Content marketing is the leading marketing or promotional tactic nowadays. Gone are the days of traditional marketing like print or digital media marketing (TV, Billboards, etc.). Nowadays, it’s all about how you can market your content on various platforms. Identifying the right type of strategy for content marketing depends on your target audience, B2B or B2C. Knowing the intent of your audience will focus your content marketing topics to maximize ROI.
Be it social media networks, websites, SEO, etc. But, the problem that many companies and marketing experts face is regenerating the investment. In other words, the return on investment commonly known as ROI.
Now there are various tactics to increase ROI. Around 74% of marketing experts claim that video marketing yields more ROI than images or text. Whereas 33% of marketers find measuring ROI a challenging aspect.
So, how do you increase ROI? What are some of the tactics you can use? In this article, we are going to talk about 5 easy steps you can take to increase content marketing ROI. Here they are:
1: Define Your Goals and KPIs
Content marketing is all about goals and objectives. That’s why it’s one of the best ways to put your business out there. It allows you to get specific objectives, whether it’s spreading more awareness, getting more clicks, or simply selling more products.
All of the objectives above are tied together. But when you spend a lot on goals in content marketing, you also need to keep track of them. This tactic is called KPI (Key Performance Indicators). So, let’s say you are spending an equal amount of money on email and social media marketing.
Now if email is bringing you more leads and conversions than social media marketing, then it’s clear that the former is winning over the latter. Therefore, email is your KPI and deserves more investment next time.
2: Know Your Audience
Understanding your audience is a critical element in any marketing. In content marketing, it’s even more important as it ensures that you spend your resources and implement your content creation the right way. So, how do you gather audience insights for better ROI?
- Learn more about their bios, i.e., age, occupations, etc.;
- Create personas based on that information;
- Define who ISN’T a target customer;
- Analyze your competition;
- Use programs like Google Analytics;
- And find trends relating to your niche.
This way, you will grasp your audience and understand what they are looking for. Then, you will have to tailor your content according to their needs. That means using the right platform according to your audience, i.e., social media, website, emails, etc.
Then you will have to create the type of content that your target prefers the most, such as videos, images, text, or a combination of them.
3: Create High-Quality Content
Now this is an important part that can decide the quality and integrity of your content marketing strategy. You need to ensure that you are creating high-quality content for your audience. Whether it’s to build awareness or sell a product, high-quality content means:
- More information, less fluff;
- Educational and instructive, not speculative;
- Informative and based on personal skills/knowledge;
- Readable and concise;
- Immaculate content tone;
- And unique content free of plagiarism.
That’s why you should focus on creating content yourself or with a professional. Whether it’s videos, images, or written text, you should always focus on the elements mentioned above. If it’s text, make sure it’s unique and free of any sort of duplicity.
That’s why you will have to optimize your content by learning a few tactics. Such as adding SEO elements to your blog posts or website. And learning how to paraphrase properly, whether manually or with a tool. So, that you can avoid plagiarism effectively.
4: Promote Your Content Effectively
Content creation and content promotion are two entirely different things. That’s why it’s important to understand the difference between the two and promote your content effectively. Now, how do you go about doing that? Here are a few things experts do:
- Using PPC (Pay-Per-Click) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing);
- Using in-built ads on social media platforms, i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.;
- Use affiliate marketing or influencer marketing;
- Use backlinks on high-ranked domain-authority websites;
- Pay to promote through emails, videos, etc.;
- And measure the performance of your content promotion.
Now it’s important to understand that these tactics are applicable only if you are creating content worthy of promotion—especially paid ones. Therefore, make sure you create good-quality content based on tips and suggestions made before. Then, promote your content using these tactics and measure the KPIs.
5: Analyze and Optimize Your Strategy
And the fifth and final thing you need to do to increase ROI is analyze and optimize your strategy. In other words, revisit your strategy every now and then, and ensure continuous improvement and upkeep of your strategy.
Why is this important? Because it can ensure that your resources are being spent in the right place. And it can also help assure that you are spending your effort in the right place. So, how do you analyze your strategy? Here’s how:
- Analyze the elements that are working, i.e., KPIs;
- Analyze elements that are redundant, i.e., elements not generating any ROI;
- And add or use new tactics, platforms, content types, etc.
Then you will have to optimize your strategy by:
- Adding new methods of content creation (if necessary);
- Removing redundant elements, as mentioned before;
- Analyze the best possible platforms for your business/content type;
- And focus your energy and resources on your KPIs.
This will allow you to save a lot of your resources already. And when you channel those resources in the right strategy, it’ll help you generate more ROI. Therefore, it’s important to hold an analysis of your strategy quarterly or annually.
Conclusion
These are the five best content marketing ROI-increasing tips. All of these steps can help you get ahead of your competitors by simply putting your effort and investments into the right departments. Therefore, make sure you follow these steps thoroughly and do your own research for elements like audience and competitors. Then, revitalize your strategy every now and then to yield the best results.