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What is content marketing?

Wednesday, Dec 27, 2023

It’s the HOTTEST new trend in marketing!

Except it’s been around for a loooooong time before anyone decided to call it “content marketing.”

The point of content marketing is to turn strangers into customers. To put it simply, it’s a strategic process focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. Ultimately, it drives profitable customer action.

Content can be anything from a video to a blog post to infographics to a PDF flyer. The best kind of content marketing is the kind of content marketing that you don’t realize is marketing.

Let’s say you are a notorious houseplant killer. Like you have tried to cultivate your green thumb with so many plants and all you have left to show for it are dried leaves and empty pots. You go to your trusty information source (Google) and type in “How to not kill plants.”

This search generates a TON of results, but you end up clicking on a blog post titled “How to Stop Killing Your Plants,” and it gives you a lot of great information about being a plant parent. You realize you’ve been overwatering your succulents and dooming them to die. (It’s normal, we’ve all loved a plant too much and killed it with care.) It also states that plants that come from a nursery rather than the supermarket tend to be potted in the right soil and have been taken care of since they were seedlings and are a better investment for first-time plant parents.

This article links to another article titled “10 of the Hardest Plants to Kill” so you decide to read that one too. These plants are super cool and are nothing like the plants you had previously been trying to care for. Each of these plants have links to the website’s shop because—oh, did we forget to mention—they’re a certified nursery that delivers adult plants to your door.

Well, these people clearly know what they’re talking about so you buy a plant from them because you know you can always check their blog for answers on what’s going on with the plant. Within a week, you’re a happy little plant parent.

Did the plant website outwardly market their plant?

Nope.

They solved a customer’s problem: the fact that they kept killing plants. By solving the customer’s problem, they gained the customer’s trust and got a sale. As long as that plant lasts longer than a couple weeks, that customer will be more likely to buy another plant or plant food or a pot or whatever from that same website.

The content marketing was that simple blog post called “How to Stop Killing Your Plants.” See how it works?

Effective, right?

Now we need to decide what problems your audience members have and how you can offer the solution.

If you can solve problems, you can use content marketing.

Content marketing is an incredibly effective strategy that can rejuvenate your stuffy old marketing strategies and breathe new life into your marketing campaigns. Whether you’re a small business or you’ve been in the game for years, content marketing can help you open new doors and make new connections.

Content marketing is the art of communicating with your prospects at every level of the sales funnel instead of trying to wedge your way in at the last second. It’s a way to showcase what makes your brand unique to people who see so many advertisements every minute.

Statistics

If you’re a numbers person, we’ve pulled together some stats that display the effectiveness of content marketing. If you’re not a numbers person, just scroll on down to the next header. We won’t judge.

Why are we starting with the stats? To show you why you should keep reading.

Data compiled from various studies and presented by HubSpot, the Content Marketing Institute and Neil Patel.

  • 55% of consumers would pay more for a better customer experience, and 86% of B2B buyers would pay more.
    • To further show the importance of this, 89% of people have stopped doing business with a company because of a poor experience.
  • 70% of B2B companies planned to create more content in 2017 than they did in 2016
  • 66% of Australian organizations reported that their content marketing approach was somewhat or much more successful than the previous year.
  • Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8 times higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% for leaders vs. 2.5% for followers).
  • Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.
  • 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing.
  • Conversion rates are almost 6 times higher for content marketing strategists (2.9% for those using content marketing vs. 0.5% for those not).
  • B2B marketers use an average of 13 content marketing tactics
  • The most common content marketing delivery mechanism is social media, used by 87% of marketers.
  • Videos are currently the most popular type of content used in content marketing, closely followed by blogs and eBooks

What is Content Marketing?

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Yawn. Sorry, we kind of tuned out there.

The issue is that many people today don’t have a long attention span. Consumers are constantly bombarded with messages and sales pitches and Amazon suggestions. It’s beyond important to catch a potential customer’s attention and keep it.

Okay, but what does that actually mean?

Have you ever wondered why large franchises like Star Wars and Marvel are money making machines? They don’t just sell action figures; they sell stories. People watch a movie, relate to a character, become obsessed with the concept, and dump their money in products that make them think about the movie.

In short, George Lucas makes a space western in 1977 and twenty-somethings in 2021 own lightsaber replicas.

