Content marketing is the development and sharing of written or visual content to attract a target audience. Although it doesn’t directly advertise a brand, it sparks curiosity about its products or services. While websites, blogs, emails, and social media are frequently linked to content marketing, content marketing precedes these channels by a significant margin.
John Deere’s magazine The Furrow is generally acknowledged as the oldest example of content marketing, but Benjamin Franklin’s publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1732 is recognized as an influential precursor. Although the primary intention of the almanac was to promote his printing company, it provided valuable information to readers.
In 1801, the bookstore Librairie Galignani used creative content techniques to increase its business, such as constructing a reading room and printing a newspaper with articles from renowned writers and excerpts from books.
Later, in the early 1960s, Exxon became one of the pioneers of content marketing by creating the slogan “Put a tiger in your tank,” alluding to the power of its gasoline. The corporation used the tagline throughout its advertising and marketing to convey a consistent message. Other corporations followed, and cross-channel promotions became commonplace.
Nowadays, 39% of marketers spend up to half of their entire marketing budgets on content creation for content marketing. It’s easy to see why: Although it costs 62% less than conventional outbound marketing strategies, content marketing produces three times as many leads.
Content marketing is so successful because it aims to provide readers with value by providing answers to their queries or a solution to their problems. To do that, brands need a qualified content writer and a digital content creator with talent and experience to produce this content.
B2B content marketing provides entertaining and practical information to professionals to assist them in solving problems or making business decisions. This is essentially the same for B2C content, which targets consumers instead of professionals.
By offering this assistance, every digital content creator increases their company’s trust among other specialists. Other businesses are more inclined to interact with social media content if they regard it as an authority and if the material proves that the poster has reliable expertise. Social media management tools make it simpler to relay this content.
The ROI of Content Marketing
It’s important to create a content marketing strategy because consumers won’t hand over their hard-earned money if they don’t trust what they see. Fortunately, content marketing is ideal for delivering useful guidance and quality content that educates readers on a specific issue.
Becoming an expert in a specific field or the go-to authority on a topic is guaranteed to grow brand audiences, develop brand trust, and increase brand social media campaign visibility. It also empowers purchasing decisions.
To calculate the return on investment of content marketing, use this formula: (Return – Investment ÷ Investment) x 100 = ROI. Here’s a closer look at the process:
Step 1: Calculate the investment: When assessing investments, it’s critical to sum up all of the costs. This includes all costs associated with content generation, such as salaries and outsourcing fees. In addition, it’s important to factor in money spent on extra services and tools that improve the quality of content, such as keyword research and content optimization software. Other expenses, such as paid advertisements and software subscriptions, should also be added to the total cost.
Step 2: Determine the return: This step is nearly identical to the last. To start, calculate the net return from content marketing.
Step 3: Calculating the ROI: Finally, plug the investment and return values into the formula. For example, if the total investment is $1,500, and the net return from the blog is $4,800, the formula would look like this: (4,800 – 1,500 ÷ 1,500) x 100 = 220%. An ROI of 220% suggests that for every $1 spent on content production, $2.20 was generated in revenue. This shows that the content marketing strategy is profitable.
Brands shouldn’t hesitate to draw inspiration from successful global brands that have deployed ROI-driven content marketing strategies.
For example, Airbnb began as a simple online marketplace and community for people looking for short-term homestays. It later began to provide relevant and helpful information to support around-the-world tourists by adding new content to its website.
Visitors to Airbnb will find that they can access “Neighborhood Guides” that highlight dining places, local attractions, and hidden gems. Such material boosts the number of users, leading to increased engagement, bookings, and, eventually, a high ROI for Airbnb.
Another example is Sephora, which has established the “Beauty Insider Community.” This online community allows Sephora customers to share and debate beauty advice and ideas.
Sephora has leveraged this opportunity by acquiring customer data, promoting sales, encouraging user-generated content, and improving brand impressions. All of this ultimately led to an increase in ROI for the brand.
The Content Marketing Funnel
A content marketing funnel is a framework to help organize information to engage with certain audiences. The fundamental purpose of this framework is to bridge the gap between content and consumers by dividing material into three major types: top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel content. These materials may lead to a sale, a demo, a download, or a conversion.
The first level of a content marketing funnel is known as the awareness or top-of-funnel level. This refers to when potential buyers still know little about a brand, company, or product.
A recent study showed a list of effective top-of-funnel content ranked from most to least traffic generated. It indicated that educational and informative information often leads to more traffic and can also be used as marketing collateral. Because each content format has advantages and disadvantages that depend on user preferences, the variety of material on a website is equally important.
By contrast, middle-of-funnel content must focus on strengthening the relationship between a company and its clients while establishing trust. While there is overlap here, it’s critical to remember that a single piece of content won’t accomplish all content objectives.
This is why, to establish a comprehensive social media calendar, it’s essential to experiment with various social media marketing methods and continue to improve. Content should be personalized to customers at every level.
Finally, bottom-of-funnel content should focus on reinforcing potential customers’ trust in a product or service so that they can make a final decision. It’s also critical to demonstrate why the brand is superior to competitors. The content at this step can mean the difference between a successful conversion and a missed sale.
Consider this list of top bottom-of-funnel content ranked from most traffic generated to least for content ideas:
- Product overviews (51%).
- Customer feedback and reviews (49%).
- Success stories (43%).
