by Anna Szabo, JD, MBA

How much time, energy, effort, sweat and money have you invested in the content you’ve already produced? Take a moment to think about this: What is the total cost of your content and the net value you’ve received from it?

Content is expensive! Isn’t it? Even if you produce it in house.

I’ve been an in-house marketer for over a decade now and have sat in many meetings about content.

I would like to walk you through the various meetings and processes that content needs before it ever sees the light of day. The reason I want to share this with you is so that we are on the same page when we discuss the actual cost of your content later.

Types Of Content-Related Meetings

• Content budget meetings
• Content idea brainstorming meetings
• Content campaign briefing meetings
• Content creative planning meetings
• Content creative review meetings
• Content SEO meetings
• Content architecture meetings
• Content publishing meetings

Content budgeting always competes with mission-critical priorities. So, if you win those few dollars to produce your epic content, congratulations! Lucky you!

Content idea brainstorming meetings sometimes are driven by research, strategic priorities and current analytics. However, far too often these meetings are do not produce the intended results.

Content campaign briefing meetings are my favorite ones!

You’ve worked hard to pour all your creativity and experience into this perfectly formatted presentation of your campaign ideas, and you’re excited to get it approved so that you can finally run with it.

Content creative planning meetings can be fun, if it’s brainstorming led. However, sometimes creatives are determined by your pre-existing media library. You must take into consideration the cost of either creating new assets, or the time it will take to build out new ones. 

Content creative review meetings can be exciting or annoying. I know you’ve probably sat through silence when what you’ve created doesn’t excite enough people in the room.  You’ve probably also been through a creative review where what you’ve designed caused a standing ovation from your team. I hope you’ve had plenty of those! They are my favorites!

Content SEO meetings can quickly turn into a nightmare if they become complicated and technical.

I must admit, I’m a technical SEO passionista and, from my experience, SEO is the most important key to organic growth. Not everyone, however, is as familiar with SEO and how it interacts with our content. As such, this meeting is usually intense. You should count the cost of it into our content pricing calculation later on.

Content architecture meetings are critical to determining the URL (slug) of your content, its taxonomy, tags, categories and UX, because all of those components impact your content’s accessibility and discoverability. Of course, you produce content SO it can be discovered and easily accessed. Right?

Content publishing meetings…I’m already sweating just writing about this process which I have personally gone through time and time again. By the time that this meeting happens, you’re ready to go, but there are some key questions that need to be answered.

• Which platforms will you leverage for content distribution and syndication?
• Will you use social PPC, AdWords search ads or retargeting based on your lookalike audiences?
• Will you engage influencers, do paid YouTube collabs or sponsor someone’s cross-promotion of your content?
• What copy will you be using for each distribution platform?
• Which hashtags will get your content the best exposure?

ARE YOU STILL READING?

Don’t get too tired! I’m taking you someplace great, I promise!

I want us both to take a hard and very honest look at the overall cost of content.

What I want to bring to your attention, is that you (and I of course) invest a lot into our content.

Content is expensive!

We want it to get good visibility, distribution, engagement and a positive sentiment. We want our content to be picked up by industry influencers and ultimately lead to ROI.

Isn’t that the very purpose of content?

ROI is what we all want.

But what is the ROI on content?

To determine the return on investment, we must first understand the investment itself, or the cost of content.

The Cost Of Content

1. The salary of everybody involved in all the meetings listed above, per hour per person per each meeting
2. The payments to vendors, copywriters, graphic designers, software tools, media libraries (if long-term, recurring fee is required, include that total number here), video crews and client meetings (include the cost of travel if any)
3. The opportunity lost because you’re working on content rather than something else (For instance, there could be another opportunity that would be of value to your company, so what is it?)

Now, if you thought content is free for in-house marketers, think again.

Content is really expensive!

How To Measure ROI On Content

1. Impressions for brand awareness
2. Engagement for community expansion
3. Click-through rate for demand generation
4. Pipeline stage progression for revenue  growth

All of the KPIs listed above might be the ones for which YOU are held accountable. In that case, can we both agree that the more exposure your content gets, the more leads it can generate, ultimately increasing your ROI?

So, how can you get more exposure for your content and make you look like a marketing rockstar?

How To Get Exposure For Your Content

1. Paid search ads via Google AdWords
2. PPC ads via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube
3. Retargeting digital display ads to your lookalike audiences on the platforms where those audiences already spend their time
4. Influencer marketing (paid partnerships)
5. Your team’s social media networks

You have so many options! Now, all you need to do is decide.

As you’re thinking through this, consider some helpful industry statistics.

Forbes began reporting back in 2013 that people lost trust in digital ads.

Digiday reported on 2017 that people thought of digital advertising as “fake news.”

Social Media Today also released an article reporting that the community thinks of marketers as “liars.”

Inc reported in 2018, “This past January, Epsilon found that 80 percent of consumers are more apt to do business with a company that provides a personalized experience.”

Forbes actually described a very important aspect of a personalized experience: micro-influencers.

Here is why your team members are your best asset for content amplification:

• Their peers trust them more than they trust your brand
• Their networks see them more genuine than your brand
• The investment in paid ads will never deliver the same ROI as the investment in the program that allows your team easily access brand-approved content, and share it on their networks with just a couple of clicks

Take it a step further, and you can even build personalized Brand-Hubs for each key team member. This means that when their peers visit their so-called “website” (aka a personally branded hub loaded by you with brand-approved content) they trust the content because they think of their peer as trustworthy.

So, can content amplification tools help your business grow? Absolutely, but only when you invest in the right kind of amplification.

My Experience with Content Amplification 

I remember working at a tech company that paid up to $52 PPC in AdWords search ads, plus $5,000 a month to an agency for ad management, and all to no avail.

When I saw the spending and the analytics demonstrating ROI (or lack thereof), I wanted to cry.

So, I recommended to stop the paid ads and instead invest the allocated advertising budget to building a program that would give employees a simple app where I would push brand-approved content with messages written in the employees’ voice that they would share on their social media.

I got the buy-in from my executive team by making a comprehensive ROI comparison presentation with projected budget savings, all while driving greater brand awareness and higher quality website traffic.

Within the first hour of announcing the program, it was full! It was actually announced by the VP of Sales on his Wednesday nationwide webinar with the team at large.

That’s how I know, for a fact, that your colleagues would love to share the content you produce on their social networks if you make it easy for them.

I also know that having a “one-stop shop” kind of content hub, that is personalized and branded for each key member, would not only help amplify your content, but would also help to build credibility for your team in the industry.

It will help your team close those awesome leads you deliver.

To summarize… here it is!

How Content Amplification Helps Your Business Grow

1. Higher visibility leads to higher engagement
2. Higher engagement results in higher CTR
3. Higher CTR delivers more leads
4. More leads means more opportunities
5. More opportunities result in more revenue

Your teammates are your best content amplification resource.

Would you like to see how easy it is to get them involved?

CTA: Let’s See How To Best Amplify My Content

Leads to demo request landing page

So, we discussed a lot today:

• The hustle content requires
• The cost of content
• The ways to amplify your content
• The ROI on your content
• The ways in which content amplification helps your business grow

Thanks for reading this far!

Now I want to hear from you – what’s been your experience with content amplification and its impact on revenue growth?

Let me know in the comments below.

P.s: Would you like to see how easy it is to get your team involved with content amplification?

Yes, show me now!