Many entrepreneurs and business owners still nurture a misconception of content marketing. They wrongly adopt the same approach for the creation of content as they would for other marketing expenses. In their opinion, the content produced for a professional blog is just like another marketing expense, no more different than advertising, printing brochures or setting up exhibition stands.
Moreover, as the return on investment (ROI) of content marketing is not easy to grasp, it is common to hear among certain decision makers that they do not wish to spend 1,000 US dollars for content creation as they are already spending some 2,000 US dollars in Adwords advertising.
What these decision-makers are missing out is that if they decrease their Adwords budget by 500 US dollars and invest this amount on content creation, in a few months time, they will be in possession of an audience generator and leads that are far superior to Adwords. In the long run, this will help them decrease their expenditures related to advertising.
Tips for creating inbound marketing
Inbound marketing implies leading clients towards you contrary to outbound marketing that means one should hunt for clients.
You are wrong if you think that generating content is similar to advertising expenses. In other words, if you spend 5,000 US dollars in Google AdWords campaigns per month, at the end of the day what you are buying are only clicks from For example, if you spend $ 5000 per month on Google AdWords campaigns, the only thing you buy is the clicks that result from your ads. You are only buying visitors to your site. And, systematically, as soon as you stop paying, clicks and visits also stop. This is the classic example of a traditional marketing expense.
However, if you spend 5,000 US dollars per month to have a writer feed your blog with relevant articles including the keywords and themes you are targeting with Adwords, you will have the necessary resources to attract internet users to visit your site for many more years to come. The content will continue to attract visitors to your site long after it has been paid. All these blog articles will be able to be valued in the literal sense of the term.
Content marketing is more of a long-term asset than an expense
Content marketing should indeed be considered as a long-term asset. Here are some examples why you should adopt this approach:
The guide of Neil Patel
In an article comparing content marketing and advertising, Neil Patel claims to have invested more than 30,000 US dollars for the creation of 12 advanced guides covering all aspects of content marketing and SEO. Each guide cost him between 2,500 and 3,000 US dollars.
However, Neil highlights that his guides have brought him 10 times more, while relying solely on the means of distribution of content he had at hand (social networks and emails mainly, therefore free). Today, his guides no longer cost him anything, but continue to bring new customers to him. In the same breath, they have allowed him to become one of the main references in SEO and Overseas Content Marketing.
The blog of Contently
Taking into consideration that on the average, a potential buyer will read 11 articles on the product he is interested in before making his purchase decision, Contently explains in detail how the content produced by the company itself played a crucial role in the acquisition of an 82,000 US dollars contract with McDuck Enterprises.
By examining the path taken by McDuck decision makers on the company’s website, Contently was able to establish that they had previously consulted 5 articles and 2 case studies on their blog. This was followed by 5 hours of telephone conversation with the sales department, and the contract was signed.
In brief, 82,000 US dollars earned from 5 articles, 2 case studies and 5 hours of telephone conversation.
The cost of these articles is estimated at about 2,650 US dollars, and their importance in the sales process at 50% (on equal grounds with the sales force). This led Contently to conclude that:
The sales force generated a ROI of 6.3. (82,000 x 50% = 41,000 US dollars, for a cost of the sales force of 5h x 1500 US dollars per hour = 6,500 US dollars)
The content of the blog generated a ROI of 15.5. (82,000 x 50% = 41,000 US dollars, for a total cost of writing / publishing 2,650 US dollars)
It should be borne in mind that for the next deals made by Contently, the effort put by the sales force will be similar to this example, with a cost and a ROI probably of the same size.
On the other hand, the content already produced will no longer require any additional expense: it exists, it is referenced, it waits for internet users to provide them with immediate relevant information and then it converts them into potential clients without anyone needing to intervene.
The articles of Mashable
Mashable is a blog founded in 2005 by a 19-year-old Scot, Pete Cahsmore. The latter has succeeded in bringing Mashable to the top 10 global sites by regular publishing news regarding phones, web as well as the programming industry. In total, Mashable has gained over 46 million US dollars from Business Angels and venture capital companies.
What is the value of Mashable? Good question. In 2012, a rumor of buyout by CNN valued Mashable at around 200 million US dollars. The deal did not take place, but how was this evaluation carried out?
Mashable has been valued on three criteria: one by taking into account the volume and quality of its audience, and the second one, by its capacity to develop its audience with new content, and finally by its archives, that is, the existing content that accounts for about 70 percent of its monthly traffic.
In brief, a blog is an asset that can be valued.
As a reminder, an asset is an identifiable element of a company’s assets. It is an element that has a positive economic value.
A blog is an accounting asset and not a marketing expense. The traffic it generates is free once the content is produced. Furthermore, as shown by a study by HubSpot, about 70% of the leads generated by a blog are by old articles. These old items have been paid for and they no longer cost anything. And yet, they remain fruitful.
How to calculate the ROI of content marketing
The Adwords Equivalence
Adwords Equivalence is a principle developed by strategist David Meerman Scott. It consists in calculating how much you should spend in Adwords to achieve a position occupied by one of your articles by using a given keyword.
Let us say you generate 100 visits per month via Adwords, with a budget of 200 US dollars (2 US dollars per click) and that you get 10 leads by acquiring the email address of new potential clients. A lead costs you an average of 20 US dollars on Adwords and allows you to generate 30 US dollars of CA. The ROI of Adwords is equal to 1.5 in this case. It is considered to remain constant over a period of 12 months.
On the other hand, you have started a blog that you update with 2 new articles per month. Each article costs you 40 US dollars and since its creation, this blog shows 30 percent of audience growth each month, starting with 30 visitors the first month, with the same conversion rate as for Adwords (10%).
By using the Adwords Equivalence <=> cost of a visitor, here’s how the ROI of your blog will evolve:
The ROI of content marketing takes 5 months to go above 1 (and be profitable), and 6 months to outrun the ROI of Adwords.
This type of calculation supports the common remark that content marketing usually takes 6 months to produce positive effects (Editor’s Note: Texteur has developed a solution to shorten this timeframe).
What if you stop blogging?
In 2015, SEO expert Robert Ryan conducted a simple experiment: he refrained from posting new articles on his site for 251 days, a little over 8 months.
That is what followed:
- Overall traffic on the website plummeted by 32 percent
- Organic traffic decreased by 42 percent
- Traffic to the contact page dropped by 15 percent
- The number of conversions on the site decreased by 28 percent
As such, by putting an end to all the costs pertaining to content production, the number of leads was decreased by 28 percent. This implies that 72 percent of leads continued to be generated by the existing content, which has already been paid for.
Now try to realize the same experience with Adwords: stop all your campaigns. What is going to happen? You will have no more visits.
Stop Adwords = Zero lead.
Stop production of content = 28% fewer leads
In an end note, do not consider the production of content marketing as an advertising expense. By producing articles for your blog, you are making an investment on the future of your business. You will furthermore be able to measure profitability which is often superior to that of digital advertising.
For a precise measurement of the ROI of your content marketing, you may also consider:
- What your content brings to your social presence,
- How it consolidates your brand image,
- The secondary indicators of your web traffic, that is:
- Improving time spent on your pages
- Increase in the number of pages per visit
- The decrease in bounce rate
- The growth of re-engagement ( percentage of visitors returning to the website)
Are you interested by efficient content marketing solutions?
Contact us for a demonstration of Texteur