Content marketing is a great way to build brand awareness, provided your content is engaging. Win the trust of your audience and they’ll share your content, increasing your reach and awareness.
People are much more likely to educate themselves about a company by reading a blog post or article than a standard advert. A strong content marketing strategy will inform your audience and encourage them to seek out your content online.
Build a relationship with your audience through content marketing and they’re more likely to buy from you – it’s as simple as that. Earn their trust and you’ll get a valuable head start over your competitors.
The evidence is compelling – content marketing costs significantly less than paid ads but generates three times as many leads, and with a higher conversion rate. It’s a no-brainer.
Content marketing is a great way to encourage customer loyalty. Create compelling content and they’ll come back for more, creating a strong sense of community and engagement.
No matter the size and scope of the project, our team is committed to achieving exceptional results. From brochure content to website copy, we take pride in delivering results on time and on budget, including:
Some of the popular formats of content we can produce for you include:
Content marketing is here to stay – it’s a proven strategy used by the world’s most successful marketing teams. Despite this, proving the value of your content to your bosses and peers is another task entirely. In theory, measuring the return of your content strategy sounds straightforward. You probably already have an idea whether it’s working or not. But how do you measure return on investment (ROI) in practice? Here are some of the best way of doing so.
In plain terms, to calculate ROI, subtract the spend from the return, then divide the return by the amount spent – in this example, our return is £20,000 and our spend is £10,000:
(£20,000 – £10,000) / £10,000 = 1.00
ROI = current value of investment minus cost of investment divided by cost of investment.
This will give you a decimal that can be expressed as a percentage (in this case, 100%). You’ll already know this but if it’s a positive number, well done, your activity drove more money than you spent. If it’s negative, it probably wasn’t worth the effort.
The actual formula for ROI is relatively straightforward. Adding up how much you spend should also be simple, providing you have kept accurate records. Add up everything from time spent, salaries paid, agency fees, media spend, design costs and anything else you can think of for the most accurate reflection.
The most difficult part with content marketing is putting a figure on the return.
Identifying the return is easier for some types of content over others. If your content is behind a lead-generation form that requires users to enter their details before accessing the file, you’re in luck. Evaluating the amount of business it drove is as simple as matching the lead value to the downloads. It may be worth doing this with potential lead value (whether it was won or lost) and actual sales value. This way, you can prove the worth of your content – it’s up to the sales team to close the lead.
You can see this method in action with Hubspot’s Complete Collection of Content Creation Templates. If you want to download them, you have to tell Hubspot who you are, and you can bet they’ll get in contact afterwards. If your lead-generation form is connected to your customer database – like Hubspot’s will be – then this process is even more simple.
For other types of content, it’s less straightforward. Blogs, videos, articles, guest posts, infographics, case studies and other pieces of content will all contribute to sales in various ways without getting that final conversion. To find the ROI for these, you’ll have to be more creative as there are many methods:
There are many ways of attributing the value of sales you have made to the marketing efforts that drove them. It’s a complex journey, because users move between channels over a significant period of time before they make their purchase.
Google Analytics is a great free tool that is helpful when evaluating the return of content. Its Page Value metric puts a financial figure against each page based on the contribution it makes to sales. The higher the number, the higher the value.
The tool also allows you to look at your marketing performance using different attribution models, providing you have e-commerce tracking set up. There are the standard models: first click, last click, time decay and linear. There is also the option to create a custom model. It’s worth looking at your content using different models to see how and where it contributes, so you can optimise it.
Evaluating the return from content marketing can be as complicated or simple as you like. Our advice is to start off small and grow from there. It’s better to have a baseline figure that everyone understands and gives you a starting point rather than spending time and energy on a more accurate figure that probably isn’t worth the effort. Once you’re confident, you can move towards an ROI value that is accurate and actionable.
Get in touch with WooContent today to discover how as a copywriting agency we can support your content marketing strategy.
