With every dollar counting more so now than ever, companies want to know that they are getting a good return on investment (ROI) with each dollar spent.  It is especially important with marketing dollars, considering the drastic shift to digital strategies in the last 18 months has meant many companies are trying new digital tactics.

Companies want to know when they spend money on marketing, they are getting their investment back and then some. It comes as no surprise that people want to know the success (or room for improvement) of new ventures.

Content marketing is where it is at right now.  It is a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online materials, like videos, whitepapers, blogs and social media posts. These materials do not outright promote a brand like placing ads in magazines or on tv, but instead subtly encourage interest in a company’s products or services.

Sounds like a great way to promote your brand, right? But the lingering question seems to be, how does one measure the ROI of content marketing?

Measuring Content Marketing ROI – What It Is and How to Do It

Content marketing ROI is a percentage that shows how much revenue a company gains from content marketing in comparison to what money the company spent. ROI is said to be one of the most important measurements of successful content marketing because it is directly tied to revenue.

When companies participate in content marketing, they are building their online branding and presence one piece at a time. By consistently creating informative blogs, articles, whitepapers, infographics and videos, companies position themselves as thought leaders and industry experts. By doing this, they have a leg up on the competition.

But how do you attain positive ROI with content marketing? The first step is setting goals. Realistic goals. Goals that make sense for the tactic and the measure of success is known.

Setting Goals for Content Marketing Success

Like anything else, setting goals helps to guide and align your focus, while sustaining momentum. If you don’t set goals, you can’t manage or measure what you are doing.  You can’t improve on something if you have nothing to measure it against. Setting goals gives us something to strive for.  Setting goals also allows us to know if we are achieving positive ROI.

When it comes to a content marketing strategy there are several goals that need to be set. The most common ones, include brand awareness, thought leadership, site traffic, lead generation, lead conversion/upsell, customer engagement and customer education.  Each of these goals, although different, also work in tandem.

Looking Closer at Your Goals

So what exactly do each of these goals mean and how do I get them to help me increase my ROI? Let’s take a closer look.

1. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is when consumers are well aware of the distinct qualities or image a particular brand of goods or services portrays. Think about things like Coca Cola or Tostito’s. Just like in consumer marketing, creating brand awareness is very important within B2B content marketing. Content marketing allows companies to reach a large audience and help them with their expertise and knowledge on a particular subject.

Some advantages of brand awareness include being top of mind, client loyalty, better metrics, better product recognition and help with the introduction of new products under the brand.

2. Engaging Your Customers

The B2B market is no different than the consumer market when it comes to engaging its customers.  Your customers want to do business with people, not a company. They want to feel loyalty and appreciation. Content marketing does this by sharing pertinent information and knowledge, as well as opinions. By doing this, a personal touch and feel is created.  A place customers feel like they can turn to and rely on.

3. Educate Your Customers

If we’ve said it once, we have said it 100 times to our clients. Some of the best pieces of content anticipate what questions your customers need the answers to and write content pieces on those topics. Oftentimes, you can get these frequently asked questions from your customer service center, design engineers or sales people. By anticipating what questions your customers will have, you will be able to answer the questions before they are ever asked. This not only portrays you as a thought leader (more on that next), but it also builds trust. Be the one that they turn to first when they have a question they want to quickly research online before talking with a person directly. This is becoming a critical change in the new digital world- self-sufficient customers are looking for answers from your company on their own time, without the need to always interact directly with sales.

4. Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is exactly what it sounds like. A leader of new ideas and ways to do things. An individual or group that doesn’t follow conventional thoughts but creates their own path. A thought leader is highly respected and in demand by clients, customers, competitors and even those outside of the industry they are known in.

To be a good thought leader you need to consistently publish content and place it on platforms that anyone and everyone can reach. While doing this, you need to position your brand as the leader or ‘authority’ in your market. By showing that you understand the market, what it needs and the important issues that surround it, you will quickly become a thought leader. Be the one who knows the answers to the questions before they are even asked. Position yourself as a trailblazer. A pioneer in your industry.

5. The Need for Traffic

We need to tread lightly on this goal. We need traffic driven to our sites so that our content can be seen and read, but we also don’t want to appear to be what could be considered click-bait. If this happens it could ruin your brand and reputation with who you are trying to market to.

B2B content marketing should focus on being relevant and useful. It should make people want to return to your site and read more and trust you as a thought leader (see, there’s those words again) in their industry. If you can do those things, then you should have no trouble driving traffic to your site.

6. Generating Leads

Generating leads is an important part of content marketing. We know that hundreds, if not thousands, of people are reading your content, but how do we know who they are? How do you monitor who is coming to your site? Easy, you use something called gated content. Gated content has individuals fill out a quick form with their name, email address and any other information you would like to garner from them. After filling in this form, visitors are led to whatever it is they are interested in reading more about: white paper, article, survey, newsletter sign-up, etc.

7. Converting Leads and Upselling

Now that you have gathered leads, what do you do with them? You begin to convert them into sales. By generating leads, then nurturing them (a process where you match the content sent to them with their known interests, such as which content pieces they downloaded or webpages visited on your site), you can begin to create trust with your relevant content which ultimately ends up in converting these leads into customers. It also helps to sell more to current customers.

Turning Goals into Actionable Data

Not all tactics match with all goals- you wouldn’t expect a blog article to have measurable leads, but it should definitely have measurable website traffic. And a whitepaper that doesn’t follow your company brand guidelines probably won’t help with brand awareness, even if you can track leads as a gated content piece.

In Part 2, we’ll discuss the types of tactics that lead to success for each of these 7 goals as well as examples of how measure that success for each type. You’ll be well on your way to building a successful content marketing plan with actionable data to help measure your ROI.