Content Marketing ROI: A Formula for Any Type of Organization. Executives won’t fund marketing if it doesn’t demonstrate results. When I hear the question about the ROI of content marketing, I always ask: “Well, what’s the ROI of your marketing overall?” And too often, I hear the answer: “We don’t know.” Think about this: The majority of content discovered by your audience comes from just three channels: email, search, and social. Identify your potential audience The business case for content marketing is to reach, engage, convert, and retain buyers you would have never seen if all you did was create promotional content and push it to social channels, publisher sites, or banners and other forms of ads that many of us ignore. Start quantifying your business case by looking at how much unbranded search traffic you get from organic search. And email subscribers are many times more likely to convert to real customers than non-subscribers. Content marketing can help retain customers We’ve talked about the value of traffic, subscribers, and leads, but what about customer retention? Then just do some simple math: How much more do subscribed customers spend vs. non-subscribed customers? In short: Build the business case, find the budget, and measure the results. Want more assistance to secure the budget and buy-in for a content marketing program that delivers ROI?
Digital, social, and mobile technologies have dramatically changed the world we live in. And no function has been more disrupted than marketing. Executives won’t fund marketing if it doesn’t demonstrate results. That’s why marketing ROI – including content marketing ROI — is one of the top challenges for CMOs and marketers.
But before we dig in to walk you through the formula to do this, here’s a secret: You need to build a content marketing destination, such as a blog or a content hub. It is easier to measure the value of an owned platform relative to any other form of marketing.
Content formula for B2B organizations
If you have not done so already, you need build the business case for content marketing to weary marketing executives.
It starts by looking at your marketing ROI overall. When I hear the question about the ROI of content marketing, I always ask: “Well, what’s the ROI of your marketing overall?” And too often, I hear the answer: “We don’t know.”
Think about this: The majority of content discovered by your audience comes from just three channels: email, search, and social. The best marketers focus their efforts on creating content that can be discovered across all of these.
And what powers those channels? Of course, the answer is customer-focused content marketing.
Identify your potential audience
The business case for content marketing is to reach, engage, convert, and retain buyers you would have never seen if all you did was create promotional content and push it to social channels, publisher sites, or banners and other forms of ads that many of us ignore.
Start quantifying your business case by looking at how much unbranded search traffic you get from organic search. You can do this quickly using SEM Rush’s overview report. Or looking at your website analytics and group the traffic you get from keywords that are branded vs. unbranded.
Then you can quantify the opportunity in the size of that audience you are NOT reaching. You attract unbranded search traffic when you commit to customer-focused content instead of content that is about your company, product and services, which is inherent to most corporate websites.
Explore missed opportunities
If the math doesn’t convince executives, try tapping into fear. “Fear of loss” is considered one of the greatest human motivators. Executives are scared of being left behind their peers, and asking questions like the ones below are a great way to start the conversation:
- Do you show up first when someone searches for the category of your solution?
- Do you own the category like L’Oreal does with com?
- Do you own the target audience like Adobe does with com?
- Are you one of the largest sources of education for your audience like Cleveland Clinic’s Health Essentials? (Congrats Amanda…
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