Not all businesses possess a massive marketing budget. The fact of the matter is, as a company starts out, establishes a footing and looks to expand its market share, budgeting remains tight, so devoting a considerable amount towards the advertising effort likely proves impossible. That is exactly why it is so important to look for ways to boost a company’s return on investment for its content marketing. Content marketing can, and should, play an important role in the outreach plan of any business, regardless of its size and location. While each business utilizes its marketing slightly differently due to its key demographic and target audiences, here are five key ways any business can improve its ROI on content marketing.
Not all businesses possess a massive marketing budget. The fact of the matter is, as a company starts out, establishes a footing and looks to expand its market share, budgeting remains tight, so devoting a considerable amount towards the advertising effort likely proves impossible. That is exactly why it is so important to look for ways to boost a company’s return on investment for its content marketing. Content marketing can, and should, play an important role in the outreach plan of any business, regardless of its size and location. While each business utilizes its marketing slightly differently due to its key demographic and target audiences, here are five key ways any business can improve its ROI on content marketing.
1) Live Video
Utilizing a variety of social media services and regularly updating a blog, at this point, receive a lion’s share of content marketing attention. A business should already understand the importance of taking advantage of these different outreach methods. However, there are specific ways in which a business owner can use these services that will result in a higher return on investment. One of these main ways is through using mixed media.
Quick blurb tweets, interesting photographs on Instagram and regular YouTube videos help keep a business active on social media, but mixed media takes it to an entirely different level. Live video, for one, has many crucial benefits. When broadcasting live on YouTube, all subscribers receive a notification of the video going live (push notifications on a computer will pop up to inform a subscriber, while updates will appear on a smartphone’s screen for these live videos). Facebook does something similar, but providing a real-time notification for anyone logged into their Facebook account. Instagram also does something similar to the mobile application highlights the profile by placing the profile icon at the top of the application with a live video border around it. Staying active on social media is one thing, but live media ensures a business has its content front and center.
Just how beneficial are live video and live streaming services for a business? According to Techno FAQ (2017), 80 percent of a brand’s audience would rather watch a live video than read a blog post. 82 percent of brand followers would rather watch live video than read social posts from the same business. These kinds of numbers provide substantial benefits to any business and instantly increases the content marketing benefits of any company.
As for what kind of material should a business consider live streaming when it comes to services like Instagram, Facebook or YouTube? 87 percent of viewers say they prefer behind the scene access, while 56 percent of businesses release breaking news insights regarding the company on live stream. It is possible to live stream over multiple platforms, although Facebook and YouTube prove beneficial as both are recorded and can be viewed at later times (plus YouTube allows recorded live stream videos to be monetized).
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2) Promote, Promote, Promote
It might sound simple, but most businesses do not spend nearly enough time promoting content. A considerable amount of time goes into research, creating and finally publication, yet many companies simply share the content to a handful of social media platforms one time then call it a day. The fact of the matter is an article that took three or four hours to create deserves more promotional time than three or four minutes.
Whether creating a blog, video or other marketing material, most companies have the amount of time designated to create and the amount of time designated to promote backward. Promoting should receive five times more time than creating. According to Marketing Insider Group (2017), this is known as the 80/20 rule. Many businesses struggle with the 80/20 rule though because the marketing department simply doesn’t know how to spend this amount of time on promotion that either wouldn’t be a waste of time, or simply repeating the same sharing tactics.
In order to promote properly and execute the 80/20 rule, it is necessary for a business to conduct customer research. For starters, it is necessary to identify where customers are geographically located. The timing of a post, whether to a blog or social media services, plays a big role in a target audience actually seeing it. So, identifying the time zone where customers are more likely to reside in is important. Following that, identifying a customer’s niche (what they are currently interested in, their specific online behaviors and what they are buying and talking about) will help formulate desirable posts and content that, in turn, will increase views and interactions.
According to Smart Insights (2017), 88 percent of B2Bs use content marketing. This means it is very easy for a single blog post or video to disappear into the throngs of other content marketing. Separating from the pack is difficult, so just mass-producing blog post after blog post isn’t going to help. It’s all about properly promoting the content so the right people see it at the right time.
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When it is all said and done, a business needs to monitor which customers interact with posts, what they are buying and if they are coming back. Building out a loyal customer base through promotional material and learning about what interests them will help improve the productivity of content marketing and help boost ROI.
3) Use Pictures with Everything
Adding visuals to blog posts, Facebook updates, and outbound tweets additional time to the posts made by a business. Some posts are visual based topics, so including images makes sense. However, regardless of the kind of post, where it’s going and what the topic is, if the platform supports images, a picture needs implementation. Visuals have a much greater impact on securing readers and bringing potentially interested clients into the website. Far more than just simple text. Due to this, using pictures can, and will, dramatically improve upon your ROI for content marketing.
