular meetings.

Define roles and responsibilities

Which department (marketing, sales, customer success) is accountable for certain outcomes in the customer lifecycle?

Standardize processes

Consistent workflows for lead generation, qualification, handoff, and customer onboarding mean you can organize, benchmark and report more effectively.

2. Technology and data

Tech stack

You’re going to need a CRM system that integrates with content creation software, marketing automation tools, customer success platforms and analytics software.

Data governance

Establish clear data ownership, access protocols, and data quality standards to support accurate reporting and decision-making.

Automation and reporting

Sidestep repetitive tasks with automation and report on campaign performance, sales velocity and customer health.

3. Performance optimization

Metrics and KPIs

Define key performance indicators (KPIs) and track progress for each stage of the customer journey. Use metrics like marketing qualified leads, sales conversion rates, and customer lifetime value.

Regular reviews and feedback

Regular performance reviews mean teams can gather to analyze data, identify bottlenecks, and react to improve processes and communication.

Customer feedback loop

The value of customer feedback is immense. Survey customers at all touchpoints to refine marketing messaging, improve sales pitches, and enhance customer success initiatives.

4. Continuous Improvement

Technology adoption

Stay updated on the latest RevOps technologies and evaluate their potential to streamline operations and improve outcomes.

Process evolution

Be adaptable and willing to adjust processes based on data and real-world results.

Team learning

Encourage ongoing learning and knowledge sharing within the RevOps team to stay ahead of industry trends.

RevOps relies on flywheel content, which means content for demand generation, inbound led generation, sales enablement, customer onboarding, and retention and advocacy.

Keeping customers happy and loyal is a part-content, part-human operation. Team members can report on calls, emails, or in-person events, but how can you see if your content contributes to better customer experiences if it’s not tracking analytics?

Often RevOps content is published as PDFs. From lead gen and demand gen content like white papers, reports, and thought leadership, to guides, manuals, playbooks, kits and ebooks for sales, onboarding and retention.

Today you can report more coherently – and much faster on these activities by using first-party data supplied by digital content formats.

Think about the value of seeing readers engage with an online white paper or interactive thought leadership. Which topics are they leaning towards? Which pages or videos? What if you could see precisely which stakeholders are looking at the pricing page of a digital sales proposal? Who shared your pitch deck and when? You’d know how to follow up, who to follow up with, and when.

For lead gen, you can manage leads from intent signals. Engagement activity is a brilliant indicator of demand. If you had the power to deliver digital manuals and guides, you not only train with text and video but could survey readers to establish learning. Interactive polls and quizzes invite retention for a useful customer feedback strategy.

Content performance shows the RevOps team which content resonates. Content data means teams can improve lead nurturing, address buyer pain points, and ultimately shorten sales cycles.

Imagine sales reps armed with content that perfectly addresses a prospect’s needs – or intel that reveals what interests them – and when. According to the Content Marketing Institute, companies that excel at content marketing see conversion rates that are 30% higher than those that don’t.

Content analytics also sheds light on which content formats convert best. Are webinars or white papers driving more qualified leads than blog posts? Do social channels or case studies translate into higher engagement?  This knowledge empowers RevOps to optimize content allocation, focusing resources on high-performing formats that drive tangible business results.

As the wise folks at Demand Metric say: video can increase conversions by 80% – so be sure you use formats that embed video (hint: interactive content can).

If you want to help teams work together, content analytics provides a shared language. Both sides can understand the most effective content at different stages of the buyer’s journey – and discovery is fast too. This paves the way for targeted content delivery, helping marketing to nurture leads with the right content while sales use high-performing pieces to close deals.

If you track first-party content data from existing customers, you can identify cross-sell, upsell and renewal opportunities for a leaner RevOps framework.

Intent data identifies conversion optimization opportunities while increasing engagement across accounts is key to derisking churn rates.

The key is to create a system that captures, integrates and activates first-party behavioral data across multiple touchpoints. Engagement data allows RevOps teams to hyper-personalize content, accelerate pipeline velocity, increase customer lifetime value and maximize revenue efficiency.

RevOps best practices rely on leveraging data to optimize processes and workflows between teams. For content, this translates to going beyond clicks and impressions and digging into content engagement.

Metrics like time spent on-page, scroll depth, and social shares offer deeper insights than clicks alone. They indicate a user’s genuine interest in your content and your brand. So think Google, who is currently testing Google Topics, a privacy-focused initiative that replaces cookies with topics to understand user interests. Importance is being directed towards high-quality, engaging content that users spend time with.

What does SEO heavyweight Moz say about engagement as a key performance indicator (KPI) for content success?

Tools like Turtl Analytics don’t just provide another marketing metric – but a strategic tool for RevOps. By leaning into data to understand content performance, RevOps can create content that drives sales, fosters collaboration, and ultimately, fuels significant revenue growth.  Data-driven content not only informs better decision-making but unlocks the true potential of RevOps, turning it into a revenue-generating powerhouse.