First things first, lets be clear on what we’re covering in this article. This is not a step-by-step guide or template for building your content strategy. There’s ample information out there that can help you construct this. I’ll link one in particular that I thought was good at the bottom.

Leading a critical revenue function, which Content undoubtedly is, requires more than effective allocation of resource. There will always be a political element. That doesn’t mean getting your elbows out or acting like, well, politicians do. It means championing your content strategy internally. It means building buy-in across other functions and with executives. It means showing other leaders how working with you will benefit them in their own goals.

I dug out a post by Jess Cook that I once saw that put this better than I could.

So, how do we build a culture of content and how do we get a seat at the tables that matter?

First, you need to be able to demonstrate the true ROI of content marketing at your organisation, and then structure that into a content marketing budget.

That budget can’t be written in plain English, it needs to be written in a language we’ll call “executive”. That is, it should use clear data to show why those resources are going to drive an outsized impact on the metrics they really care about. Remember, you’re competing (again, in a friendly way!) with other go-to-market functions when it comes to budget allocation.

Your Head of Sales can demonstrate the ROI on investment in Sales.

1 SDR = $5k / month;

= 250 touchpoints / month;

= 15 replies / conversations

= 3 demos

= 1 SQL.

In a tough economic climate in which efficient growth is the name of the game, that’s what you need to be able to show. Is $5k in your hands going to produce more than 3 demos? More than 1 SQL?

“Content is a long term activity, though. If we focus on producing really great content not optimizing KPIs, we’re going to do more good in the long run”.

To this fictitious critic, this figment of my own self-doubt, I say three things:

1. Just because content is a long term activity, doesn’t mean it isn’t also a short term revenue driver.
2. Understanding this detail doesn’t mean you must be a slave to it. You can simply divide your budget more strategically between your different goals.
3. Content is part art, part science. We shouldn’t remove the art, foster that in your team. Content leadership is more 80/20 towards science, though. You need to learn to speak executive, or you will continue to see budgets cut when times get tough, and work in sales-centric GTM cultures. Why are Sales reps the rainmakers? They can connect their work directly to revenue. You need to as well.

Proving Content Marketing ROI

Ok, so how do we go about understanding whether $5k is better in our hands than another function’s?

It starts by understanding exactly how content impacts each stage of the pipeline. I’ll use an example from Demand-genius here to illustrate.

Crucial to this is the ability to build first-party relationships with your audiences. This often involves some combination of incentives or CTAs (”the carrot”) or content gating (”the stick”). We believe there is a place for content gating if it is in service of a better buyer experience, and the decision to gate is “reader-led”, not “content-led”. That is, it’s about where they are in their journey, not the assumed value of the content they’re reading.

I won’t get too tactical here since we wrote a whole other blog on the benefits of known users and how you can build them. You can check it out here.

From your perspective as a content marketing leader, getting to this level of insight is a huge unlock. You can use that insight to:

1. Reposition Content internally, from a “nice-to-have” TOFU activity, to a critical GTM function with a directly attributable impact on top-line growth.
2. Identify Content Gaps. Go from a reactive to proactive function, strategically filling content gaps to help close more deals. Check out this post where I talk more about this, specifically the first point about taking a more structured approach to your roadmap.
3. Understand what content to use, when, to drive deals forward. Again, your job is to champion the content strategy. Remove the guesswork from this, and you can show Sales exactly what content and format works in each stage of the pipeline.

Remember, if you’re focused on driving revenue, both Sales and your Exec team are critical distribution channels. This repositioning of content and awareness of its impact is not self-promotion, it’s critical to your company’s revenue function.

‍Speaking Executive

Ok, we’ve got a handle on our Content ROI, now how can we actually use that information to work more effectively and start justifying a higher content marketing budget?

Lets split this into two different jobs-to-be-done. One is ongoing, and one takes place when it comes time to set your content marketing budget.

Regular Reporting

As you reposition Content internally as a critical revenue function, you’d better get ready to report in a more formal, consistent way and have it scrutinised more closely.

What you report on is going to vary depending on your KPIs. We believe content teams should be focused, at least in part, on revenue generation. We’re a super young company and therefore an immature content function ourselves, but internally our bi-weekly report includes:

• Traffic
• Pipeline Generated
• Revenue Impacted
• Revenue KPI Influence (How does content influence ACV, close rates and time-to-close. This is a great way of generating buy-in with both executives and sales reps).
• Best performing pieces, segmented by pipeline stage.
• Engagement trends that can help customer conversations (e.g. this topic is hot).

It’s super important to build this regular reporting muscle. As Jess succinctly put it, you’re building a culture of content, and cultures are not formed at budget season. They’re formed by consistent behaviours week in and week out.

Budget Justification

Cultures aren’t formed at budget season, but budgets are.

