I’m always talking to my clients about the need to create more marketing content. But what exactly is content? Information, yes, but more than that: it is water for customers and prospects who thirst for knowledge, it is sustenance to fuel the marathon process known as the sales cycle.

Content consists of web pages, white papers, articles, brochures, presentations, podcasts and other packaged, educational information that helps generate interest in your products and position your company as experts. And it helps keep that interest going and growing when you need to nurture leads over the long run.

I recently underwent a “content inventory” project with a client. Sales people were claiming that they lacked the right information to help support their sales process and move prospects along toward becoming customers. So we dug up all the content the company currently had: hard copies from the literature racks, PDFs on the server, custom one-off pieces on someone’s hard drive. Postcards, letters, Flash demonstrations . . .

We found an amazing amount of useful material. The problem was that it wasn’t categorized or easily accessible. So we set about creating a central repository of content categorized by type, created short summaries of each piece, suggested when and where each piece should be used, and made it accessible to everyone who needed it.

In undergoing this exercise, we also uncovered unmet needs for specific types of content: a white paper on this subject, a data sheet on that product. Then we established a team of consisting of content creators (marketing and other subject matter experts) and content consumers (sales people and their customers and prospects) that would meet regularly to discuss new content needs and manage projects to make sure those needs are met.

Remember: your customers and prospects are hungry for information that will help them solve the challenges they face every day in performing their jobs. It’s your job to feed them.