Wanting higher ROI makes good sense and good cents for tight budgets, but how can you make sure your brand content is getting you the best return on your investment? There are some simple data metrics to study that we’ve paired with 4 tips to take your content to the next level.
Before You Start: Know How to Crunch the ROI Numbers
Picture this: You’re excited about your brand, as every entrepreneur is, and ready to write the best blog ever to share your joy with the world and hoping your blog helps your brand website rank higher because you read somewhere that blogs help SEO (which they certainly do when used properly). You carry on writing for several thousand words, filling up precious hours that you didn’t have fully available, as you had a few leads you should have called and an order to wrap. Then, once you hit that shiny “Publish” button, over the next few days and weeks, your beautiful, joyous opus stays stuck at zero page views. What happened?!
Unfortunately, you wouldn’t be alone in that struggle! Over 90% of content gets absolutely zero traffic from Google! The cliché “Fail to plan, and you plan to fail” rings true for a reason. The digital world is full of unoptimized and poorly planned content. Even quality can’t quite cut through the search engine algorithms if you aren’t equipping your content with SEO and targeting your pieces to the right audiences eager to share in your excitement.
The Not-So-Secret ROI Formula You Need
A great way to avoid this pitfall is to keep your Content Marketing ROI formula at the forefront of your focus and plan your content strategy carefully. Put simply:
Content Marketing ROI Percentage = [(Return on Investment – Total Investment) / Total Investment] x 100
Your investment includes not only what it costs to create the content, but to promote it as well. When using this formula, the 100 multiplication of your figure is to help you express your ROI in a percentage. A positive ROI comes from spending less on creation than you make back in sales!
Know the Difference Between ROI and KPI
Those of you wondering why page views or website traffic metrics aren’t part of the ROI equation may be mixing ROIs with KPIs. ROI is the return on investment, but KPIs, or key performance indicators, can give you a diagnostic look at potential reasons your content isn’t creating those sales/conversions to boost the ROI. Learning how to judge your content is just as important as creating it in the first place because you can refurbish and update older content as you grow or study previous results to inform your next attempts!
Now that you know what you’re getting into with calculating ROI, let’s dive deeper into our hints to bringing that number up!
Hint #1 - Research Ramps Up ROI
Knowing not only who your target audience is, but understanding what works to reach them is critical to creating content that converts. Different demographics respond differently to the same content, and sometimes repurposing or repackaging existing content can keep your messaging consistent yet fresh. For example, if you’re hoping to reach Gen Z with your product or service, a lengthy blog like we mentioned above isn’t the prime way to first introduce your brand to them. Many in this target audience would be better reached via social media platforms or ads in their daily feeds. However, if your product sells cookware or foodstuffs and the blog is presented in a recipe format, then readers already deeply entrenched in that style and niche will appreciate this format, provided you have all the right keywords, placement, and other data points to maximize ROI.
Hint #2- Update Your Content Regularly
In addition to consistently producing new, relevant content that integrates lessons learned from how other content performs over time, the internet era is all about edits and updates! Since your digital content isn’t printed statically on billboards or in magazines (though it certainly can be!), there is always an opportunity to improve the content in response to audience reactions and new information. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when you can repurpose, reformat, repackage, or redirect your content ever so slightly to make a more profound impact.
Bonus Tip: Always Share About Successful Case Studies!
As your brand grows and more customers express their excitement in reviews on third-party retailer websites, social media comments, forums, or your own online storefront website, you can begin to build case studies you can then use to promote your brand in action! Content from when you first started that shares new enthusiasm with gusto can be enhanced with links to pages detailing the brand proof from raving customers!
Hint #3 – Choose Your Tracking Metrics Wisely
As mentioned in our previous hint, KPIs can help set guidelines for improving content over time, as you can study what works and what needs work. However, some KPI numbers can become vanity metrics that take up precious time and effort without boosting ROI. For example, if you keep seeing your web traffic numbers increasing, but customers still aren’t converting, then there’s still a core disconnect in your content knocking down your ROI. In fact, if you aren’t partnering that increased web traffic with studying where those audiences are spending time on your site, you’re missing a key ROI-increasing bit of data. See what causes someone to click away with proper tracking tactics and web page hierarchy and organization. Data like this may even indicate areas you can improve that aren’t directly content related at all but maybe impact how it’s received, such as web page formatting snafus, color scheme choices making words illegible, design elements taking too long to load, and more.
Hint #4 – Don’t Underestimate Promoting Through Interpersonal Connection
Let’s think back to your original blog post, and let’s say you reached out to the experts here at USA Link System for some SEO tweaks and additional support. Now it’s performing well with targeted keywords, and you’re seeing the metrics you were hoping for naturally when you first created the piece.
Remember, the only constant in marketing, like in life, is change. Trends and audience behaviors change often, and adding an extra layer of interpersonal connection could be just the boost your content needs to send it over the edge into conversions and sales!
Sometimes, content gives the best returns when coupled with interacting to other content in the right forums and/or social media. Perhaps that blog post would be best paired with a spontaneous livestream where you promote the link in a live chat. Adding that extra-mile thinking when creating content and knowing how, when, and where to post as well as how to help direct traffic to the converting content.
Bonus Hint - Outsource to Experts!
The best part about the digital age is being able to get professional help from anywhere at prices businesses of any size can afford. Save time searching for the right digital marketing agency and trust your brand content needs to the team at USA Link System! We’re ready to help. Contact us for a free consultation!
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