This is where it’s important to be able to to translate that understanding of past performance and that broader awareness of your impact into a clear strategy moving forward. A clear and succinct justification of why that extra budget, be it $5k or $50k, is going to be better off in your hands. This needs to centre not on eyeballs or leads. Both are “nice-to-have”. They are leading indicators far removed from enterprise value, which is what every executive is judged on.

Put simply, you need to show how you’ll help hit their goals, not yours.

Previously, I’d imagine your content marketing strategy was very well researched. It demonstrated a clear understanding of your ICP, buyer personas and the typical marketing funnel. It isolated stages of the funnel on which to focus, and leveraged sensible but unproven assumptions to map that to content. We’ll focus on TOFU or MOFU content and based on that, invest more in social or blog posts.

All makes sense, but a critical revenue function needs to be more scientific. The art is then how you blend it with an understanding of your market, ICP and personas to produce great content that delivers on the maths.

This is the level of detail the best marketers, with a true grasp on how they're driving pipeline progression, will get to.

‍

We’ve seen an opportunity to influence demo and proposal stages more with content.
‍
Currently conversion rates are only X% between demo and proposal, and data shows that they are also the least digitally engaged stages in our pipeline - Y% lower than in discovery phase. That’s a big drop off we’d like to fix.

We also know data research pieces perform 100% better in demo stage than anything else.

In fact, conversions from demo → proposal double in Q1, when everyone’s talking about our benchmark report.

Here’s what our KPIs look like this year if you extend that Q1 performance all year round:
‍
Last Year
‍100 demo
20 proposal
10 deals
$500k New ARR

This Year
‍100 demo
40 proposal
20 deals
$1m New ARR.
+$500k vs. last year.

So, we want to do a quarterly big data piece.

The problem is, that report is expensive and we can only publish one annually with the current team. We want to hire a Content Writer to handle our blog, so we can focus John (imaginary content marketer) on the benchmark report. The content writer will cost $50k, but if we can drive $500k that’s 10x ROI!!!

‍

Now you’re speaking executive.

Let’s also consider what they’ll be weighing your suggestion against.

Lets assume that $60k buys you an SDR instead. Historically, we know to expect 50 demos per year from a decent SDR.

• 150 demo
• 30 proposal
• 15 deals
• $750k New ARR
• +$250k vs last year.

Today, your execs are hiring an SDR every day of the week, twice on Sundays. Turning $60k into $250k is not bad at all.

That’s a mindset of the past though. Growth at all costs meant understanding what can work. “We have a lot of capital, what is a reliable way to deploy it to grow?”.

Efficient growth requires an understanding of all the potential options rather than the existence of a single viable one. That’s what will separate businesses in this cycle, in which capital is much harder to access. Those who can look beyond the viable option - hiring an SDR - and find the best option. That answer lives in data you don’t currently have.

Chicken and Egg Problem: Where do I start?

“Ok, this all sounds great if you have a 10 person marketing ops team backing you up”, I hear you (or my inner voice again) say.

Fair point. There’s a classic chicken and egg problem here. To develop this insight requires investment, which requires the insight. Tough spot.

Technology has moved on, though, you don’t need a huge team to get started on this journey. Depending on your level of investment, and the role content plays within your broader marketing strategy (ie. is it your primary channel or not), there’s a couple options.

Content is critical and/or we need to start small

Demand-Genius launches next month and will offer a free tier. We’ve done this purposefully, we want to help you solve the “chicken and egg problem”. If you’re right at the start of this journey - tight budgets, no first-party data, limited awareness of content’s revenue impact - our free tier gives you the tools to take the first steps.

Here’s what we’d suggest:

1. Implement reader-led gating on your highest converting content (you’re allowed up to 10). You’ll start building more known users, and providing a better buyer experience in the process.
2. Take advantage of our content analytics snapshots. We launch this module next month, but get started with Content Experience ASAP. We’ll be able to surface better data for you from the get-go when we launch.
3. Use this to demonstrate that there is a down-funnel impact that is being missed currently.
4. Convince your executives to make a small investment to allow you to explore this further and come back to them with exact data.

Talk to us, we’ll help you.

Content is secondary, and we have some budget

There are some great marketing attribution tools out there, like Hockey Stack or Dream Data. They’ll cost a bit, but if you can justify them they will allow your overall marketing function to operate in a more data driven way. You can then leverage Demand-Genius’ content insights as your content strategy matures.

Marketing is as much about what you stop doing as what you start doing.

At worst, this investigation will show Content to be what it is often mischaracterised as: a top-of-funnel luxury. That is a valuable insight that can focus your resources and let you invest confidently in alternatives. The objective isn’t to outcompete your Head of Sales and not hire the SDR. It's to truly understand if there’s a way to turn that $60k p/a into more enterprise value.