CONTENTMARKETING ROI

Improve your content marketing ROI with these 4 tips

Creating content is an investment in terms of time, which is why you want to get the most out of it. To help you get started, we offer 4 tips for improving your content marketing ROI.

Content is King. Still is. But although marketers have seized on content marketing in abundance, one of the biggest challenges remains proving and optimising the actual return on investment (ROI) for content marketing.

Therefore, in this article, we provide some practical tips for optimising content marketing ROI. Using these tips, you can make the most of your content, get more return on your marketing budget and actively monitor whether your content contributes to your marketing success.

Tom

Reading time:

9

minutes.

Tip 1: Set KPIs for content marketing

To be able to indicate that your content marketing is actually successful, it is important to set good KPIs. These content marketing KPIs allow you to justify your marketing budget and content spending and demonstrate ROI.

Note: The type of content that will contribute to your KPIs will vary by organisation. Whereas a (semi-)government agency will be more interested in content and KPIs to generate more visitors to its website, a B2B software provider will be more likely to focus on KPIs for generating marketing or sales leads.

Some different KPIs to keep an eye on:

Website sessions/visits
Average time per session
Conversion rate for your key content
Percentage of qualified leads (marketing qualified leads)
Percentage of sales opportunities (sales qualified leads)
Generated Revenue

An example of an online funnel in which the KPIs are determined per stage

An example of an online funnel in which the KPIs are determined per phase.

We often see that in practice, these KPIs are far from transparent. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that there is a platform (or tool) with which you can accurately measure the impact of your content marketing efforts. Ideally, this platform allows you to monitor and assess content for each individual channel. This way, you can instantly see which traffic sources are responsible for the most leads; crucial for your content marketing ROI optimisation.

Should you then discover, for example, that organic traffic via Google is your main traffic source, while social media contributes relatively little, a logical next step is to spend more time and effort identifying relevant keywords for content than increasing the frequency of your social media updates. This not only helps to optimise existing channels, but also to improve your approach for the long term. Therefore, pay sufficient attention to setting up and monitoring your KPIs.

Tip 2: Reuse existing content

When a blog post, whitepaper, technical product sheet, newsletter or any other form of written content has been developed, we often see that development of new content is started almost immediately. This is not necessarily wrong, as content production should not stand still. But to get maximum return from your content, it is important to think about how the piece of content created can be applied in additional formats and channels.

For example, if you have written a series of blogs full of useful advice for existing or new customers, you could compile them into a bundle and offer them online for download. If you have previously developed several webinars, you might as well develop this content into several how-to videos (or vice versa: from videos to webinar). The most common optimisation we see in practice: offering your latest written articles by default in your online newsletter.

An example of whitepaper offered to prospects in further depth

An example of white paper offered to prospects in further study of the subject matter

Content that you produce as an organisation can also be used as a webinar, especially during periods such as during the Corona crisis

Content you produce as an organisation can also be deployed as a webinar, especially during periods such as during the Corona crisis

It is also worthwhile to create content from previous achievements or most striking results in the form of case studies and share it via social media channels. That way, you will create trust or interest in your products or services that may match the practical challenges of potential customers.

Reviewing previously published content is another way to optimise your return on content marketing. You probably write some well-performing pieces every year, or pieces that could be relevant every year (for example: 2020 trends in B2B marketing). Adapt these best-performing pieces, supplement them with information that is accurate and relevant, and share them again through existing channels.

Reusing or "upcycling" content in this way is faster and easier than starting from scratch. It allows you to stay relevant and, it is more cost-effective. Plus: if you choose keywords for content carefully, blog posts, white papers and other material will continue to generate traffic to your website and possibly generate leads for years to come.

Tip 3: Make your content freely available

As we described earlier: making relevant content available behind a form is a good way to identify prospects. Just make sure you do this in moderation. Offering content behind a form, or 'gaps', is not always good for the user experience.

You can also offer content without a form or conversion path

Content you can also offer without a form or conversion path

Sometimes a form is and remains a barrier for prospects to make themselves known. When you've spent a lot of time on this piece of content behind a form, but it totally fails to deliver the results you expect, it's probably time to make the content freely available.

Making content freely available when it is not performing adequately has an additional benefit. When the content is published online, it can be indexed by Google, contributing to your organisation's visibility. Thus, it can potentially generate more traffic than it did before. While making your previously gated content freely available does not guarantee success, you do open it up to a wider audience, which can provide leads in the long run. That way, you increase the return on the previous time investment.

Tip 4: Increase returns through marketing automation

Although marketing automation has grown in popularity in recent years, it can be challenging to achieve a positive ROI when you acquire this technology.

But as many marketers have experienced in practice, when set up and configured correctly, a marketing automation system can streamline content activities to deliver better results at low(er) cost. This directly impacts the ROI of your content marketing. So what should you look out for?

Marketing automation should provide you as a marketer (or your entire marketing team) with the capabilities to monitor and drive demand in the marketplace through a single integrated platform. This includes everything from understanding trends in search volumes, to publishing and offering blog posts and whitepapers, to tracking emails and conversions. With a single system, switching between other tools and systems to monitor performance is no longer necessary. If your marketing automation platform is set up properly, it improves the way you can publish, share, analyse and optimise content. This guides the way you optimise your entire marketing process. While saving time. Need help choosing a platform? Then be sure to read the article on comparing marketing automation tools.

With the help of the above tips, you can get started immediately on improving your content marketing ROI. Need help with that? Then contact Centagon's specialists.

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