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How to Boost ROI With Strategic Content Marketing

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Alex Sanders
How to Boost ROI With Strategic Content Marketing

By now, most people realize that content marketing is one of the most effective and approachable marketing strategies available. Through the development, publication, and distribution of content, you can turn your brand into a thought leader, reach more people, and naturally attract traffic to your website.


But how can you increase your content marketing results?


ROI and Content Marketing


First, understand that there are many ways to measure the results of your content marketing strategy. You could measure your impact in terms of traffic, conversions, or even brand awareness. But no matter how you choose to measure your results, you'll need to think about your return on investment (ROI). In other words, how much value are you getting compared to how much you're spending on your content marketing strategy?


If you want to see better results overall, you need to be strategic. That means increasing your ROI intentionally; the two straightforward ways to do this are Increasing your KPIs and reducing your overall costs.


How to Boost Your ROI With Strategic Content Marketing


With the right strategic initiatives, you can boost the ROI of your content marketing strategy.


These are the best ways to get started:


  • Hire a strategic content marketing agency. A strategic content marketing agency is an institution filled with experienced professionals who can help you devise better strategies and produce the content you need to be successful. Early in your relationship, your strategic content marketing agency can help you review and analyze your past efforts. Later on, they can help you refine your tactics and execute your high-level objectives. They'll be with you at every step of the process, from initial planning to follow through an analysis – and they'll even help you measure your ROI, so you have a better understanding of the results you've seen.
  • Analyze your past efforts. It's important to spend time analyzing your past efforts. If you followed a content marketing strategy in the past, how did it go for you? Did you have any landmark successful pieces of content, and if so, what were the key qualities that made them successful? Did you have any pieces of content that completely fell flat, and if so, what were the qualities that held them back? Use these insights to begin brainstorming about possible new directions.
  • Choose a target demographic. You'll typically see better results in content marketing if you have a specific demographic to target. Choosing a specific niche means you'll be able to craft more relevant content, you'll be able to reach your audience more precisely, and you'll avoid competition at the same time. You can even create customer personas, so you have a better idea of who these people are. Everything starts with a few rounds of market research and refinement.
  • Invest in quality over quantity. One of the best ways to see better results in a content marketing strategy is to invest in quality over quantity. When people first learn about content marketing, they're usually incentivized to produce as many blog posts, social media posts, newsletters, white papers, and other forms of content as possible. However, this is somewhat self-defeating. It's much better to spend your efforts focused on producing one, extremely high-quality piece, rather than distributing your efforts across dozens of pieces that people will never read.
  • Consolidate or cut your underperformers. As you proceed with your new strategic initiatives, be on the lookout for underperformers – pieces of content that never make an impact and fail to see a positive return. Consider cutting or consolidating these underperformers so they no longer hold you back; sometimes, you can breathe new life into weak pieces by combining them into a bigger, more comprehensive piece.
  • Push your top performers. Conversely, keep watch for emergent top performers. Some of your content pieces are going to make a splash almost instantly, attracting shares, engagements, and traffic. When you find a truly disruptive piece in your portfolio, make an extra push for it. Distribute it further and across more channels and consider paying for advertising to give it even more exposure.
  • Incorporate search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy that has natural synergy with content marketing. In fact, it's almost impossible to practice SEO without content marketing, since quality written content is the best way to optimize your site for search engines. If you spend more time focusing on your search optimization strategy, you can get more power out of each of your content marketing pieces, ultimately multiplying your results.
  • Keep evolving. Finally, remember to keep evolving. Content marketing isn’t a strategy that can afford to remain stagnant; in this environment, your competitors, your readers, your publishers, and the world at large is constantly changing. The only way for you to increase your results and remain successful is to change in line with them. Pay attention to your analytics and keep optimizing.


You're not going to triple your content marketing ROI overnight. Content marketing itself is a long-term strategy, and one that you need to follow for months before you even start seeing results.


Still, if you put in the effort, and you have the help of a strategic content marketing agency at your side, you'll eventually optimize your results and reach peak content marketing value.

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Alex Sanders
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