Marketing teams persuade and captivate audiences every day. They convince people to buy everything from $160 pens to coffee beans that pass through elephants. But a CMO’s toughest sell is always his own boss — especially when it comes to content marketing.
Executives want to know a marketing strategy’s expected ROI before they commit money and resources to it. But content is a different animal than other marketing initiatives. It doesn’t produce impressive short-term results; it bolsters long-term profits. Once a content marketing strategy proves its worth, executives feel more confident investing in it. The challenge is convincing them to take the initial plunge.
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Here are six selling points you can use to persuade your company leaders that content marketing will go the distance for your brand:
1. Leads generated from content: Anything that requires visitors to submit their contact information — whether that’s subscribing to your newsletter, downloading a piece of content, or signing up for webinars and other offers — will ultimately capture leads. Use tools such as Google Analytics to track and document engagement with internal and external content. Then, take this data to your boss to demonstrate how different types of content generate new leads. Analytics also give you clear, actionable information on how to improve your ROI and pivot from poorly performing strategies.
2. Sales generated from content: Executives are especially interested in these numbers. Use your analytics systems to track how many people sign contracts or purchase your products after downloading content from your website.
Encourage your salespeople to ask prospects and clients how they found your company. They may have read an article you posted but didn’t click through to a download or sign-up page. It’s useful to know which articles compel prospects to get in touch.
Ask your sales staff how often content comes up organically in customer conversations or how frequently they use it to educate leads. All of these insights will demonstrate how content indirectly influences the sales process.
3. The performance of referral traffic: By tracking your content’s referral traffic over time, you can make fairly accurate assumptions about how it’s impacting your business. My company saw a151% increase in conversions in the first quarter of 2015. Thanks to our analytics system, we can attribute that jump to the guest contributions, blog posts, and gated content we developed and executed this year.
Lead generation and referral traffic numbers help you set benchmarks for your content. Build a strategy using Google Analytics and marketing automation software to tie a definitive ROI to your content. By showing a favorable comparison between content production costs and the value of sales generated, you can make a strong case for a content strategy to your CEO.
4. Non-quantitative metrics: Analytics don’t tell the full story. Great content creates ripples in your industry, which can’t always be measured by social media shares or lead generation numbers.
For example, I often reference American Express’ OPEN Forum content marketing strategy during keynote speeches. Amex doesn’t track those types of mentions, but small wins for brand visibility like these can add a powerful punch to its ROI. Hard data is important, but don’t overlook content’s role in brand storytelling and positioning.
5. Budget opportunities: Content marketing isn’t cheap. Getting it right requires a substantial financial investment that might not show a visible ROI for a while, which can make it a hard sell to budget-conscious executives. Anticipate your boss’s reservations, and suggest ways to make the numbers work.
Make the case for pulling funds from the sales, recruitment, and research and development budgets. Content serves as a great asset in social media campaigns, recruiting efforts, public relations strategies, and sales, so marketing shouldn’t be the only department shouldering the financial burden.
But that doesn’t mean marketing is off the hook. Revise your own budget to see where you can redirect funds to more productive channels, such as content marketing. Too many companies throw money at outdated or ineffective SEO strategies like link building and keyword stuffing rather than content creation.
But creating valuable, engaging articles and guest posts is the surest way to rise in the SEO rankings. Plus, good content yields a number of other benefits: lead generation, sales conversions, thought leadership, great customer relationships — the list goes on.
The money for a great content strategy is already there. You just need your boss to rethink how she’s using it.
6. Competitors’ content: With 78% of CMOs saying custom content is the future of marketing, you know your competitors are hard at work crafting industry-leading content. And the more powerful and compelling their content strategies become, the harder it will be for your company to catch up. Your boss doesn’t want competitors controlling the conversation, so she’ll come around quickly when she realizes what’s at stake.
Once you’ve sold your company leaders on the value of content marketing, you can get the ball rolling with implementation. Your leadership team is an invaluable asset to your marketing game plan, but time constraints often prevent top-level executives from contributing their insights. Create a custom knowledge management process that allows you to leverage their experience without eating up their time.
