Last Updated on August 21, 2023 by admin
Thinking of *not* investing in content marketing? You might want to think again. Content marketing is an effective way to drive revenue growth. By creating high-quality content that addresses the needs and interests of their audience, businesses can establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry and create long-term value for their customers and their bottom line.
Trust and authority, better search rankings, increased leads and conversions, and customer retention are big ways that content marketing can move the needle for B2B brands:
Builds trust and authority: By creating high-quality content that provides value to customers, businesses can establish themselves as experts in their field and build trust with their audience. This can lead to increased brand awareness, loyalty, and customer engagement. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 75% of B2B marketers have been able to build credibility and trust using content marketing successfully in the last 12 months.
Improves SEO: Content marketing can also improve search engine optimization (SEO) by creating relevant and valuable content that targets specific keywords and topics. This can lead to increased website traffic, higher search engine rankings, and more leads and conversions.
Generates leads and conversions: Content marketing can also be used to generate leads and conversions by creating content that addresses the pain points and needs of customers. By providing helpful information and solutions, businesses can attract and engage potential customers, ultimately leading to more sales and revenue. CMI also reports that 57% of the top performers use content marketing successfully to generate leads and revenue.
Supports customer retention: Content marketing can also support customer retention by providing ongoing value and engagement to customers. By creating content that educates, entertains, and informs, businesses can keep their customers engaged and satisfied, leading to increased loyalty and repeat business.
Supports other marketing efforts: Finally, content marketing can support other marketing efforts by creating a consistent brand message and voice across multiple channels. By integrating content marketing with other marketing tactics such as social media, email marketing, and advertising, businesses can create a cohesive and effective marketing strategy that drives revenue growth.
It’s that content marketing can be an effective way to drive revenue growth by increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, and building relationships with customers. Additionally, it is also less expensive than traditional marketing and can generate more leads.
Not Investing in Content Marketing: Potential Outcomes
Not investing in content marketing can have several costs for B2B organizations:
Reduced brand awareness and credibility: Without a strong content marketing strategy, companies may struggle to increase their visibility and credibility in the industry, making it harder for them to attract new customers.
Difficulty in generating leads: Content is the lifeblood of your website, and for many, the website is the core lead generation machine. Without content marketing, B2B organizations may struggle to generate leads and drive website traffic, which can impact their ability to grow their business.
Lack of thought leadership: Without content marketing, organizations may appear tuned out. Not taking part in important industry conversations means that companies will struggle to establish themselves as thought leaders. This can make it harder for them to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Difficulty in educating customers: Without a content marketing strategy, businesses may struggle to educate customers about their products and services, which can make it harder for them to persuade customers to choose them over the competition.
Difficulty in building relationships with customers: Content marketing plays a major role in customer relationship building. Without content to foster emotional connections, companies may find customer acquisition and retention to be much more difficult.
SEO challenges: Content is critical to a solid SEO strategy. Without it, your website will have a hard time ranking for core or long-tail keywords. In other words, it will be much harder for prospective customers to find you online. Lack of visibility can be extremely detrimental to business.
Overall, not investing in content marketing can have several costs for B2B organizations, including reduced brand awareness and credibility, difficulty in generating leads, lack of thought leadership, and difficulty in educating customers.
Understanding the Math of Content Marketing
On the surface, the math appears fairly basic. Investing in content marketing could cost your organization anywhere from $2,000 – $30,000 in monthly expenses. Not spending anything costs $0.
However (and this is a *ginormous* however).
The cost of missed opportunities is limitless.
Consider some simple math on SEO alone. Let’s say you can expect a 3% lead-to-opportunity conversion rate from your website or landing pages. And let’s say 6% of those opportunities turn into closed deals.
Now, let’s look at two scenarios.
In the first, you do nothing. You leave your website as it is, creating no new content. Let’s say you currently get 2,000 unique organic visitors monthly. According to our benchmark conversion rates above, you could expect to turn roughly 3 of those visitors into paying customers.
Another assumption: your average deal size is $20,000.
So by doing nothing, you might continue to generate $60,000 from your website.
Now let’s consider a modest content production cadence that has you blogging 2-3 times per month. With the right keyword strategy (and maybe some technical SEO tweaks to your website), we’ll assume you manage to boost organic traffic to 3,000 unique organic visitors monthly. Of course, this won’t be overnight. It could take anywhere from 3 months to a year, depending on your actual cadence and strategy.
Now, you’ve managed to generate two more leads per month, equating to an additional $40,000. That brings you up to six figures ($100,000) monthly.
Sure, you’ll likely have to spend some money on a freelance writer or an agency to create your content, but it won’t cost you anywhere near $40,000. In fact, it might cost you $2,500.
So, you can do nothing ($60,000).
Or you can do something ($97,500).
In this case, the true cost of not investing in content marketing is $37,500/month – and that’s *just* looking at content for SEO. Factor in email campaigns, ebooks for demand generation, and social media, and that number can balloon as high as you can imagine.
Yes, there are plenty of factors to consider when determining whether or not to dive into content marketing: content marketing budget, content expenses, resources required, and much more. However, don’t forget to factor in the cost of *not* investing. It could be more than you anticipated.
