How to Measure The ROI of Content Marketing in 2020

How to Measure The ROI of Content Marketing in 2020

Did you know that 72% of the marketers in 2020 say content marketing increased engagement on their website?

Well, content marketing is an effective online marketing strategy that can boost your business revenue through the roof. This is mostly because of its extraordinary ability to draw the attention of your target audience and make them take desired actions.

But, how exactly can you find the ROI of your content marketing efforts? You might be putting so much time and money into creating and executing your content marketing strategy. If it doesn’t produce any visible results, it will just be an exercise in futility.

Content marketing is the type of marketing that involves the creation and online distribution of different kinds of content that stimulate interest in a brand’s products and services. Let’s understand how you can measure the ROI of any content marketing campaign in 2020.

If your curious to learn more what content marketing is we have a whole article dedicated to it!

Steps to Measure Content Marketing ROI in 2020

Content marketing ROI is calculated to know the revenue you generated through the money you spent on your content marketing campaigns. It is definitely the most important metric to measure because it directly affects your expenditure.

Here are the steps involved in measuring the ROI of content marketing. Let’s discuss them in detail.

Step 1: Calculate the cost of content creation

To begin with the process, you will first have to calculate the cost of content creation. Now, to create content, you will have to calculate the money spent on many resources. 

You will have to calculate the content creator’s salary, the cost of purchasing images, video, audio, and other outsourced work. The cost of purchasing the software to create the content should also be added. 

You will also have to include the work done by other departments on your business to create a successful content marketing strategy. If you outsource content marketing, calculating this cost will be much easier. 

All you will have to calculate is the amount you are paying the agency every month and compare that with the revenue generated.

Step 2: Figure out the cost of content distribution

Once you are done and over with the content creation, you will begin distributing the content online. 

Now, content distribution or promotion can happen two ways - Paid and Organic. When it comes to organic promotion, you will want to add the salary of the person that is responsible to distribute content on social media and third-party websites every day. 

Then you should add the money spent on paid promotions. Paid promotions can involve the use of Pay-Per-Click advertising and paid social media marketing. 

You might even be paying other websites to publish your content. All these expenditures should be added as well. Also, the cost of purchasing content distribution tools and software should be considered.

Step 3: Sum up the revenue you generated

Your content marketing strategy should help you generate leads that you can turn into sales. If the content you created is helping you do that, you have practically created a source of getting leads for your business. 

Now, you will have to figure out the total revenue you have generated through the content you created. If you have content that people read and click on the ‘call-to-action’ and purchase your product, calculating the revenue will be much easier. 

This is because the relationship between the content and sales is direct. Other times the relationships will not be direct. This process of figuring out the total revenue generated through your content marketing campaign can take time. 

Just add up all the direct and indirect sales you have gained from your content creation and it will be the revenue generated.

Step 4: Calculate the content marketing ROI

To calculate the content marketing ROI for your brand, you will want to use a tried and tested formula. 

Luckily, we have the formula with us and you can use it to quickly calculate the content marketing ROI. 

The formula is quite simple to understand and use. It says you have to subtract the investment from the returns and divide the result by investment and multiply the result by 100 to know the content marketing ROI as a percentage.

Content Marketing ROI (as percentage) = (Return - Investment)/Investment) x 100

Let’s understand this formula with an example.
Let’s say you created one piece of content and you spend $500 on creating and distributing it. The content goes onto generating $2000 for you. You can calculate your Content Marketing ROI  by -

Content Marketing ROI (as percentage) = (5000 - 500)/500) x 100

In this case, the content marketing ROI will be 900%. Therefore, you should try to spend as less as you can on producing the content if you want to increase the content marketing ROI.

How to Improve Your Content Marketing ROI?

There are many ways you can improve the ROI of your content marketing campaigns over a long period of time. 

You can do it by updating your content regularly if you are in a fast-paced industry. You should look forward to re-purposing the content and promote each repurposed piece of content. 

Finally, you must spend more on research and coming up with content ideas that can really drive the target audience to take a desired action. Follow all your content marketing efforts with extensive analysis using Google Analytics. 

Figure out what kind of content works and what doesn’t. And then double down on creating content that gels with your target audience

Final Thoughts

Content marketing is essential to compete online. But, creating a solid content marketing campaign will only help if it produces the results you are looking for. If it does not provide you with the ROI, you must make significant changes to your content marketing campaigns today! Have questions? Feel free to put them down in the comments section. We’d love to help you out!