Evidently, user-generated and case-based content was most successful at generating traffic.
Because each step of the marketing funnel serves a different purpose, a preferred social media tool should be used to measure the metrics of each content group. The following metrics are commonly used to evaluate top-of-tunnel content:
- Total traffic, organic traffic, and referral traffic.
- Social media interaction (shares, comments, likes, etc.).
- Influencer and media mention.
- On-site engagement (bounce rate, time spent on page, etc.).
- Subscriptions to newsletters.
Here are the metrics that are widely used to evaluate middle-of-funnel content:
- Rate of conversion.
- Number of leads.
- Total number of visitors.
- Time spent on the page.
- ROI and return on marketing investment (or ROMI).
When evaluating bottom-of-funnel content, consider these metrics:
- Rate of conversion.
- Payments and revenue figures.
- ROI and ROMI.
- Requests for free trials and demos.
While these metrics are important for determining how well content is received, they don’t reveal everything. Once the data has been obtained, it’s important to continue effectively planning content, testing, and developing tactics over time.
Regular data collection and social media analytics, such as behavior monitoring, will help properly refine the content marketing funnel. This is known as “iterative improvement,” and it helps improve a company’s social media report even more.
A properly implemented content marketing funnel strategy can drastically enhance conversions and increase sales. Content marketing funnel methods can also help maintain existing clients. To further increase customer loyalty, brands should create social media calendars to ensure that quality content is delivered consistently.
Finally, a content marketing strategy should also permit the development of personalized content based on client preferences and interests. Customers will feel more involved and connected to a company if a tailored social media marketing strategy is used to close transactions.
How to Effectively Market with B2B Tactics
It’s important for businesses of all sizes to know how to launch a B2B social media marketing strategy.
They should start by defining goals and assigning a monetary value to them, using the exact figures that need to be reached. This could be growing brand awareness, generating leads, or something else. Does revenue need to increase by 20%, 50%, 100%? Great! How many new leads are needed to reach that goal, and how much traffic needs to be brought in to reach that number of leads? Clear objectives make a social campaign easier to manage and assess.
To further clarify objectives, companies should identify their target markets, determining who the content will be aimed at. Are they in the C-suite, or are they HR specialists? Define and research the target audience to adapt the social media content creation to them.
It’s also important to make the most of the unique selling point (known as USP). To do this, brands should highlight what makes their companies unique. Why should someone choose them over the competition? This distinction can help make the most of the USP.
Because the B2B content marketing landscape is always changing, companies must look for new trends, such as increased reliance on data analytics, the rise of artificial intelligence and tailored experiences, and more emphasis on visual marketing and interactive materials like quizzes.
The best way to adjust to these changes is to be proactive. Businesses should make it a priority to create a social media planner to get SEO, high-quality material on search engines. They can go further by integrating analytics for data-driven decision-making and cultivating consumer relationships through personalized experiences to meet social media goals.
A great example of B2B content marketing is Shopify and its marketing efforts. Shopify made a significant investment in B2B content marketing by creating almost every form of marketing material, including blog entries, podcasts, and even online courses. It dispersed these materials through effective social media management.
This highlights the benefit of providing a diverse set of valuable resources. Shopify captured a large audience’s attention with various types of social media content creation. As a result, it became one of the world’s biggest e-commerce platforms.
How to Effectively Market with B2C Tactics
To effectively target B2C buyers, brands must focus on generating curiosity, enthusiasm, and urgency. To accomplish this, they can employ attention-grabbing social media advertising tactics with catchy headlines, photos, and videos to draw and hold their attention.
Using emotional triggers like fear or curiosity to appeal to their emotions and motivations through social listening is critical. Testimonials and social proof that demonstrate how a product or service might improve their lives are great for piquing customers’ interest. To urge them to act, use clear and appealing copy, calls to action, and incentives.
Loyalty programs, referrals, and reviews can also help retain customers. Brands can contact them with lucrative discounts, prizes, and feedback requests via email marketing, SMS, and push notifications to further strengthen the business-consumer connection.
Given that website traffic often begins with a search engine, SEO is an excellent way to reach a large B2C audience at a low cost, thanks to solutions like Google Analytics.
Consider Gymshark, a B2C athleisure clothing brand, as a perfect example of how effective SEO can be. It ranks for over 145,000 keywords and has over 2 million organic visitors.
A similarly well-thought-out SEO strategy can boost search rankings in various search engines, making it easier for consumers to find brand websites and learn about their products and services.
Tracking KPIs and leveraging social media metrics help brands make informed, data-driven decisions to steer B2C marketing campaigns. Simply looking at statistics and using content marketing tools will reveal what helps and prevents brands from meeting revenue goals.
How Mandala AI Can Help
By generating new ideas, collecting valuable, shareable information, and discovering business insights, Mandala AI permits users to work collaboratively with data to increase their content marketing and social media marketing performance.
Mandala AI’s Time Analytics feature offers holistic insights for enhanced understanding and productivity.
The Ripple feature can act as a social listening tool by monitoring all social media feeds from the major platforms and quickly gathering data and insights — all on a single dashboard!
What’s more, with Insight Analytics, it’s possible to delve more into social media monitoring to learn what people think of a brand with top mentions. The data is unfiltered and contains current consumer insights that reflect both sentiment and trends.
Explore Mandala AI’s plans today to become a pioneer of social media content marketing.
