By Joydeep Bhattacharya
Whenever the subject of business-to-business (B2B) content marketing strategy comes up, small businesses automatically turn their attention towards content creation instead of return on investment (ROI).
However, the number of content marketers realizing the need for definite, measurable results is increasing; they intend to meet the financial demands of their executives. This is easier said than done, as content marketing strategies for small businesses rarely determine ROI. They find it hard to sell their executives, like CFOs and CMOs, on the merits of this investment, cannot wait around for their content marketing strategy to yield suitable results, and face trouble quantifying content marketing due to its inherently complex nature.
In fact, most small businesses have no knowledge on current returns; without this detail, they cannot focus on improving their strategy. Still, there are a few ways for small businesses to boost ROI from their content marketing efforts. Read below to know what they are.
Know Your Target Audience
Use different analytics tools, like Google Keyword Planner, to find out the number of people using Google to search for key terms in the industry and build your audience personas. These people constitute the target audience for your business. Focus your attention on those people who keep looking around the industry for any details. Draw the attention of these visitors instead of the ones who are already searching for your business brand.
Analytics of your website easily let you know how many people visiting your website from unbranded searches. Use this information and deduct it from the overall number of users searching industry terms to locate your potential audience base. Now tweak your content in a way that meets the demands of users searching for these terms. Reaching out to more people in this manner will automatically cause your ROI to surge.
Measure Your Content Marketing
Use quantifiable measures understood by your business, like sales revenue, leads, and retention. Value every lead generated by your content marketing efforts, every user who registers for one of your events or white papers, and every subscriber you generate for creating your list. Identify this information to calculate the return on investment of generating leads, subscribers, and sales against the overall marketing ROI. Measure each user engaging your content marketing, and find out if they stay longer or spend more as buyers. Use content marketing strategies to deliver more profitable and engaged clients.
Focus on Organizing Your Content
Create a customizable editorial calendar to devise and implement your content marketing strategy effectively, while meeting your publishing deadlines. Assess what’s working and what’s not while inputting associated analytics and data along the way. Use software, like Basecamp or Kapost, to ensure smooth flow of operations.
Utilize Gated Content
Maintain a blog for your small business to serve as an educational resource for users looking around. Use gated content to take your blog to a deeper level, and figure out who is ready for the next step. Gating your content enables you to know who is qualified, but you still have to produce content that makes them like, and more importantly, trust you. Gate that content which is valuable enough for a user to be willing to exchange their contact information and currency for it. As soon as they provide their details, they become leads, and an integral part of your ROI. Use tools like Leadfeeder’s social selling lead capture solution to engage with qualified site visitors who have not left any contact information.
Leverage All Your Existing Content
Milk every single piece of content for what it’s worth. Promote it properly via newsletters and social media channels. Make your content outstanding enough to be syndicated to high-authority publications. When your content has been around the block long enough, revisit it and update it to make it even better. In the end, try and get every single drop of return you are able to from it.
Yes, it is challenging for small businesses to increase the ROI of their B2B content marketing strategy but the aforementioned steps can help you do so. Overcoming the challenges is worth it as you’re able to put a value on this investment to show executives what they would lose out on without the proper content strategy.
Joydeep Bhattacharya is a digital marketing evangelist and author of SEOsandwitch.com. He is a regular contributor on publications like Wired, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Hubspot and several other sites.
