Content marketing is more and more important in the marketing world, but some still don’t know how to prove its return on investment.
Content marketing is getting more respect these days, but it still often faces an uphill battle in the board room or the C-suite. Many don’t perceive it as being capable of delivering the same kind of tangible return on investment (ROI) that other media initiatives can.
I’m bullish on content marketing because I know it works both for SEO as well as for building reputation by delivering the content via other channels like email, social etc. But I also know that content marketing sometimes needs defending. So here’s what I tell people who ask me to “show me the content marketing ROI”:
Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
There’s no question that it takes time and money to assemble a body of content sufficient to be “interest-bearing” in terms of generating leads, traffic, or other behavior desired by the business. Successful content marketing empires accrue their value over time.
How much time should be allocated to accomplish this goal? I’d venture a minimum of six months to one year. How much money? Such a figure depends on your ability to staff, hire, recruit, or crowdsource sufficient suitable content. You can keep costs down by intelligently repurposing everything you create, but you’ll still have to pay somebody to create the content you will be serving out.
