Content marketing ROI refers to the return on investment generated by content marketing, calculated as a percentage of the total amount spent on the marketing effort. It represents the revenue earned from content marketing relative to the cost of producing and promoting the content.
ROI is calculated by subtracting the cost of creating the content from the revenue your content generates, dividing that number by the costs and multiplying by 100. But, keep in mind that without tracking forms or UTMs, determining the exact ROI (by Webster’s definition) of your content is difficult and in some cases impossible.
What Is Content Marketing ROI and Why Is It Important?
For the purpose of this post, let’s look at the bigger picture of content marketing ROI which is how to determine if your content marketing efforts are worth the investment. Sometimes it is possible to measure the return on investment of a content marketing effort to an exact percentage, for example, an email newsletter containing a discount code to purchase a specific product; sometimes it isn’t.
But, it is always possible to measure if the efforts are worthwhile. On The Casted Podcast, Peter Mahoney of Planful said that he doesn’t just look at audience numbers or concentrate on only proving that conversions are coming directly from his podcast. He absolutely is tracking those things, but he sees podcasts as a greater asset for a brand, how they tell a brand’s overall message, how they engage customers like no other channel, and how they spark powerful relationships among guests, customers, and partners within your industry. Catch my drift?
It’s important to measure the impact of your content marketing efforts. Why? Because why would you put effort into something that isn’t benefiting your business? If you are unaware of how your content is affecting your profits (whether it be through direct conversions or lead generation from customer engagement), it becomes challenging to determine which investments are valuable and which ones are not.
How to Determine Your Content Marketing ROI
Here are three things to concentrate on when calculating the ROI of your brand’s content marketing.
Determine Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
To accurately gauge your content marketing ROI, you have to understand the metrics that factor into its calculation. However, the specific KPIs you track will depend on the type of content you are creating. To start, it's essential to define your goals, determine which KPIs are most important, and how to track them effectively.
For example, when it comes to blog content, important KPIs may include blog traffic, views per post, time spent on page, and conversion rate. For podcasts, KPIs might include ratings, subscribers, backlinks, downloads, social shares, and reviews. Social media KPIs can include follows, likes, saves, shares, and conversions, while email newsletter KPIs may include click-through, bounce and open rates.
By identifying the appropriate KPIs for each content type, you can make informed decisions about where to invest your resources and how to improve your content marketing strategy. You can also use a combination to determine the ROI of your content. For example, although the number of likes on an Instagram post may be difficult to measure in terms of conversions, you can look at the number of likes with the number of unique page visitors to your website following your post and see, when you post a photo of X, your website gets X unique visitors.
Once you have decided on your KPIs, it is crucial to…
Ensure That You Have the Right Tracking Methods in Place to Measure Them
Tracking the ROI of your content isn’t always easy, but it can be done and it is important. Track metrics that align with your objectives.
There are a million ways to measure your content such as landing pages, tracking conversion forms, Google Analytics, specific marketing tool analytics (Semrush, Mailchimp, podcast hosting platforms, etc. to name a few), UTMs, and social media analytics. Each of these platforms can be used to measure different content marketing efforts and has built-in ways to measure your contents data and efficiencies
Setting benchmarks is another great way to measure your performance over time. If your blog is gaining traction month over month, or your podcast is doubling its subscribers with each episode, there is usually a reason to continue.
Understand Your Costs for Creating Content
To even begin to understand if your content marketing efforts are worthwhile, you must know the cost of creating and distributing each type of content.
The cost of creating content includes expenses such as paying freelancers or in-house experts to plan, create, measure, and manage strategies. Monthly expenses also include the cost of images and photography, videos, software packages, and your full in-house team salaries. Distributing content also comes with expenses like social media, advertising, paid promotions, and tools or platforms used for content distribution.
Maximize the ROI of Your Content
Measuring the ROI of your content is key to proving its value. Begin every new content marketing effort by choosing relevant marketing metrics to set tangible goals. Then your ROI will be easy to track, and you’ll know exactly how to measure its success.
With Casted, you can prove that content marketing significantly impacts the bottom line. Casted not only provides the tools you need to publish and syndicate your content and break it down into pieces that can be amplified across multiple channels and formats but also maximize and measure its value. Request a demo today!