Not that Lucas’s life goal was to sell lightsaber replicas. But someone profited off of the nerds who wanted to be Jedi masters or Sith Lords. (Cough cough Disney cough cough)

Content marketing is the strategy of selling an overall brand rather than a product. According to a 2018 survey by the Content Marketing Institute, a whopping 85% of Australian organizations use content marketing. Not to mention that these brands are definitely getting results, with 66% of Australian organizations also reporting their content marketing approach was somewhat or much more successful than the previous year.

How to Explain Content Marketing to Anyone

Content marketing is the art of telling a story or providing information to nudge your customers into buying your product. Content marketing is what makes “fandoms” an infinite resource of business opportunities because the content makes you feel strongly about something, so you go and buy a product related to the content.

Content marketing can tug at a person’s ethical, logical, or emotional strings.

Consider the first line of shoes produced by TOMS. Were they the cutest shoes ever created? No. But when you bought a pair, did a barefoot child in a poverty-ridden country get a pair of shoes for free? That’s what they said. So, everyone walked around in espadrilles for a few summers in a row.

Every business has a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and in content marketing, you’re trying to sell the brand before you sell the product.

Many people want to buy from brands with a story.

Let’s say you’re looking to buy a bag of coffee. You could go to the supermarket and grab a bag, but you find yourself at an open-air farmers market. At one of the stalls, you find an old man and his granddaughter selling bags of ground coffee. The grandfather is a veteran and 50% of the sales are donated to the local VA. The granddaughter works part time at a fancy coffee shop and spends a fair amount of time describing the best ways to brew a cup of coffee with you. Although you could spend half the money on a bag of grounds that you know you like at the store, you find yourself buying a bag (or two) from this pair simply because you want to support them.

Now let’s take the concept online.

You want to join a gym, but you’re not sure where to start. When you search for one on Google, you get a tsunami of results. That in itself is overwhelming, so you try to have someone narrow it down for you by typing in “best gyms near me” or “how to pick a gym.” “Best gyms near me” only gave you customer reviews, but “how to pick a gym” returned with a blog post from a local gym that detailed what you should be looking for when getting a gym membership. They talk about everything from comfort to access to equipment. You enjoyed that read, so you decide to dive into their other articles. They have articles about nutrition, video breakdowns of how to do common exercises, and posts about mental health. Just by browsing the blog, you decide that this is the gym you want to be a part of.

Boom, content marketing for the win.

Content marketing doesn’t even have to relate to the product the company is selling. Sometimes people just appreciate the information a business puts out and follows their brand closely. Eventually, that person may purchase the main product from this company.

A well-known example of this is the American Girl franchise that is wildly popular in America. At its core, the company sells dolls. However, they published a book for pubescent girls called The Care and Keeping of You and that book is ranked second in its category on Amazon. Does it have anything to do with the dolls they sell? Nope. Does it have everything to do with the girls they market to as they grow up? Yep. Parents appreciate this because it saves them from many awkward conversations, and they recommend American Girl products to other families they know with young girls.

Why Content Marketing?

80% of people can recall a video advertisement they’ve seen in the last month.

Not surprising considering the number of ads we see every day, but if you promote a video that will potentially be remembered by 80% of the people who view it, what do you choose to put in that video?

Think about the most impactful commercials you’ve seen. Are they the ones that sell the product or sell the brand? Do they evoke your desire for the thing they’re selling or the overall mood that the product evokes?

There are four steps in the sales cycle from the point of view of a customer:

  1. Awareness – A customer has a need, whether they realize it or not, and your company alerts them that there is a solution
  2. Research – A customer begins to determine whether your solution will fill their need. They may compare your solution to other solutions, but they take the time to educate themselves on the variety of solutions
  3. Consideration – A customer gathers they information they gathered and weighs their options
  4. Buy – A customer makes their decision and gives a company their money

All businesses have the same goal no matter what product they sell: to get people to spend their money on their particular product.

Traditional advertising works wonders in the consideration and buying phases. Content marketing is more effective in the first two phases because it takes the time to raise awareness of solutions and educate the customers about the solutions.

Content marketing provides solutions to problems that traditional marketing can’t.

If people can’t find you in a web search, then you’re only gaining clients through word of mouth. Utilizing content marketing to create valuable content attached to your brand makes it more likely that your website will come up organically.

Let’s go back to the gym example, but from the perspective of the gym owner. Maybe the customer hasn’t joined a gym and isn’t necessarily looking to because they’re happy to do at home workouts. But they aren’t losing weight like they expected to, so they decide to Google search “Best foods for boosting metabolism.” Lo and behold: your website pops up with a blog post that heralds “10 Best Foods for Boosting Metabolism.” They read that article and before they know it, they want to become a member of your gym.

