Let’s say you’re convinced of the power of content marketing.
You know it has the potential to pull in a giant number of inbound leads and sales.
When done right, it can take your business — or, your client’s, if you provide marketing as a service — to the next level.
But there’s a problem.
Your potential clients aren’t 100% convinced to ditch their paid ads and hire you as their content marketer.
They’re not sure they want to make the content marketing investment.
What do you say to them? How can you convince them it’s worthwhile?
Today’s powerful formulas, data, and info that I’ve gathered up just for you will shed light on this topic like never before. You’ll have everything you need to convince your clients. Let’s get into it!
How to Convince Clients on the Power of Content & Get Content Marketing Buy-In (Video)
How to Talk to a Client Who’s New to the Content Marketing Investment
77% of companies are doing content marketing, so your client already has a faint idea about it.
Still, he’s not sure how it works and if he should use it.
To convince him, tell him to imagine content marketing as a vehicle. Quality content, including the strategy behind it, is the ENGINE that keeps the vehicle moving towards its destination.
Now, let’s say the destination (goal) is an increase in organic traffic. Your content strategy of publishing one blog three times a week is the engine. Without this content, it’s impossible to keep the engine running and thus reach your destination.
How to Show a Client the ROI on a Content Marketing Investment
Here’s the thing.
Executives will ask for hard numbers when it comes to predicting ROI for their content marketing investment.
The good news is there’s a formula you can use to literally show them the money.
First, explain what content marketing aims to do.
- Build traffic to a site
- Convert traffic into leads
- Convert leads into sales
Remember, content marketing strategy success is measured in conversions. The higher the conversions, the higher the ROI for your client.
Here’s how to predict conversions and the ROI for a content marketing investment.
- Find the estimated amount of monthly traffic to a website. This figure is easy to get if you’re working with someone who already has a website. If you’re working with someone new, you’ll have to make a few assumptions.
- Multiply it by the average rate of organic traffic-to-lead conversions (16% according to MarketingSherpa). For example, if the site gets 15,470 visitors per month (a random website traffic figure), that’s 2,475 leads.
- Multiply the number of leads by the average SEO leads-to-sales conversion rate (14.6% based on a HubSpot study.) Using the 2,475 leads example, that’s 346 sales in one month.
How to Explain a Content Marketing Investment Is Better Than Paid Advertising
“Why should I make a content marketing investment instead of doing paid advertising?” your client might ask.
If hit with this question, follow this 3-step explanation.
1. Estimate Your Client’s Content Marketing Investment
Be up-front with your client and explain how much an investment for quality content marketing will cost.
The average price for a piece of authority content is $375. If your client wants one blog a week, that’s $1,625 a month and $19,500 a year.
2. Predict What Your Client Will Get Out of This Content Marketing Investment
Let’s go with the example above and say your client chooses to pay for one blog a week. That’s 52 blogs in a year, each optimized with high-performing keywords (low competition, high search volume).
Over the course of a year, two-thirds of these keywords manage to rank in the top three positions of Google’s SERPs. That’s a total of 34 highly indexed keywords.
According to Ignite Visibility, keywords in the top three positions of Google have an average search volume of 1,500 per month and a click through rate of 13.14%.
Take your 34 top indexed keywords and multiply that by 1,500. The total is 51,000. Multiply that number by 13.14% (click-through rate) and you get 6,701 visitors to your site per month.
3. Show How Your Client Will Get ROI Through the Content Marketing Investment
What this means is your client’s total investment will lead to a minimum of 6,701 visitors. If you apply the formula for converting visitors into leads and then sales, that’s 1,072 leads and 150 sales.
Compare that with paid search (which can cost up to $17,000 a month for that kind of traffic), and you’re saving up to 10x of your client’s investment.
Also, remember the results of content marketing build over time. Unlike paid ads, which turn on and off like a faucet depending on the money flowing in, content marketing requires one initial investment and gets better with age.
The older the content, the weightier your content and its value becomes.
You can go from zero prospects in month one, all the way to 4,800 prospects in month 12. According to HubSpot, the real magic begins to happen once you hit 400 blogs.
Convincing Clients of the Advantages of a Content Marketing Investment
A ton of marketers out there already have an idea of what content marketing is.
But without the real numbers to prove its worth, they’ll keep putting it aside for “later.”
To convince new clients that making a content marketing investment is worthwhile, pull today’s formula out of your toolbox and start working some magic.
If you’re looking to learn every step in building a practical, profitable content strategy, the technique of SEO writing, and the art of writing for an online audience, consider getting a lifetime seat to my Ultimate Content Hacker™ Training Course Bundle. Click here to learn out more.
