It’s obvious that content marketing is important for any business. But do you know HOW important?
If you send your marketing masterpiece out and just assume it’s going to get great results (because let’s be real, we are all a little bit biased), you may be missing out on some key information that could get you even BETTER results.
It’s called Content Marketing ROI.
If you don’t measure the clicks, views and purchases that are the result of your campaign, then how do you know it really worked?
I’m going to walk you through marketing ROI with the help of a great Linkedin Learning course by Velera Wilson.
Content Marketing Goals
The first step in pretty much anything, is to establish goals.
“A successful content marketing strategy will require understanding and buy-in from other groups in your company”
Velera Wilson
The first thing you need to do, is establish who your stakeholders are.
Wilson (2020), shares that there are 3 types of stakeholders:
- The authority
- The people impacted
- Those who contribute
Then, define the goals with your stakeholders. It’s important to ensure you are all on the same page.
Start by asking these key questions (Wilson, 2016):
- What are the company goals?
- What gaps or opportunities are seen?
Finally, evaluate what goals are important…
- Engagement?
- Brand awareness?
- Lead generation?
- Sales?
Ask yourself which content marketing goals offer the greatest business impact (Wilson, 2016).
Measure your success
Once you know what your goals are, you need metrics to measure their success.
What types of metrics can you measure?
- Search Volume
- Views
- Website Traffic
- Reach
- Press mentions
- Likes/Comments
- Follows
- Shares
- Downloads
- Contact forms
- Subscriptions
- Calls
- Sales
- Renewals
- Net promoter scores
- Referrals
- Percent of sales from existing customers
Whatever your goals are, choose metrics that align with them and track them consistently.
The next stop, according to Wilson, is “Benchmarking”.
“Benchmarking provides you the point of reference for success to compare your results against”
Velera Wilson
You can benchmark in a few different ways:
- Past Campaigns
- Competitors
- Review Studies and marketing reports
Example
Let’s use an example. My husband used to own a small limousine company (pre-covid 19). We had a website and business pages on social media.
We did a few advertising campaigns on Instagram, Facebook and Google during the time we were operating the company.
Here’s a screenshot from an Instagram post promotion we did:
As you can see, we received 5 comments and 83 likes. If that was our benchmark, our goal might be to receive 100 likes, 6 comments and reach 2 new people. That’s an example of using a past campaign to determine a benchmark.
Measurement Timeframes
It’s important to set a timeframe for your results. If you set a goal to run a marathon, but never determined when that will be, you may never complete it.
So set a start and end date, if it’s an ongoing campaign, mark your calendar to check it regularly, and make improvements as you receive your results.
How to Calculate Content Marketing ROI
To calculate the ROI of your content marketing, you’ll a few things:
- Cost of the investment
- Net Profit (Sales-costs)
For example, our limousine was being advertised on Google. This was where we got the most leads.
We spent $25 per week and received about 5 calls per week about limo services from finding us on Google. If we book 1 of those clients at about $200 for a ride, the math would be:
($200-$25)/$25 = 700% ROI.
That campaign that was worth it’s cost!
Estimate your ROI
You may need to estimate ROI before you fire off a campaign. This can be helpful if you need to secure marketing funds and show revenue potential (Wilson, 2020).
For this you need:
- Estimated cost of investment in the campaign
- Vender Estimates
- Past campaign expenses
- Conversion Rates
- Number of Leads
- Sales from previous campaigns
- Revenue
- Costs
- Conversion rates
If you’re like me, math can be tough, so here’s a great blog that shares how to perform Marketing ROI math.
Remember, estimates can be off so it’s important to track the actual ROI coming from your campaign. You may also want to estimate how much ROI you will receive from different marketing campaigns (Instagram, Google, Facebook, email).
Creating Content to Drive Results
Your audience has specific needs and it’s important to appeal to them. I wrote a blog post about creating great marketing content that you may want to check out.
Here are some tips:
- Know your audience so you know where to advertise.
- What resources do you have (budget, time etc).
- What content will align with organizational goals?
For example:
Our limousine customers often used Google. We tried Facebook and Instagram, but Instagram didn’t have great results and Facebook was just okay. Google generated the most leads.
A particular phrase that was searched frequently when we were setting up a Google ad for the limo business, was “last minute limousine”.
Interestingly, a company in Edmonton used that phrase as their company name.
We used the phrase in our ad campaign and would often get calls from people looking for that company. About 50 percent of the time, we converted them over to us… All because we used that phrase in our ad campaign.
We spent about $25 per week on that ad and the content was based on quick limo service.
Buyers Journey
It’s important to align your content with the buyers journey. What is this journey?
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
- Purchase
Check out this Youtube video on the Buyers Journey if you want to learn more about it.
Understanding the buyers journey can help you know where and when to target your ads.
Attribution Models
Attribution is essentially where you attribute your sales/conversions from.
Here are a few models that Wilson (2020) mentions:
- First Touch – first point of marketing contact with customer.
- Last touch – last point of marketing content before purchase.
- Linear – assigns value to ALL marketing content in buyers journey.
- Time Delay – gives most credit to the content that’s closest to the conversion (percentage based).
Customers may not buy through the first point of content they have with your content. It’s interesting to know what helped make their final decision.
Reporting Campaign Performance
Invest in content marking tracking tools. Sometimes you don’t even need to pay much, it may be included.
For instance the limousine Instagram page we have has tracking tools included. When you pay for an ad campaign, metrics are included in the results.
By the way, if you decide to advertise on Facebook, I wrote a blog about that!
Here are a few analytic tools that Wilson (2020) recommends:
Social Media
Online SEO Tracking
Website
- Google Analytics
- Crazy Egg
- Check out my blog on SEO
Focus on metrics that are relevant to your campaign and audience. If we were simply excited that our limousine ads were gaining us more followers on Instagram, but were not seeing an increase in bookings – we were not tracking a relevant metric.
Ask yourself:
- What’s not working?
- What could be better?
- What’s working well?
“Make successful content even better” – Velera Wilson
Test what your audience responds to, ensure your marketing copy will get results, and measure your ROI.
Some variables you can change/test:
- Copy
- Design/layout
- Time of day
- Call to action
Try changing variables to see what works. Keep evaluating this never ending process.
Conclusion
ConclusionWilson’s Conclusion
Wilson’s Conclusion
You are now ready to get out there and develop great campaigns that align with your goals. Use resources such as the Content Marketing Institute to keep current on marketing trends. Good luck!
My Conclusion
Content marketing ROI is an integral part of creating your campaigns.
As used in many examples above, Google was the best resource for our limousine ads. It was where new grads, engaged couples and partiers looked for service.
Not only this, the great reviews we gained from customers gave us a 5 star rating, which I believe contributed to our conversions.
I hope you enjoyed learning about content marketing ROI with me and Velera Wilson!
References
Wilson, V. (2020). Content marketing ROI. LinkedIn Learning. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/content-marketing-roi/calculating-roi-on-content-campaigns?resume=false&u=2109516
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