Are you looking for a way to take your content marketing strategy to the next level? If so, you need to figure out your average return on investment (ROI). Your ROI will let you know if your content is meeting the needs of your target audience.
Once you understand how much you make on each post or piece of content, you can start to figure out which marketing strategies are worth your time. Today, we are going to show you a formula that you can use to figure out your ROI in terms of sales.
After we reveal the formula, we will look at three other factors business owners and marketing should track if they want to see what kind of returns they are getting on their content marketing strategy.
Let’s dive in!
Content Marketing ROI Formula
The first thing we want to discuss is how to calculate your return on investment when considering direct sales. On average, 47% of shoppers read 3-5 blog posts before deciding on a product or service. If you can track how many of your visitors turn into customers after engaging with your content, you’ll find it easier to identify areas for improvement.
Let’s look at the formula, then we will explain how it works.
Content marketing ROI = (return on content – investments / investment) x 100
So, let’s say that you spent $1000 on your content and made $4000.
We can solve the formula in three simple steps.
- 4000 – 1000 = 3000
- 3000/1000 = 3
- 3 x 100 = 300
In the example above, your content marketing return on investment is 300%! Talk about impressive!
You may have to try it a couple of times to get a feel for how it works. But you can use this formula to determine how much you’ve made on a single piece of content or your entire blog library.
The most significant barrier you’ll need to overcome is calculating the cost of your investment. There are countless factors that many of us don’t take into consideration, such as software costs. You’ll need to get good at tracking your expenses and figuring out producing each piece of content.
Now that we’ve shown you the most common way to calculate your content marketing ROI, let’s look at some other ways you can measure your success.
Website Traffic and Lead Quality
Ideally, you want to increase your traffic so you can get more sales. Here’s the thing, a big boost in traffic doesn’t mean as much if the lead quality is lackluster.
You may be asking, “What is lead quality?” Simply put, lead quality is a way to measure how likely a potential visitor is to sign up for your newsletter, engage with you on social media, and eventually buy a product.
If you see an influx of traffic, but your bounce rate also goes up, it’s likely that you’re not bringing in qualified leads. You want people to find your site that can genuinely benefit from your product or service. When customers find value in your website, they are likely to spend more time browsing.
Your blog content is the best way to qualify your traffic. Take some time to research your audience and get to know their likes, dislikes, and goals. If you’re writing content that resonates with your audience, an increase in website traffic is typically good for your business and sales.
The best way to tell if your leads are qualified is to track user behavior after they click on a specific post. For instance, if a user clicks your posts, writes a blog comment, then navigates to your pricing page, they are a high-quality lead and want what you’re offering.
If most people make it to your blog page and immediately leave, you may want to rework the content or topic.
SEO Ranking
Your SEO ranking is an excellent way to determine the return on investment of your content. Research shows blogging companies tend to see 97% more backlinks compared to those that don’t. In other words, if you want people to reference your content and build brand authority, you have to write high-quality blog posts.
There are several ways you can boost the success of your SEO strategy:
- Make sure you rank for both short and long-tail keywords.
- Work towards getting your site in featured snippets and answer boxes for search terms.
- Stay active in the community so you can get more inbound links.
When your content is optimized for search engines, you have a much better chance of bringing in qualified leads.
You can check your current ranking for specific keywords by using incognito mode on your web browser. Simply open a new Google search bar and type in one of your keywords. Now you can see where your website will appear for many first-time searchers. The closer you are to the top of the results, the better chance you will see an impressive ROI.
Social Engagement
Finally, let’s talk about measuring your content marketing ROI through social engagement. Globally, 3.96 billion people use social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to engage with brands. If you have a strong social presence, you’ll have an easier time connecting with consumers that can benefit from your product or service.
We regularly check our Google Analytics account to see which pieces of content are driving traffic to our site from social media. After analyzing the results, you’ll start to learn what kind of content inspires users to click through and interact with your brand.
When you consider that 59% of people use social media for shopping inspiration, it’s easy to see why social engagement is such an essential factor for measuring ROI.
You can also use tools like BuzzSumo to track social shares and engagement across all platforms. Simply type in your URL, and you can see how many people liked and shared your post across all of the most popular social websites.
Final Thoughts
Your content marketing goals may differ from someone in another industry. There are concrete ways to measure the success of your content strategy, but there are also context-sensitive factors that you can assess and improve. The tips offered here today will help you see the big picture whether you’re planning your next content sprint or just want to check the performance of your latest blog posts.