What Results Can I Expect from Content Marketing?

If you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon of using content marketing in your overall marketing strategy, then think again. Content marketing is now used by the majority of online businesses (in fact 93% of B2B Marketers are using content marketing).

Of course, the end goal for all online businesses is to drive traffic and sales, and content marketing is your go-to source to ensure this happens. But you may ask yourself, what results can I expect from content marketing? The possibilities are endless, but let’s break it down into an action plan and goals.

Typical Results for Content Marketing

Content marketing is king, but what results can you expect? Whilst it varies for different businesses, the stats below are proof enough that content marketing is worth it.

61% of consumers say they feel better and trust a company that delivers custom content, so therefore they are more likely to buy from that company (Custom Content Council)
The average website conversion for companies with defined content processed is more than twice that of companies without (5.9% vs 3.8%) (business2community)
B2B companies that have blogs, generate 67% more leads per month on average than businesses without (Social Media B2B)

Convinced that content marketing is the real deal? We thought so! What should you do now? Get started of course.

Have Clear and Reasonable Expectations

The aim of content marketing is to drive leads to your website by providing valuable content to your community and eventually convert those leads into customers. But what results can you expect for your business?

Let’s look at the average results of content marketing first. Typically the first few months of your content marketing efforts will be focused on building your following – and your cost per lead will rise. However, after this initial stage, your following will grow and your cost per lead will reduce as leads start to come to you for your valuable content, more often.

So, what should your expectations be? Considering the above, it’s important to know your results will not happen overnight. However, with consistent action and a pool of relevant, valuable content there for the taking, your following will build, and valuable converting leads will start hitting your website.

A recent study by business2community showed that content driven tactics save an average of 13% in your overall cost per lead. They also showed that 82% of marketers who blog see a positive ROI for their content driven marketing.

Tracking Results

One of the great things about digital marketing is that everything you do is trackable and reportable. This makes it easier to really assess your content marketing efforts and pivot if a change in strategy is needed. So, first set realistic expectations to ensure you are tracking relevant data and working towards your ultimate goals.

Set clear expectations to begin with:

• Set reasonable expectations for your business, accounting for the slow on take in the first 3-5 months
• Set traffic goals for each month and create a strategy around those goals
• Set engagement goals for each month and create a strategy around those goals

Once you have set your expectations, you can start tracking and reporting on your content marketing efforts.

Track the following:

• Overall site traffic
• Where this traffic is coming from
• The value of each source
• Most popular content/posts
• Where your leads are coming from
• On site interaction time and site trawling
• Social media leads and which channels are most powerful
• Your overall ROI of each campaignROI for each specific campaign – track your time and costs involved

Conclusion

It’s easy to see that content marketing drives results, and with the advantage of digital marketing, you have the power in seeing the results straight up, for yourself. A whopping 82% of marketers who blog daily acquire a customer using their blog and that’s only the beginning. When it comes to content marketing your options are limitless, so why wait any longer to get started?