If marketing is the highway to success, content marketing is the bullet train. The reason behind content being the preferred brand of marketing is no secret; not only is this the best and the fastest way to put forth your idea through to your consumer, but content marketing is also unbelievably cheap if compared with its counterpart. Recent studies show that preferring content marketing over traditional media marketing saves at least 60% of the allocated revenue.
Although being cheap doesn't mean it is ineffective in any case. Content marketing has a reputation for generating three times in b2b industry more leads concerning other marketing mediums. Content marketing is the Mt. Everest of ROI, and no one should ignore such a useful ROI model.
What exactly is ROI?
ROI stands for Return On Interest. It is an algorithm that helps calculate the total input cost and returns for any assignment, project, or campaign.
What is B2B Content Marketing ROI?
ROI in terms of content marketing in b2b industry is nothing but the percentage that showcases what revenue you have secured compared to what you spent during the campaign. ROI is one of the critical indicators of that campaign's progress as it is directly connected to the revenue stream.
Even though revenue generation is an essential part of marketing, it should not be the only factor around which a campaign's success should be based.
ROI isn't just revenue
ROI is leads,
ROI is SEO success,
ROI is exposure,
ROI is authority.
Commonly encountered issues while calculating ROI
Many people have a habit of premeditating and calculating returns before even establishing the basics, so before you start calculating your outputs, you must understand the common yet significant problems marketers face while calculating the ROI of a project or campaign.
The primary factor to consider is that marketing of any form is a long-term game, especially when it comes to content marketing. Nearly all of the campaign start and progress with an overall negative ROI, but not to forget that the ROI would improve over time. Another factor to be considered is the numerous advantages content marketing presents, which are hard to qualify directly as financial figures or numerically for that matter. Brand value and brand exposure are some of its mastery.
How to calculate ROI for your organization
After you have all the metrics required to gauge your ROI, it is time to calculate and forecast your growth. Although, for accurate results, it is necessary for you to have a good idea of the financial expenses on your content campaign, which includes in-depth knowledge of retail spending for the content and the promotion.
The formula to find your actual Return On Interest is a simple mathematical formula of dividing the final financial value received during the campaign by the total cost invested in the project.
What is a good ROI?
The actual goal should be to make back every dollar that you have invested in your marketing campaign. But, ideally, there is no perfect definition of what should qualify as a good ROI. Good ROI largely depends upon the marketing strategy, the distribution channels, and, most notably, the industry that you are operating in.
While calculating ROI of the offline campaign is not the most straightforward task in the world, it becomes considerably easy when it comes to online strategies. Many campaigns assisted by Google Ads, Amazon Ads, etc. automatically track ROI and have detailed data to back figures of 800% ROI for many projects.
Suppose alongside content marketing; you are testing out other strategies. In that case, it can become quite a troubling task to pinpoint if your blog, forums, podcasts, or videos are translating directly to a purchase or being converted into an intent-based lead. Especially if the content isn't directly linked to a landing page.
Recent studies conducted by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) state that understanding and calculating ROI has given marketers a sense of mystery for decades, and Even though the current market offers a lot of tracking URLs and modern technology that helps calculate the success of content, Content Marketing Institute strongly suggests analyzing the ROI from a long-term perspective while also taking in consideration factors of non-financial gains such as the organic audience growth.
So, with all the technicalities around, we would like to help you to truly understand b2b content marketing ROI, to recognize the correct metrics, and to heighten your ROI.
When you calculate your ROI in the future, don't forget to factor in how the following metrics help your organization in the long run.
Direct financial aspect
- Lead generation: - An open secret of the market indicates that Quality content draws an audience, and an audience can allure leads.
- Leads can be direct or indirect, but some factors can help us recognize their strength: -
- Strong attraction or sense of affiliation towards your brand name
- Redirection towards similar articles which constitute sales funnel
- Direct communication with your sales team regarding Pre-sales query
- Sales: - One of the significant factors of consideration while calculating the ROI is the lead conversion rate. If you are feeding quality content to qualified leads, some of them will end up buying something.
Direct content engagement
1. Blog traffic: - The primary factor to account for the success of a content marketing campaign is the traffic drawn throughout the process. Because no traffic directly translates to no revenue. Even though that statement might sound a little dramatic, it is nothing but a straight fact. Because if there is no audience to read it, there will be no customers to buy it.
a. Thus, in this particular section, it is necessary that you keep a tab on what your customer response is and what the behavioral pattern is in terms of your website.
b. Moreover, just the numbers and frequency of visitors is enough to help you understand your traffic growth and compare your performances with the previous records.
c. It is also extremely essential to know the source of your traffic; thus, looking into referral traffic is important. When you see where the traffic is coming from, you can modify or restructure your campaign accordingly.