According to Cooler Insights (2017), posts that use visuals see a 40 percent increase in attention over posts without images. This is because only about one in five words on any website is actually read. People want content they can easily scan and skim for helpful information. Should the post pass the initial scan test, they become more likely to stop and read. Pictures improve the potential for reading the full content. This is because 80 percent of what a person views is retained. Plus, when a landing page includes visuals in the form of video, the page becomes 40 times more likely to be shared and conversion rates increase by 86 percent.
Visuals do not need to come simply in the form of an embedded JPEG file on a social media post or website. There are other ways to generate interest and attention beyond an interesting photograph. Infographics still possess a great means of providing helpful information in a visual display. In fact, an infographic can boost Web traffic by 12 percent. The illustrated statistics makes the information easier to read, recall and retain. Beyond this, videos and GIFs are excellent forms of visual material that can take any website content marketing attempt and improve its performance across the board.
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Every social media and website platform responds differently to visuals, but each sees a dramatic improvement over simple text posts. According to SAG IPL Solutions Accordingly (2017), tweets containing an image receive 150 percent more retweets than tweets without visuals. Plus, 80 percent of pins are re-pinned when containing an image. This number drops to 1.4 percent for pins not containing an image. When a website product contains a video, viewers become 64 percent more likely to buy the content, and after seeing a video, shoppers become 40 percent more likely to enter a store (both online and in-person). This is because 96 percent of online shoppers will watch a video about a product or service, in order to see what they are interested in used and demonstrated.
4) Understand (and Win) the SEO Game
By now everyone has heard of search engine optimization: the process of making content more attractive to search engines. Just about every blog post covers the basic, same-as-everyone-else SEO content. From suggesting longtail keywords to checking in on Google Analytics, marketers have heard it before. This also means every other content marketer is working on the same deck, which again levels the playing field. That is why it is important to really understand, and win, the SEO game. There are several above and beyond SEO tactics that will truly separate any posted content from the rest of what’s out there.
According to Leap Clixx (2017), enterprise-grade analytic tools is a start. These tools are not the free applications available. Yes, Google Analytics does have its place, and while it may seem comprehensive, enterprise programming takes this to an entirely different level. In a world where data is king, paying a little extra for these insights will make a large difference. These enterprise-grade tools help identify specific niche markets within the traffic by analyzing where IP addresses come from, previous searches made by these IP addresses and what sort of content individuals are interested in. It takes data analysis to the next level while also making it easier to understand the best marketing approaches for a target audience.
Leap Clixx also points to the importance of posting to a blog at least three to five times a week. In years past, it took Google (and other search engines) time to crawl a page. A search engine spiders would make its Internet rounds and come back to the page. Frequently updated pages would receive these crawls more frequently, but it still took time. That no longer is the case. Due to this, only posting to a blog once a week will not help keep a website front and center on search engines. Regularity requires actual regular updates, so businesses need to focus on publishing more often to remain SEO strong. For businesses interested in next level analytical platforms, HubSpot does provide enterprise level programming with back-end analytical tool-sets far more sophisticated than what Google Analytics has.
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5) Know the Metrics Important to Business
There are all sorts of ways available for measuring content marketing success. Every business owner needs to decide what determines a quality return on investment. Is it an increase in leads? More sales? Additional re-tweets and social shares? ROI may mean something completely different for two different business owners. However, according to Entrepreneur (2016), there are four times of content metrics that matter.
The first is consumption metrics. This is the overall number of downloads, page visits and views content receives. It represents how often something is seen online. The second is a sharing metric. Easily enough, this is how many times content is shared on social media, which in turn helps increase a viewer base. The third option is a lead generation metric. The lead generation metric looks at how often a visitor to listed content opts into the call to action. Lastly, there is the sales metric, which is the frequency of a lead turning into a sale. These are the four most important metrics to focus on. Businesses need to focus on these metrics when looking for ways to boost ROI. By looking at these different metrics, it becomes possible to determine the best content for improving an individual company’s marketing. The average number of content marketing tactics used by companies, according to Smart Insights (2017) is 13, almost many are underutilized and, with proper execution, can lead to enhanced ROI.
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In Conclusion
Properly executed content marketing has the ability to connect with potential customers and convert these interested customers into sales. However, the biggest problem with content marketing is actually making sure would-be customers actually see the information. With so many other companies out there utilizing similar advertising tactics, excellent content far too often falls by the wayside. That is exactly why taking advantage of these five tips and tricks to boost content marketing’s return on investment is so crucial. From adding in visuals to every post all the way to taking advantage of live video streaming services, a company will see significant increases in inbound traffic, leads, and new customers by implementing these recommended changes.
