ROI is the new buzzword when it comes to content marketing
Content marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of brand strategy, so how can we measure its return on investment? Kayvan Salmanpour, international vice president of NewsCred, offers his best advice.
ROI on content marketing is now the question on every brand’s lips – but how can you answer it? Brands now know they need to be creating, curating and sharing content, so how can the results be measured, and ultimately justify the cost of content to their shareholders and board?
Being able to analyse content data – from social shares to lead generation – allows the savvy marketer some insight into how consumers are interacting with their brand. More importantly though, the feedback allows brands to shape their growing content marketing strategies and do more of what works.
Having a clear goal, strong but realistic ambitions, being flexible and investing in the future should be front of mind for anyone in charge of a content marketing strategy.
Start with the goal in mind
Success in content marketing doesn’t happen overnight. Brands that want to delight, engage and connect with audiences need to produce, curate and share high quality, high value material.
Net-A-Porter is an example of a brand whose content marketing goal is clear – to increase its credibility as a high fashion destination and to convince luxury audiences of the merits of shopping online. It knows exactly how it wants to talk to this audience, what content it desires, what content it should feed to them and in what way.
It is now positioning itself as a high-end publisher, in both print and online. To do this, it has created an immersive digital experience by combining video how-to’s, weekly diaries and photo spreads together to create visually stunning editorial content.
It has just launched a new glossy magazine, Porter, which delivers an authoritative global point of view on high fashion, in an attempt to rival incumbent fashion names like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
Launching a content marketing strategy is a little like launching a traditional magazine in that you have to define your audience, editorial values and tone of voice – all while answering to commercial objectives too.
Brands will be asking themselves what they want to achieve through content marketing. Is it purely to drive purchase? Or is it about brand awareness or brand repositioning? Is it heightened customer engagement and loyalty? Is it to encourage recommendation? Or all of the above even?
Dream big, but be realistic
A brand’s objective for doing content marketing should make them feel confident enough to ‘dream big’. But just as important are realistic goals; not only should goals for a content marketing strategy be realistic, they should align with a brand’s business aims.
Creating specific pillars of content that can be matched to a goal will provide a realistic and clear layout of what can be expected from a content marketing strategy – and how your content can convert followers into customers, or retain and upsell customers.
For example, if the goal is to drive purchasing, think about the way content can successfully move the audience through the sales journey. Goals could include setting a target for the number of subscribers the newsletter distribution list should grow by; or to increase subscriptions to a customer magazine; or even a certain increase in shares of articles or videos.
Choose metrics wisely
With content marketing there are seemingly infinite metrics to choose from – some of which are better indicators of business growth than others. It ranges from consumption metrics – how many people ‘consumed’ content measured by page views and downloads – to lead generation metrics and how many shares the content is receiving from an audience.
If brands and agencies aren’t selective of the metrics they choose, they will just end up buried in an unmanageable mound of data – or celebrating the success of content that didn’t return any monetary value at all.
Choose metrics that will track a lead’s movement through the funnel and will that will sync up with other bottom-line concepts like costs, revenue and profits. Now, it’s about thinking of cost per opportunity just as much as it is cost per click.
Learn on the fly
You love your content, but does the audience love it too? Don’t let brand bias get in the way. Be critical about your content programme’s performance and give yourself a reality check.
With every piece of content, the question should not just be, ‘What did I achieve with this? Is it close to the marketing goal?’, but also, ‘Is this interesting and of value to the audience? Is it something they would give up an email address for or share socially?’. Learning on the hop from each piece allows brands and agencies to shape content, and ultimately make it more effective through every additional piece.
This process requires self-discipline, being cruel to be kind – but ultimately it will ensure you link back to your marketing goals with every piece of content and create materials of a high editorial standard.
Investing in content for the future
Content marketing isn’t just a tactic – it’s a long-term strategy. Brands must have patience when it comes to seeing the investment into content marketing pay off and agencies need to brief and manage them carefully.
In NewsCred’s experience, it takes around four to five months from the start of a strategy to start seeing a return on content marketing through the culmination of channel distribution all coming to fruition. The return could be anything from a consistent return of visitors, elevated social presence or increased levels of sales.
Brands need to set up a strong foundation, and if you help them be prepared and patient, you will gradually begin to see a return on investment, aligned with their marketing goals. A quick win might make you look good in the beginning, but it will only be a shallow result and won’t give you the depth of audience uptake that content can deliver.