This also goes into customer-business relationships. Customers are more likely to support businesses that they feel they have a relationship with. How do you create a relationship with customers? By providing information that is helpful or entertaining, showcasing your lifestyle or values, and other forms of direct or indirect engagement. People will be more willing to spend a few extra bucks on your product if they feel like they have a connection with you.

Content marketing is an efficient way to open the door for more customers without spending a bunch of money on marketing. It can help increase web traffic, support lead qualification, and convert those leads into sales.

Developing relationships with your customer base will lead to more lifetime customers rather than a bunch of one-time customers. And if your customers swear by your company, they’ll tell all their friends or social media followers about you.

Types of Content

For the amount of content the Internet holds, there are almost as many forms of marketing that content. Some methods work better for some businesses compared to others, and it’s important to fine tune what works best for your business.

Videos

Remember what we said earlier about how 80% of people can recall a video ad they’ve seen in the last month? Videos are one of the most powerful strategies in the content marketing portfolio.

Instead of seeing a static headshot of some executive, you see them talking about their business and (hopefully) can hear the passion in their voice. Videos are able to quickly catch people’s attention. According to HubSpot, 54% of audiences want to see videos from brands they support, which is higher than any other form of content.

If you’re on a tight budget, you don’t have to hire an entire film crew. All you need is a nice smartphone camera, ring light, and a tripod. Voila! You’re in the film business.

If you’re considering an introduction video for the “above the fold” portion of your website, keep it simple and succinct so you don’t have to re-record a video every few weeks. If you’re looking for a one-and-done video for your webpage, hiring a professional film crew may be a smart investment.

However, if you want to start a YouTube or TikTok channel from your business with how-to videos or experimental videos, then you can use the resources your staff has on hand.

Gym Example: Your gym drops a YouTube video breaking down how to do different exercises each Tuesday and a video about various fitness products each Thursday. A person beginning their fitness journey does a YouTube search on “best protein powders” and your video “Comparing Different Powders to Find the Best Protein Powder.” They’re entertained by the trainer featured in the video and they end up buying the protein powder they recommend. They go to your channel and watch more videos and decide they would feel comfortable working out at your gym because you’ve given them the knowledge of how to do their recommended exercises and the trainers seem nice.

Blog

Some people are visual learners and love watching a video. Others would prefer to read all about a topic. This is where the blog comes in.

Offering a blog with content that relates to your product can organically draw in more customers as we’ve talked about. In fact, research by HubSpot indicates that companies that blog get 55% more website traffic than those who do not. The key is SEO optimization. (SEO Optimization is its own beast and we can tackle that together later.) Keeping a blog schedule can be helpful, especially if you have people looking forward to a new article every Thursday (or whatever day you choose). The most important thing when deciding what to post about is whether it connects back to your audience or product. If you’re running the blog for a gym, you’re not gonna post an article about “The Ten Best Lightsaber Battles in All Star Wars Canon” unless your brand is specifically targeted towards body-building nerds. Even then, it’s a stretch. HOWEVER, “Recreating the Best Lightsaber Battles in Star Wars and Which Battle Burns the Most Calories” is less of a stretch and might bring you a whole new clientele. 3. Infographics Infographics are a fun way to grab your customer’s attention and quickly present the facts. This form of promoting content can make your message easier for customers to digest. Most marketing professionals recommend that infographics use as little text as possible and let the graphics paint the picture. Infographics are generally long, vertical graphs that show pictures, cartoons, graphs, etc.

If you choose to use an infographic, be sure to promote it where it will be effective. An infographic will be most effective on Facebook, your website, or an Instagram story. You can use snippets of the infographic on your Instagram feed or throughout your website as well.

Podcasts

Podcasts are essentially the modern version of radio stories. You listen to experts or amateurs talk about a particular subject and they are usually released in episodic format. A podcast can open the door to an entirely new audience. Podcasts are free to access and if people enjoy listening to you talk to people, they’ll check out your product/service. If starting your own podcast seems to be too much for your business, then consider getting a guest spot on a podcast related to your brand to talk about what you do. 5. Case Studies Building case studies with real life people using their stories and real data will focus your potential customers on the quality of your product or service. Many people who have never had a personal experience or know someone with a personal experience with a brand will possibly want to know about previous customers’ experiences. Presenting a case study can help sway people by showing them the start to finish experience of working with your brand. There are plenty of ways to present the data found in a case study, and you can even combine this content marketing strategy with other strategies.

