We all know by now that content is king. It’s what helps you rank in google, brings people to your website, warms up your audience, builds your profile, and the list goes on. Creating content takes significant time and effort, that’s why it’s important to make sure you’re measuring the return on investment and putting your content resources where it counts.
Here are some tips that businesses of any size can use to increase ROI on content.
1) Use data to maximise success
Whether you have a fancy CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) or are relying on free tools like Google Analytics, there’s plenty of data out there that can help you understand which content is working best for you – what topics are most popular with your audience? Which of your blog posts have the most reads? What types of social posts get the most engagement? The amount of data you can track these days can seem a bit overwhelming, but you can’t be scared to dig into it. All of these tidbits can help you build a bigger picture of your audience’s interests and help you figure out which content is working best for you. We’ve recently started using Google Data Studio to keep better track of how our content is doing.
2) Track user journeys
You’re making content with a goal in mind; whether that’s getting more followers, form completions, conversions or something else, make sure you can track the success of your content in leading prospects to that end goal. You won’t know if your content is adding value to your business unless you can track the path from someone consuming something you’ve created to them taking that final step you’re leading them towards. Is that blog you wrote closing the deal for you? Or did that email offer you send out bring in new business? The starting point is ensuring you’ve mapped out that path for your customers and have a way to confirm that your content led them to the end goal. That can be as simple as ensuring you ask new customers how they heard about you or it can be tracked through analytics tools.
3) Provide value with each piece of content
Don’t just write for the sake of writing and don’t just write whatever you feel like. Use tools to validate your content so you ensure you’re giving your audience information that they’re looking for. Use the data that’s available internally and externally – what are the most common questions clients or prospective customers ask you? What are the keywords that bring most people to your website? What are people talking about online related to your business? Make sure that each piece of content you create will help your audience walk away with new knowledge. When you provide them with useful information, they’ll remember and come back for more, leading them further down the funnel. Websites like answerthepublic.com are a great starting place for inspiration.
4) Always have a clear call to action
Calls to action (‘CTAs’) are something most marketers have burned into their brains, but you’d be surprised how often content gets pushed out without one. Content has many purposes, but in the end, the goal is to help move your audience further down the funnel, so make sure you are prompting them with a clear CTA. It doesn’t have to be a giant orange BUY NOW button. Maybe you want them to subscribe to your blog, register for an event or download another piece of content. Just remember that ultimately you’re producing content for a reason and that is to lead potential customers further down the buying path so you need to help them along the way by clearly laying out the next step before them.
5) Don’t set it and forget it
Everyone is guilty of this. You spend hours, days, weeks, building an amazing piece of content. You do your research, craft something beautiful, send it out into the universe, breathe a sigh of relief and promptly move onto the next project without looking back. Generally, the content you produce isn’t likely to be super time-sensitive, so you should be able to extend its life well beyond the first release without having to spend much time updating it. Think about the stats – let’s say you send something out in an email blast and there is a 25% open rate, that’s minimum 75% of your audience that hasn’t even glanced your content yet. Keep trying! Send it out with a different subject line, at a different time, etc.
Keep these 5 tips in mind whenever you’re producing new content to ensure that you’re optimising return on investment.
If you’re interested in learning more about how content marketing can help your firm, register for my upcoming webinar ‘How to market your small firm with thought leadership‘.