2. Onsite engagement: - Getting viewers to your page or blog is not enough. Making them stay there is! And in that process, analytics related to bounce rate comes in place.
a. If you have a low bounce rate, that means your campaign is working, and people are interested in your content or are even revisiting your website to get more information. That would account for immediate success, and mean you are on the right track to generate a lead or, better, make a sale from your content.
b. But, contrary to the above situation, if you have a killer blog. Still, the visitors are clicking off the page. This indicates either the topic or the campaign needs a little tweak.
c. Therefore, it is essential to have engaging content right to the newsletter section or CTA (Call to Action) segment.
3. Offsite engagement: - Offsite engagement is as vital as Onsite engagement, if not more. For any content related campaign to be successful, it must generate enough social media traction.
a. Offsite engagement is the best bet to gain leads, not just regular lead, but intent-based leads as, generally, the content that reaches the end-user is either shared by close contact or a relative.
i. Recent studies showcase that many decisions are influenced by either peer recommendation or direct social media proof.
ii. You can directly track your social media traction by Google analytical tool.
Social media presence
Right from the boom of digital presence, the questions that businesses are frequently under are "Where do we rank on Google?", "Are we visible on Bing?"," What should we do to rank higher?" and these questions do not go in vain. Because due to the general human tendency, people tend to click on what appears to be the top result on the search page, and more clicks = more leads = more sales. And here are a few methods that you can use to leap from the rest to the best.
1. Search Engine Optimization: - SEO is implementing a technique used to reach out to a broader audience by getting your page to rank higher on the search engine result page.
a. To keep track of your SEO performance, you need to keep in check that: -
i. Your content perfectly fits around your target keyword.
ii. You notice a spike in inbound links.
2 Develop a sense of authority: - If your page has a sense of power, people tend to believe and share the data more, which automatically increases the reach, generating potential leads and sales.
Apart from these critical metrics, there are a few factors that marketers should keep an eye on, such as: -
- User demographics: - Google analytical tool is a paradise for anyone working in the marketing and sales industry. Because not only does it help you with the number of visitors to your website or blog, it also showcases how old your users are & where they are from. If this isn't an acceptable sample bank, what is?
- Platform: - In today’s age, all of us are glued to our mobile phones for the larger part of our day, so it's easier to assume that most of our traffic is derived from mobile, but won't it be great to have a factual data to support your assumptions?
How can you boost your ROI?
1. Focus on details: - When you put out any data for your end-user, make sure it is detailed and filled with information, so your page, blog, or video is the last stop for that user.
a. Be extra generous even to add internal and external links to create a pipeline that caters to your visitor's every need.
2. Decorate sophisticated content: - Sophisticated is the new sexy. But, it comes to B2B, we push it beyond the known borders because the buyers are ready to pay the premium prices if they get the sense that they are getting the excellent value for their money.
a. Approximately 50% of buyers go the extra mile when they feel catered through the journey. Sophistication, in this matter, provides the peace of mind that seals the deal.
3. Redevelop your content: - Many campaign marketers find it very frustrating to wait around for the content to be created and curated from scratch. Therefore, it is very sensible to redevelop and repurpose your content according to project demand to save time and resources.
4. Focus on data and strategy: - Many campaigns fail to garner the expected results as they are not targeted around a particular resource or keyword.
a. Studies by CMI reports with correct keywords, B2B marketers can blast their campaign by at least 60%.
5. Optimize your blog or website for mobile: - Never forget to focus on mobile. If you connect closely with the people from the digital background, you will hear how essential mobiles are to the digital world for generating traffic. So, in this scenario, is it worth it to not be prepared for the future?
How to Forecast the ROI for a Potential Content Marketing campaign?
Search for Case Studies of Companies working under a similar domain, allocate particular time and resources for online studies to discover B2B or B2C companies that have previously executed similar campaigns. The more similar the companies are, the easier it is to draw parallels and figure out the closest estimate. Although you might need to go deeper into the documents and give them the respect they deserve, the end product would be well worth your time and resources.
Work towards the necessary optimization today
Time is money, and when it comes to content marketing, time is potentially the essence of success.
Don't waste your time, get ready to implement, and optimize your ROI using the perfect metrics.
Positive growth in ROI is inevitable, no matter which module and marketing methodology you use.
Are you feeling scared to implement any of these on your own?
Feel free to contact us, and we will put you through to one of MarkSpace Media experts.