Books and eBooks

Whether you publish a physical copy of a book or an eBook, you have the ability to draw in customers. First of all, you get to market yourself as “author of [Awesome Book Title]” and that alone makes you sound like you know what you’re doing. eBooks are basically long form blog posts that people can instantly download to learn about a topic. Your book can direct them back to your product and lead them to making a purchase. And of course, you know how a printed book works. Either way, you’re presenting yourself—and your business—as a reputable source of information.

User-Generated Content and Influencers

User-generated content comes from people who publicly post about a product they use and love. Influencers are popular people who other people look to for recommendations on what products to buy and use. By reposting the positive posts that people make about your product, you’re showcasing happy customers. If you can get an influencer to promote your content, their followers will be inclined to check out what you’re doing. Think of this as another form of customer reviews. People want to buy things that have been proven to work. The more they see your product being loved by others, the more they will feel the need to get it themselves.

Memes and Quizzes

Embrace meme culture. Especially if you’re targeting younger people, memes are the way to go. If you can make them laugh, they’ll be more interested in what you have to offer. A meme is an image set with culturally relevant text that becomes “viral” if it’s shared enough times. The more memes you make, the better chance you have of going viral and attracting new customers. To go along with memes, interactive quizzes or polls are a great way of engaging potential customers. Whether it’s “What type of _______ is the best for you based on ________?” or general trivia, people will want to click on your link to participate and learn more.There are so many more forms of content marketing, but you get the idea. Other examples include white papers, checklists, classes, forums, and workbooks.

Is Social Media a Form of Content Marketing?

Yes and no. Specific, we know. Let’s start by saying Social Media Marketing is technically its own category. Social media platforms can simultaneously be content generators and a place to distribute your content. Sorry, what? You can use social media to find content through other users and/or influencers, but you can also promote your blog, podcast, or video on your social media channels. It’s also important to remember that different platforms have different audiences. In social media marketing, the content created is geared towards a specific platform. In content marketing, the content created is geared toward selling the brand. Still, you can make a Venn Diagram of social media marketing and content marketing and there would be a great deal of overlap. If we’re considering social media in terms of distribution for content marketing, it’s incredibly effective because you can generate a following easily. All platforms are easy to use, and you own that page. Your social media presence can be evocative of your overall brand. Other distribution channels for content marketing include organic distribution (high SEO rankings), paid promotions (sponsored posts, search engine marketing, etc.), and earned distribution (audience sharing your content with their network without compensation).

What Content Should You Use?

This depends on your business! Certain strategies will work better depending on your target audience or the niche you’re trying to advertise to. You have to find the content that’s most likely going to attract the people you want to follow your website. Since they’re two of the most successful avenues, maybe start with a video or a blog.

If you’re struggling to figure out what strategies work best for your business, we’re here to help!

How Do Marketers Find Success with Content Marketing?

Content marketing takes a lot of dedication, time, and energy. At this point, you understand why people take the time to do it. But let’s lay out the direct results of an effective content marketing campaign and what success you’ll find

  • You’re discovered by the right people: if you have the answers to people’s questions, they’ll rely on you to continue answering their questions.

    • Blog posts, eBooks, videos, etc. are good avenues for this

  • You develop an engaged and committed audience: having a customer base that subscribes to your company’s content—literally or figuratively—generates a loyal group of long-term supporters

    • Content that’s shared on a weekly basis like a blog, YouTube video channel, or a podcast is a great way to get followers

  • You find new customers: expanding your outreach to new kinds of marketing strategies leads to opening the door to new customers

    • Think outside the box and brainstorm how your brand can be relevant to another generation of consumers, then make some memes and quizzes, start a forum, or whatever your heart desires

  • You increase revenue with customers you already have: the more you offer your customer-base, the more they’ll interact with your product

  • You put your marketing money where it does the best: most marketers see better results with content marketing strategies compared to traditional marketing strategies

    • Instead of paying for a marketing strategy that may or may not work, you can hire someone to write blog posts for you or to run your social media campaign and so on and so forth

  • Content marketing tends to fuel your other marketing efforts: if you’ve established your expertise in an area, when you start promoting a product or service directly people will be more inclined to buy it

  • You offer support at all levels of the sales cycle: you have information relevant to building awareness, present pros and cons of your product versus other products, and you convince the buyer that yours is the superior product

  • You improve your conversion rates: having people look at your website is awesome, but to be successful you need them to do more than quickly browse so it’s important to build customer affinity

  • You keep the conversation going and you keep the conversation relevant: while it takes a lot of work to stay on top of trends and continually produce content, you give your customers a reason to stick around and hopefully something to look forward to Content marketing isn’t for everyone, but it’s worth exploring at least one aspect of the various strategies to see where it takes you. There are plenty of ways to dip your toes into the content marketing water without paying a ton of money. However, when you decide to fully commit to content marketing, it’ll be extremely beneficial to sit down with your team and develop a content marketing strategy tailored to your company.

