Content is King. You’ve heard it so many times that you're sick of it. Your content is having no effect on your company’s bottom line. Well, that might not be true. Knowing where content succeeds depends on understanding how content marketing drives sales.
Often a piece of content cannot be directly attributed to a sale. It will be several pieces of content over a long period of time that pushes a customer to make a purchase. That sounds confusing, right? It is a little bit, but keep reading and we will clear everything up. We will explain how content marketing drives sales and the metrics that you need to measure to understand your content marketing ROI.
Content marketing drives sales. You need to focus on the chain of events that leads to the sale to understand where content marketing has an impact. For example, some of the main ways that content marketing drives sales include:
Content marketing increases website traffic (or it should if you're doing it right). Creating valuable content that is not sales-focused but rather about sharing knowledge and insights around topics related to your brand will help you increase your website traffic.
For example, writing high-quality blog posts can increase your website traffic. Writing SEO-focused content will help you generate organic traffic through search engines. In addition, top-quality content often gets shared on social media and you can create traffic through this source too.
Have you ever purchased a product or service from a brand you knew nothing about? Unlikely.
According to Small Business Genius, it takes five to seven impressions for people to remember a brand. It is almost impossible to present your product to a new lead and for them to immediately be willing to make a purchase.
You use content to build awareness of your brand and trust with new and existing customers. By providing valuable insights through content to your audience, you present yourself as an expert or ‘thought leader’ in your field.
This trust and awareness that you have built, means that when your audience is ready to make a purchase, they come to you and not a competitor.
A key way you drive sales through content is by pushing prospects through your marketing funnel.
There are three stages of a marketing funnel:
You push your leads through each of these stages with content tailored to each stage of your funnel. Your content marketing answers their questions at each stage and nurtures them until they are ready to make a purchase.
Measuring ROI for content marketing campaigns is not as easy as with many other channels of marketing. But it is also not extremely difficult.
The simple formula for measuring ROI for content marketing is:
Content Marketing ROI = [(return-investment) ÷ investment] x 100
Your return is how much return your content generated. This can be a little tricky as some content will continue to generate leads or sales long after it is launched or it can be difficult to attribute to a direct sale.
However, you can sometimes directly attribute a piece of content to purchase. For example, when a lead clicks a CTA on a piece of content and then makes a purchase.
Your investment is how much money you put into creating your content. This should include your time, and anyone else who worked on the content, any assets you purchased, cost of distribution and more.
Now you know how content marketing drives sales. There is often not a direct link. A sale is generated through website traffic that comes from content, because of trust established, when a prospect becomes more familiar with your brand or for many other reasons. But it does drive sales.
See inspirations here:
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