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You’ve more than likely heard the saying "content is king." Most business owners understand the importance of content marketing. However, the challenge for many small business owners is calculating just how much revenue that content brings in.
One study found that 24% of businesses report being "not at all successful" in calculating their content marketing ROI. It's easy to understand where the disconnect happens. You wrote a fantastic blog post, but how do you know if it contributed to your bottom line?
Keep reading for a comprehensive overview of how to measure your content marketing ROI and other essential content metrics you should consider.
What is content marketing ROI?
Content marketing return on investment (ROI) is a calculation that shows you how much revenue you gained from your content marketing efforts versus the cost of those efforts.
Calculating your content marketing ROI is essential to ensure that these marketing efforts are contributing to your business growth.
When calculating your content marketing ROI, always make sure to include every cost you've incurred, including:
- Salaries or outsource fees of people who produced the content
- Any platforms or subscriptions you purchased to produce the content
- Any cost you incurred promoting the content (PPC, social ads, etc.)
The exact equation for content marketing ROI is:
[ (Your Content Sales - Your Content Investment) / Your Content Investment ] x 100
This equation will give you the ROI as a percentage. So, let's say you produce a blog post that results in $500 of sales, and it costs you $125 to write, purchase photos, and promote on Instagram. The ROI on this piece of content is 73.4%.
What is a good content marketing ROI?
There are no standards when it comes to what your content marketing ROI "should be," and it can vary drastically from one business to the next. It's essential to keep two things in mind. First, if the content is bringing in more in sales than it costs to produce, it's earning a positive ROI and is worth it. Second, you should be taking the time to set benchmarks for your content and working to improve it little by little.
Seeing notable content marketing gains can take a while for many businesses. You'll need to devote a lot of time and energy to produce a good amount of content before you get noticed and become respected as an authority. Once you've built up a lot of content, however, you'll often see higher and higher returns.
Content marketing success metrics
Measuring your content marketing ROI is a straightforward way to understand if your content efforts are resulting in more revenue for the business. Still, content is about a lot more than just revenue. Producing content helps to improve your brand awareness and become established as a leader in your space, increases your engagement and touchpoints with your customers, and more. For that reason, you must evaluate your content marketing efforts against other factors as well.
Website traffic
Ultimately, your content should be driving more traffic to your website. In fact, 63% of marketers use website traffic to determine a piece of content's success. The more people you can get to land on your website, the more people who will be exposed to your brand, thus increasing conversions.
Engagement
A second essential metric to use when gauging the success of your content marketing strategy is engagement. Across the board, your content should be increasing engagement levels for social, email, and your website. Good content will get people to comment on your social posts, open your emails, and stay on your website longer. If you do not see these improvements, it might be a sign that your content isn't resonating with your existing audience.
SEO
SEO is a significant driver for any business. In 2021, 61% of marketers believe that SEO is the key to online success. Content marketing and SEO are closely intertwined, and a strong content strategy can improve your SEO. If your content performs well, it can increase your Google ranking. You will see this improvement as you write content around your business keywords, get people to stay longer on your site, and drive more traffic to your site.
Further, when you provide helpful, interesting content to your audience, you form a relationship with them. As a result, your audience will begin to trust your brand, engage with you online, and even become champion customers who recommend your brand to others.
Poor ROI? Don't give up on content marketing
If you do not see the results you want from your content marketing efforts (such as a positive ROI), this doesn't mean you need to give up on content. Instead, consider if your content can be improved. Review what your top competitor is doing and try to do it better. Over time, your content marketing ROI will become positive and continuously improve.
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BBB of Southern Piedmont and Western N.C. contributed this article.