Why Marketers Need to Make a Content Marketing Strategy

No matter what form of marketing you pursue, you can’t just slam advertisements on a page and hope they stick. You need to have goals and intent before you begin promoting your product or service to the world or else you won’t have any sort of purpose for your content. Content for content’s sake can be chaotic. Because there’s no shortage of content in today’s world, your content needs to be useful and relevant. It needs to provide your audience with something helpful or entertaining. And at the end of the day, it needs to reflect your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

Before you create your strategy, you have to answer a few questions that might seem obvious. You might find it helpful to write your answers out, especially since at some point you may want to hire an outside source to assist with your content marketing strategy.

  1. Who is your content for? In an ideal world, who’s your target audience? What demographic are you trying to reach? Maybe you’ve had success with one niche group, and you want to open it up to a wider pool of people. Knowing who you want to reach will help you decide on the best way(s) to reach them.

  2. What problem are you solving for your audience? Hopefully, your core product or service fills a need your customer has. If you branch out from that core product to the web around it, what other needs can you fill for your potential customers? Not only do you need to solve unsolved problems, but you also have to establish why your problem-solver solves problems better than your competitor’s problem solver.

  3. Why are you special? What’s your USP? Why should people buy from you instead of the other guys? This is arguably the most important question to answer, but hopefully a question you already know the answer to. Your USP can be that you’ve been in the business for over 25 years, that you’re veteran-owned, that you donate half of your profits to a charity, that your product is 100% American made, that your service has a 90% success rate, etc. Amazon Prime offers free two-day shipping; what do YOU offer?

  4. What kind of content will you use? Now that you’ve answered the first three questions, you’ll have a better idea of what might work for your brand. At this point you can pick one (or more) content forms to try. If you choose to use multiple forms of content, which one(s) will you invest the most time into?

  5. Where will you publish your content? Depending on the kind of content you create, you will want to narrow down which platform(s) you want to share your content on. Certain forms of content will do better on social media channels than a website.

  6. How will you generate your content? You’ll have to decide who will make your content—whether it’s someone on staff or someone you hire outside of your business. If you are having someone from your current staff take on the content responsibilities, what platforms will they use to make their content? And of course, what’s the schedule for publishing the content? Amazing! You now have an outline of your content marketing plan! Now you can begin developing your strategy for putting this plan into motion!

    1. Set SMART Goals: I’m sure you know what your goals are but take the time to really define what your goals mean for you and your business.

      • *Specific: You have real numbers and real deadlines. Instead of “We want more site visitors,” state “We want to increase conversion rates by 3%.”

      • *Measurable: Make sure you have a means of tracking your goal. Although you want to increase “brand engagement,” you have to figure out exactly how you can quantify that engagement.

      • *Attainable: Pick a goal that is challenging but within reach. Look at the stats from other businesses similar to your own to see what is possible in terms of growth.

      • *Realistic: You know your team better than anyone. Set your goal based on what you know your team is capable of. Marketing isn’t necessarily a go big or go home enterprise.

      • *Time-Bound: Set a deadline for yourself. Once that deadline arrives, you’ll be able to reevaluate your goals and decide on your next strategy! It’s the circle of marketing, and it moves us all.

    2. Set Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

    Your KPIs will go hand in hand with the “measurable” section of your SMART goals. Your KPIs are quantifiable data points that you can use to measure your performance to see if you’re on track to achieve your goals.

    For example, if your goals revolve around brand awareness, then KPIs you may use include site traffic, social media followers, subscription rates, or mentions by customers/partners.

    1. Reevaluate Your Chosen Content and Distribution Channels Now that you’ve narrowed your general goals into SMART goals, refer back to your outline to see if the types of content and distribution channels are the best way to achieve your goals. If they are, great! If not, don’t power through with something just because you have your heart set on it. You need to do what will be the most beneficial to your business.

    2. Evaluate SEO Strategies

    If you’re looking to drive new organic leads, you’ll need to optimize your content to be easily discoverable by search engines. This is more relevant for certain kinds of content than others, but any content you create should be able to be traced back to your brand.

