A good content strategy takes time to show results. When the world around you is moving frenetically, justifying spending on something that may take months to bear fruit is a big ask.
For those struggling to get your content marketing budget signed off, we’ve done the work and explained how to pitch your senior management team.
You’ll learn:
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Why Is Content Marketing a Valuable Investment?
We’re assuming at this point that you have a content strategy in mind; putting a content marketing strategy together is half the battle. The other half is persuading the budget holder that content solves your current challenges.
To successfully get the investment you need, you must set the scene for your senior team.
Show senior managers why you should use content to achieve your business goals. You should be hitting on the following points when talking about investing in content:
- Increase brand awareness – You won’t attract customers if they don’t know you exist.
- Build trust with customers – A customer will view your content multiple times before purchasing from you. Content is instrumental in persuading customers to buy your product or service.
- Drive organic traffic – While ads have their place, they can be costly. Free traffic sources should always form part of your lead generation strategy, and high-quality, useful content helps make this possible.
- Improve search engine rankings – Google looks for search intent as part of its ranking process. If you’re producing engaging content that answers your customers’ questions, then Google will rank you highly.
Persuading the C-Suite Execs: What Are the Benefits of Content Marketing?
Support your pitch to the senior team with evidence. If you’ve got the numbers to support your request, ensure they are front and center in any conversations about content.
There are several benefits to investing in content. They include the following:
- Cost-effective strategy – Content can be created in-house or outsourced. Even if you need to pay for content, it can bring in far more revenue than it costs to write. Investment in good content means that you’ll be able to get in front of your target audience easily, helping to generate more leads.
- Higher conversion rates – Good content builds trust. When people trust you, they are more likely to spend their hard-earned cash with you.
- Long-term ROI – Using well-thought-out content, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Being memorable will lead to customers thinking of you before they approach your competitors. This helps to increase customer retention.
- Support other marketing efforts – A solid content strategy that ties into your digital marketing strategy will help establish your company as a trusted brand.
- Competitive advantage – What are your competitors doing? A good content strategy will get you noticed and persuade customers to come to you before anyone else in the same industry.
Common Mistakes To Avoid When Investing in Content Marketing
When pitching to the C-suite, you must ensure your strategy is clear. The lack of a clear content strategy can kill any chance of future investment, so ensure you understand your aim when producing content and that your strategy supports it.
First, do you know who your ideal audience is?
You’d be surprised at the number of companies who launch a content strategy only to see it fail because they have not done the due diligence to understand who their customers are and what they want.
Secondly, content strategy lives and dies by how consistently you’re producing content. Even the greatest content in the world will not have the desired effect if it’s not posted regularly.
Finally, focusing on quantity over quality or neglecting to promote the content you produce can end your content strategy before it gets off the ground.
So, make sure you’ve given these points due consideration and plan how you will implement what you create.
How To Build a Content Marketing Budget
Setting a realistic budget will help support your request.
Understand what it will cost to create your content (both in terms of fees and time).
Be sure to consider the expense of any tools or platforms that you’ll need to use.
You should also have a plan for allocating the necessary resources for promotion and distribution.
If you’re not going to manage the content in-house, you’ll have to think about the cost of having a third-party handle this for you. WriterAccess can help you produce content that supports your goals and remains within your budget.
Make sure your plan involves reviewing and updating content regularly.
Content refreshing is beneficial for your reputation (it shows you are keeping up to date with the latest developments in your industry) and good for the SERPs.
Measuring the Content Marketing ROI
When you go in front of your senior management team, one of the first things they will ask about is the return on investment (ROI).
Any investment needs to be tracked so that its effectiveness is understood and changes to the strategy can be made if necessary.
Make sure you’re armed with the following data to support your request:
- Key performance indicators – These will be determined by your tech stack and how your company identifies what KPIs are important.
- Google Analytics data (or information from any other SEO tool you use) – This data will give you a good idea of how your content is performing. You may also need to use content marketing tools that help manage your social media campaigns. Many of these tools have report functions that analyze your social media content much easier.
- Customer acquisition cost – How much are you spending to acquire a customer? If you rely on paid ads, this expense could be high. A good content strategy could go a long way toward reducing these costs.
- The lifetime value of a customer – What is your customer’s average spend? How long do they remain with you as a customer before they move on? Again, these numbers will help support your content strategy plan.
Address Common Concerns From Your Senior Management Team
Addressing common concerns is often a sticking point when requesting money for investment.
If you’ve got the data we mentioned earlier in this article, you should be able to answer any questions your management team might have.
Use your data to show the potential impact of good content on lead generation, customer acquisition, and revenue growth.
Put together case studies using your data that show how content has helped you achieve your goals.
You can also share examples from industry peers to support your cause.
Best Practice for Collaborating With Your Senior Team
Communication is vital for any successful working relationship. Make sure that any business case you present is clear and concise.
A good business case will describe the current situation, how you intend to address the issue, what the budget is, and how you plan to manage the project and communicate progress.
Your senior team will expect regular updates on any investment they make, so being armed with the relevant data (and making sure you are measuring KPIs accurately) will help support your content strategy.
Get the senior team involved by seeking their input regularly and keeping lines of communication open.
When reporting, make sure you have easy access to the necessary data.
Building a dashboard that collates all the relevant KPIs will help you quickly identify patterns and trends, enabling you to respond swiftly if your strategy is not working.
Ready to Invest in Content Marketing?
Well, I hope that you, at least, feel ready to convince your leadership to do so.
Remind them that crafting actionable content takes time, effort, and knowledge of the content marketing industry.
Fortunately, you can easily find the perfect partner at WriterAccess! Our writers, editors, and translators are all fully vetted, so you can be confident that the content will be engaging for your audience.
Plus, we focus on providing easy-to-use tools that will speed up your content development schedules—so you’ll see the benefits quickly.
Hiring the right staff of full-time project managers, editors and writers would be a serious challenge for most teams. Simply gaining approval to create or expand a content marketing team is difficult in today’s tough economy.
When you partner with WriterAccess, you’re immediately gaining access to some of the best writers in the country, all with experience in working across a variety of business verticals.
Start your free trial with WriterAccess today and see how we can help scale your content development efforts without a massive upfront investment.