Content marketing is a no-brainer when you consider all the ways it supports your bottom line. Solid content drives traffic and positions your brand as a hub for information. As a marketing professional, you already know this. You just need to help your boss see the light, too.
COMMENTARY: According to a marketing survey, 43 percent of respondents said “blatantly promotional and self-serving content” is the characteristic they dislike most in B2B content. Another survey found that ending a blog post or newsletter with a product pitch reduced the content’s credibility by 29 percent. Julie Fleischer from Kraft stated that 90 percent of data is “crap.” So keep in mind your own unique situation when considering how this information relates to your content efforts.)
To create effective content that builds trust, breaks down sales barriers, and keeps your company top of mind, you need to focus on providing value to your audience. The best way to do this is by educating them. The information you provide will hopefully lead customers to do business with your company, but if it doesn’t, the problem likely is your product or service — not your content.
Here are a few ways to sell without being promotional or compromising credibility:
1. Choose a medium that aligns with your goals. Every content medium serves a specific purpose, and choosing one that fits your goals is the first step in effective content creation. Third-party publications generate visibility and boost credibility, whereas blog posts, whitepapers, and case studies create hyper-targeted engagement.
If you want to take an in-depth look at a confusing aspect of your industry for people further along in the buying journey, you can create a whitepaper that’s available for download from your website. For example, we created “The Insider’s Guide to Tackling Content Marketing Like a Pro,” which offers a step-by-step guide to creating and implementing a successful content strategy. It serves as a great resource, shares our company’s tried-and-true methods, and even includes concrete examples of how our clients find success using our process. If you want people to know how great your product or service is, ask your customers to sing your praises in a case study or testimonial.
2. Eliminate company mentions that don’t enhance understanding.The company name drop, the “backdoor brag,” the shameless product plug — we’ve all seen content creators commit these promotional sins. Even “subtle” brand mentions can make a bad impression when they’re simply there for promotion and don’t serve to help educate the reader. In general, you should avoid all mentions of your company that don’t enhance the reader’s understanding of the message you’re trying to convey.
3. Don’t try to sneak in links. Nothing destroys credibility faster than populating an article with dozens of links to your company’s product or service. Even if you don’t mention your product or service outright, you’re violating the social contract with your readers by trying to push them to your offering when they’re seeking information.
It’s fine to link back to one of your blog posts or whitepapers that builds on the information you provided in the article, but it must be extremely relevant and further understanding of the topic. Otherwise, readers will feel betrayed and click away.
4. Share unique experiences, but avoid irrelevant rambling. Writing about your company’s challenges humanizes your brand and offers your readers valuable learning experiences. It can also be an excellent way to subtly draw attention to your company’s unique differentiator without creating an article that reads like website copy. Organize your expertise and key experiences, and house them in a company knowledge bank using this custom template to streamline the process. My team relies on this tool to help supplement my articles and keep the content flowing.
However, there’s a big difference between sharing a helpful experience and bragging. Your company might have the world’s largest in-office bar, or you might be a world Judo champion. But unless you’re using those experiences to teach readers something or to provide a little entertainment, you’re the digital equivalent of the guy who corners people at the company Christmas party to show them pictures of his cat.
5. Focus on information that’s most valuable to your audience. Don’t tackle content from the standpoint of “What can I write about to position my product or service best?” Instead, tailor your content to the topics your audience wants to read about.
What are your readers’ burning questions? What are their biggest pain points? What obstacles do you encounter most often on sales calls? All these questions should naturally lead you to an information vacuum that you can help fill with educational content. You can also write about important industry trends, timely events that impact your audience, or a product/service category (hint: not just your product) to help customers along the buying journey.
If you’re creating content with clear business goals in mind, it can be difficult to walk the line between sharing helpful information that builds credibility and being promotional. But it’s important to shift from the “me” marketing mentality to considering what’s best for your audience. When in doubt, go with what will deliver the most value to your readers. After all, the best ways to build credibility are by sharing generously and demonstrating true expertise.
Here's an excellent infographic that outlines the key elements of how to measure content marketing ROI:
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Courtesy of an article dated June 14, 2015 appearing in Forbes an an article dated June 14 2015 appearing in Forbes
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