    Strategizing for the best SEO results includes

    • Keyword Research: knowing what your audience will be typing into Google to find your content

    • Keyword Optimization: you content marketing can’t just content marketing stuff your article content marketing with keywords content marketing where they don’t content marketing make sense. See how annoying that is? Don’t do that. Sprinkle in your keywords. You can utilize a service that will help you identify the number of times you should use each keyword.

    • Content Organization: a solid website structure is key to ranking well on a search engine, and it’ll help your users get around your site.

    • User Intent: don’t just think about what Google wants, think about what your audience wants. Although you’re optimizing your content for AI, you’re marketing to real life humans. If you were going to search for something that would lead you to your product, what would YOU type into your preferred search engine?

    1. Set Your Budget Consider your resources and whether you need to set a hard budget or a soft budget. You have to consider all aspects of the marketing cycle from creation to distribution. We’ll talk more about the costs in a little bit.
    2. Create and Distribute the Content Time to (finally) put your strategy into action! Create that content and release it into the world. You may want to use a content calendar or a content management system to keep you on track and regular in the publishing of your content.
    3. Analyze and Measure Results Now that you’ve implemented your strategy, it’s time to evaluate how it’s working and if you’re getting the results you want. If you are, great! Keep going! If you’re not quite there, go back a couple steps and switch it up!Once you’ve passed through one marketing cycle, you get to begin the process all over again! YAY!!

How to Make a Better Content Marketing Case with ROI

Creating a content marketing strategy will help you be able to measure the Return of Investment (ROI) in your content marketing efforts. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 92% of marketers reported that their company views content as a business asset. This content creates credibility; 96% of the most successful content marketers agree that their audience views their organization as a trusted resource. And as we know, content marketing generates three times as many leads than paid search advertising. Consumers have become desensitized to advertising. They expect to see it and they’ve learned to tune it out. You have to rethink the marketing game to make your business stand out among the myriad other businesses online. The former senior director for data, content, and media at Kraft, Julie Fleisher, stated that content marketing ROI was four times greater than even their most targeted advertising. To compare your traditional marketing efforts to your content marketing efforts, you have to know what your current marketing ROI is.

Your ROI is made up of three components: cost, utilization, and performance.

The Cost of Content Marketing

To accurately measure the ROI, you have to know the amount of money you’re putting into your marketing venture.

If you’ve dabbled in content marketing, you can start by running a content audit where you take stock of the content your company has already created. You can then look at the costs associated with this content. Each type of content may have a different cost associated with it.

If you’re new to content marketing, then you can do some research into the different costs associated with various content strategies.

WebFX states that services offered by content marketing professionals vary from $2,000 to $50,000 each month. The amount you spend will depend on the type of content you produce, the person you hire to create the content, and the amount of content you produce.

For written content, you’re looking at paying a freelancer anywhere from $35-60 per hour for each individual article you want written. If you want to have all your material coming from the same place, you can hire a content marketing agency that offers copywriting services and pay them a lump sum of approximately $1,000-3,000 a month.

Visual content is more eye-catching and reaches potential customers who digest information better through pictures or video. An infographic created by a freelancer will likely cost over $300 depending on how detailed you want your graphic to be. If you hire a video production crew, you’ll end up spending anywhere from $1,200-$50,000 per video.

That being said, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing tactics.

Keep in mind that your content is a means, not an end. Like most things in business, you get out of it what you put into it, so the question isn’t necessarily how much it costs but rather how much you can invest into it. You’ll be able to figure out a way to make it work if you decide that content marketing is the route you want to take.

Content Marketing Utilization

You’ll have to keep track of how and where you use your content. Especially since you’ll be investing a significant amount of time, effort, and money into producing content, you’ll want to make sure your content will stay relevant for a long period of time.

A talented marketing team will understand how to promote content on multiple platforms to expand the audience outreach. The most important thing is that the content is being used. Content that is never used is waste. Don’t waste your resources.

Content Marketing Performance

Loop back to those measurable goals you created when you set the strategy for your content marketing plan. When you’re considering the performance of your marketing efforts in terms of ROI it’s as simple as asking yourself if you are on track to meeting your goals or if you met your goals by the deadline you set for yourself.

It’s also important to evaluate consumer engagement rather than consumer traffic. Of course, it’s great to have more people visit your site, but you want your content to compel them to stay on the website. Your content is the bait, and your website showcasing your product or service is the hook.