“I can’t afford content right now.” We hear this a lot. We understand. When you start to look at the costs of content creation on a regular basis, the numbers can seem a bit daunting. It isn’t cheap.
At the same time, the ROI of content marketing is substantial, which I’m about to show you firsthand.
There’s been a lot written on the ROI of content marketing. Some people have devised elaborate formulas to calculate and track the value of leads, links, and other key metrics. Some people consider the ROI to be something of an abstraction – for example, how can you put a price tag on thought leadership? And some, like myself, tend to view the ROI of content marketing as a mix of both.
But in this post, I wanted to share three examples of content that generated a sizeable amount of new business for us. My intent is that you’ll start to view content as a revenue generator, not a cost center.
- A post, which I wrote in my first few months at nDash, caught the attention of a notable public relations agency. It started a conversation that resulted in two deals being signed for a total of $180,000 per year. The post took roughly an hour to write.
- A LinkedIn post by Stephanie Roulic led to a strategic partnership with an international marketing agency, which now accounts for $72,000 in yearly revenue.
- This post on outsourcing was viewed by the VP of Marketing of a west coast software company, which now has a yearly contract in place for $135,000.
Let’s Do Some Math
That’s 3 posts that directly resulted in $387,000 of yearly revenue. For this discussion, let’s assume that these numbers account for all of our revenue. So if we published 240 posts a year (roughly one per business day) at $200 per post (an average of what we charge clients for a blog), then we get this:
- $48,000 invested
- $387,000 returned
- $1600 of revenue per blog post
In other words, for every dollar we spent on content production in 2014, we got back eight dollars in return. If I proposed those numbers as an investment, you’d probably think it was a pyramid scheme (i.e., too good to be true). Again, this little exercise just covers three successful instances and doesn’t include anything related to whitepapers, email marketing, or social media content. Just blogs. The real ROI is obviously much higher (and it keeps increasing).
Final Thoughts on the ROI of Content Creation
I started this company by myself, with no money and no resources. Despite this, I’ve invested heavily in content marketing from Day One. I hope the reasons for doing this are now obvious. And I hope you can see why I think it’s crazy that some companies—established companies with lots of resources—refuse to make the investment. I hope you’re not one of them.
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