Combined sales of companies selling through content marketing is expected to grow to almost $50 billion by 2019, according to recent research from the research firm, Outsell. Yet many content marketers are confused by their sales-speak sales tactics.

In a recent seminar at ContentCon, the largest content marketing conference in the U.S., Outsell President Michael King took the stage with blogger Ron Foote and John Roe, CEO of All Right Minds, to talk about monetizing content marketing by identifying exactly who should be being sold to.

The key is to tell it straight, but in a way that will open eyes, get the job done, and send the message loud and clear.

“It’s being real,” said King. “You have to speak directly to the buyers’ mind.”

It’s all about storytelling, when you’re telling the buyers what they want to hear so they buy. Storytelling is not always storytelling; for others it might be “content” with actual employees and customers talking to each other.

The key is to get the right story in front of the right people, who will think it’s their story they want to be told.

He said content needs to be driving a message, sales process, and a salesperson. He said it also needs to help CEOs and employees to make decisions that will affect an organization’s revenue. Content has to deliver all of that.

At Outsell, we call it “the whole story.” What a content marketing company is, but more importantly what the content marketing company is delivering, whether it’s a sales process or a product or service, “what your unique selling proposition (USP) is is absolutely essential.”

He explained that to deliver on that, it needs to be a bit of both a task and a skill. Sales people need to think clearly and can only do it with purpose and purpose alone, and content marketing professionals have to learn to shape their content so that it can deliver that purpose and purpose only to target buyers, who are the buyers.

We interviewed 100 entrepreneurs, successful creators, and creatives from out of the U.S. and Canada. We found that 91% considered content marketing the most important part of their organization. But who are they buying from? What is the price point? What is the (good) news? How can we drive the USP? How can we match the right people to the right organization?

“It’s all about stories,” said King.