How to Generate Positive ROI Through Effective Content Marketing
The results of content marketing can be hard to quantify. A content marketing campaign may not have an immediate impact on your bottom line.
Nevertheless, good content marketing always impacts your bottom line. Today, we’re explaining everything you need to know about generating positive returns on investment through effective content marketing strategies.
Outline Achievable, Profitable Content Marketing Goals
Content marketing can generate a positive ROI in a number of different ways. Three of the best ways content marketing can provide a return on investment is by:
- Raising awareness of your brand
- Generating leads, sales, conversions, and other online metrics
- Educating your audience and creating trust
All three of these things will generate positive returns for your business. You might not see the returns on your bottom line tomorrow. When implemented over time, however, an effective content marketing strategy is guaranteed to generate value for your business.
Below, we’ll highlight a few of the ways the above actions can generate positive returns for your brand.
Top 3 Benefits of Content Marketing for SMBs
Small and medium-sized businesses can generate profit through content marketing in a number of different ways. Here are some of the best ways we’ve seen businesses benefit through content marketing:
1) Better Brand Awareness and Trust
Your brand is competing with thousands of other brands online. On the internet, it’s easy to get lost amongst the competition. Content marketing helps develop awareness of your brand. Even something as simple as posting an Instagram photo once a week can increase awareness and trust of your brand.
Consider writing weekly blog posts where you share unique knowledge that you can’t find anywhere else on the internet. Some SMB blogs generate attention by catering to other businesses. Other SMB blogs work best by marketing to customers.
Whether you’re sharing industry knowledge or customer-facing tips, you can build brand awareness and trust with effective content marketing.
2) Reduce Marketing Expenses
Marketing is expensive. Content marketing, however, can be surprisingly affordable.
Let’s say you spend $1,000 creating a video. That video goes viral and thousands of people hear about your brand overnight. Traditional marketing campaigns have nowhere near this level of outreach. Fair enough, most content doesn’t go viral, but being prolific with your content marketing increases your odds of having a piece of content that takes off.
In terms of ROI, content marketing can be extremely cost-effective when done right. In fact, many of the best content marketing strategies come with little to no cost:
- Create a social media account on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. and share various aspects of your business with the world; it costs nothing but boosts your brand’s awareness, trust, and value
- Ask employees to write one blog post per month highlighting a unique aspect of their daily work; have an accountant share unique strategies for tax season, for example, or ask your marketing manager to share some ideas
Neither of these strategies cost much money to implement. You don’t have to produce a professional video, nor do you have to hire a photographer. Many SMBs run the best content marketing campaigns using their own in-house employees and smartphones.
3) Create Content with the Goal of Generating Leads, Conversions, or Sales
Your content should be created with the goal of generating leads, conversions, sales, and other measurable metrics. This is how you generate a positive ROI from your content marketing campaign.
Something as simple as requiring users to enter an email address to receive a free eBook, for example, is an effective content marketing strategy.
In other cases, your blog post might link to company products or have a “Request an Estimate” button highlighted, encouraging users to get a quote.
By aligning your sales and marketing efforts, you can enhance the effectiveness of your content marketing while generating positive ROI for your business.
Be Patient with Content Marketing: The Results Will Come
Content marketing may not generate a positive ROI overnight. It might take weeks, months, or years to see the returns from content marketing.
Picture it like this: some people create hundreds of podcast episodes before generating a following big enough to earn a profit.
Once a podcast becomes big, however, it’s a huge boost to your brand. It raises trust and awareness of your brand. It gets people interested in the other products and services you’re selling. It tells people you have unique industry knowledge that they can’t get anywhere else.
Your podcast might start with just ten downloads for the first episode. You might put hours of work into your podcast for the benefit of just a handful of listeners. If you keep creating good, unique, informative content, however, then you can expect returns in the future.
Conclusion
Yes, it’s possible to generate a positive return on investment through effective content marketing strategies. Using the tips above, you can implement a profitable content marketing campaign into your business strategy.
Need help creating a content marketing campaign that works for your business? Get in touch with Renew Marketing today. We’ve helped SMBs across America deploy profitable content marketing campaigns that generate proven returns on investment.
