Did you ever wonder why we have 7 days in a week? The ancient Babylonians divided the moon cycle down to 4, 7-day periods. Blame them for that Monday morning feeling and thank them that its Friday.
One week is plenty of time to review the ROI on your digital marketing strategy. You may believe you know how to maximize ROI but there’s always more you can do. Read on to learn 7 simple ways you can increase ROI within a week.
Content Marketing Return on Investment
Content marketing is a more effective means of generating business as compared with native advertising. Using blogs, videos, and infographics targeted at a specific audience you can generate increased traffic and conversion rates.
Content marketing is the low-cost solution. It doesn’t take much time or money to create content. You can get it out there quickly and easily.
Whatever content you create it lasts longer than most other advertising. It can be available to your audience for as long as you leave it on the web. This means it’s getting a return for as long as it’s out there.
As you develop content you grow your audience. It’s the growth in your audience that delivers the return on investment. More content and a bigger audience mean compounding growth.
Increase ROI
It’s worth saying a few words about what return on investment means. The investment is what you spend. It can be expressed in terms of money or time.
The return is the benefit you get back from the investment. You may be satisfied with non-financial benefits. These benefits may be your reason for investing in the content marketing.
If your objective is to make money then you need to quantify the return in monetary terms. How many dollars, is each dollar invested in your content marketing, earning? This is your return on investment (ROI).
Your content marketing may generate leads. If you can convert these leads into revenue you have achieved a return. Better still, if you can retain those customers and get repeat business from them you have an income stream.
1. Do More with It
You may have one particular objective for your content marketing strategy. Perhaps your focus is on generating new traffic to your site and converting that traffic into sales. Maximizing ROI is about getting more output from this input.
Consider using the same content to develop better relationships with your customers. Add the objective of increasing revenue from existing customers. The more objectives you add the more likely that you increase the return.
You don’t have to erode the quality or effectiveness of the content by trying to be all things to all people. For example, adding search engine optimization to your objectives need not damage your primary objective.
2. Quality over Quantity
It’s tempting to create lots of content. Your intuition may tell you that more content means more contact with content consumers. This may not be the case.
If your content is poorly targeted or even just poor, it may damage your brand and turn consumers off. If you want more interaction with consumers, give them something they value. This will increase traffic, search engine indexing, brand awareness and all the other good things you want.
Increase the quality of your content by focusing on a few pieces. Think about outsourcing content creation. Be better at offering quality content than any of your competitors.
3. Reduce the Cost of Content
Increasing return on investment is as much about managing the “investment” as it is bringing home the “return”. Is any of the investment you are making, wasted? Can costs be reduced?
Streamline the content production process. Find great content producers who can deliver at the lowest cost. Remove any wasted effort or cost from your internal process to ensure the content production process is very lean.
4. Make It Durable
There are two types of content you can produce. Evergreen and non-evergreen content. You may produce both types.
Evergreen content doesn’t go out of date. It, therefore, has a very long shelf life. Non-evergreen content such as news has a limited useful life.
The ROI of evergreen content can keep on giving well after the initial launch so that’s great for ROI. Non-evergreen content may get a big initial impact because of its immediate relevance but this will fall away as it ceases to be current.
Don’t dismiss non-evergreen content. You can increase its life by updating it. It’s possible that this will make the content very valuable to your consumer and even create a following.
5. Reduce Distribution Costs
If you are spending money on the promotion of your content you should include this spending in your ROI calculation. There are other ways of distributing your content more cost-effectively. The free distribution channels such as social media can increase your ROI instantly.
6. Repurpose
If you have content that has been successful in the past don’t think it’s given all it can. There is more value to be had. Try updating it, refreshing it or building on it.
Even re-using the same content with a minor refresh can extract more value from the initial investment. Try re-thinking the content for a new audience. Adapt a blog article to work as an infographic.
7. Get Other People to Do the Work
If you could get content written tomorrow for free, you could improve your ROI overnight. You can do just that. User content can be engaging, effective for SEO, and low cost.
Question and answer forums, content sharing sites, and communities can all be options for the cost-conscious content marketer. They can be highly targeted to your preferred consumer.
One Week
Any of these ways to increase ROI could make a difference. Starting today, get a better understanding of your ROI. Take these steps to improve it.
To learn more about digital marketing, contact Alex Lloro.