Content marketing is such a valuable tool to utilise as part of your wider marketing strategy; an integral component of the success of your business. The key is to measure your campaigns, maximising the results for your budget allowance and amplifying your success.
In this article, we will explore what the ROI of content marketing means for your brand, how to measure and amplify, and of course, how Contility is here to help.
What is the ROI of Content Marketing?
Content marketing ROI is simply the metric used to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. It helps to identify whether your content strategy is delivering profitable results, as well as areas for improvement, such as where your budget could be better spent.
Contility makes this all very simple. Our dashboard shows you the total reach of all your content, enabling you to understand the ROI of your content. Regardless of the stage in which your content lies, whether this be after it’s been pushed live or in the conception stage, Contility will convert each keyword reach into a target reach for all your content. Now all your content has to do is perform!

There are two lines mapping your content reach, one line representing how your content is performing after you’ve published it, the other for target reach. Consequently, you can analyse how your content is performing and change your strategy accordingly.

Your data for current reach and target reach should be rising in tandem to demonstrate a strong ROI. If they aren’t, this could be symptomatic of a few factors.
This data could suggest that you are simply not publishing enough content for it to achieve your target reach. Building a content calendar that establishes regular intervals for content publication will organise your content publication, ensuring that it creates a strong ROI.
You can also use this content calendar (which you can create with Contility) encourages the diversification of your content, enabling you to plan for a range of content types, including blogs, organic social, paid social and any other platforms you feel are appropriate for your business.

Alternatively, this could also mean that your content isn’t performing how it should, missing the reach benchmark and therefore not achieving the visibility your brand desires from your content strategy. As a result, it’s important to re-evaluate your content strategy and SEO practices to ensure your content lives up to its fullest potential.
The formula
The formula for working out the ROI of your content strategy can be adapted to the metrics of success you are measuring against.
However, there is a general formula that your business should be using. You should take the costs required for you to create the content, including freelancer wages, scheduling tools, etc., as well as any distribution costs, for example, promotion across social media, and minus this from the revenue generated from the content. Divide all of this by the revenue generated from the content and multiply by 100 to give you a percentage for ROI:

Lifetime value of content
It’s important to acknowledge that content has a lifetime value. As a result, content can improve its ROI over time. So don’t stress if it doesn’t immediately go viral or gain traction. Monitor the data and measure the results over time, enabling you to amplify your brand’s success.
Some content also naturally performs better than others, even if they are of equal importance to the brand and its identity. The eco-system of content will uplift one another, meaning if you have a poor month, traffic-wise, your content will still deliver ROI.
This is especially relevant for search engine content marketing specifically, predominantly in the form of blog posts, is that this content stays live and can continue to spike in traffic regardless of how long it has been live.
There are a few caveats. The content has to be relevant and up-to-date with modern knowledge, devoid of any false information or spammy content.
Throughout their lifetimes, blogs will continue to boost your revenue, in addition to solidifying unmeasurable elements that all contribute to the value of your brand, like further establishing your brand identity or increasing your sense of credibility.
Especially in relation to keywords, your reach can vary dramatically.
Contility gives you the tools to analyse your keyword reach which will update automatically month-by-month, providing you with specific reach for each of your content nodes, as well as a total for each of your content pillars. Not only does this allow you to compare each piece of content on an individual scale, but you can also contrast each pillar, evaluating which ones give you the best ROI and therefore where to focus your attention and budget, amplifying your success.
Value comes in many forms
Customers don’t convert based on one piece of content!
Although on the whole your content should be generating revenue and giving you a continually improving return on investment, content marketing isn’t all about generating sales. Especially, individual pieces of content. They all exist in your brand’s ecosystem, contributing value in more ways than one.
A study from Focus Vision found that, on average, customers will consume at least 13 pieces of content from a particular brand before deciding to purchase. This indicates the need for your content to provide as much value and education for the potential customer as possible, encouraging brand awareness, engagement and education first and foremost, with the leads and sales following.
Measuring is key
With that said, measuring is key to ensuring the optimisation of your campaigns, meaning your brand’s budget isn’t being spent unnecessarily on content that adds no value to your brand or your audience.
It’s also important to measure your campaigns to feedback to your marketing team, board of directors or clients, enabling you to continue with your efforts and prove that your strategy provides worth and becomes an asset to your business.
So, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to measure content marketing ROI:
1. Define your marketing goals
Considering the audience you are attempting to reach, define your marketing objectives for each element of content that you are planning to use.
For example, for blogs, your marketing goal will be to drive traffic to your website and elevate your brand’s position as a thought leader in your industry. Whereas for social media, a primary objective will be brand awareness and attracting leads.
2. SMART Objectives
Illustrating your SMART objectives is an invaluable method for refining your marketing goals, and transforming them into tangible and actionable plans to achieve your KPIs.
For example, for blogs, the key metric for success will be website traffic and the time spent on your website. Whereas for social media, your key areas for measuring will be followers, likes, comments and engagement with your content.
3. Information is king
It may sound obvious, but ensure you set up all of the appropriate tracking measures to ensure you gain as much information as possible from the content you publish and distribute. The more information you have, the easier it is to measure not only the success of your campaign but also the best ways to optimise your content. Make sure you’re tracking everything from form submissions to email sign-ups and conversions.
4. Analyse and evaluate
With all of the valuable data you have gathered, you can now analyse the different areas of your marketing strategy, seeing what content elements are thriving and others that might need improvement.
If the numbers look poor for your social media strategy, for example, don’t necessarily pull all your budget and efforts from this area. It could just require a more innovative approach.
You can analyse this traffic and reach with Contility. On our dashboard you can view a clear, visually engaging and interactive analysis of your content data, enabling you to adapt accordingly.

5. Optimise!
At this stage, your marketing team should optimise the campaign based on what’s performing well, moving the budget around to align with the results your brand is tracking. This will ensure that your campaign is the best value for money and give you the best return on investment possible.
Amplify your success with Contility
Contility is an excellent tool that can be utilised by your marketing teams to enable the tracking of valuable data, enabling you to optimise and drive results.
Get in touch with us to find out more about how we can guide you on your journey to success.