That was a question posed to me over lunch last week by a friend in the industry. He went on to say that he couldn’t show any specific ROI for the social posts and blog posts he had been creating. [And I’m pretty sure he’s not the only one who feels that way.]
So, I’ll tell you what I told him…
First, ‘marketing attribution’ (that is, directly connecting revenue to a specific marketing activity) is a myth! Marketing to drive purchase decisions is more like a 3D matrix. There are multiple touch points (social posts, blog posts, emails, videos, event marketing & networking, direct sales outreach, etc.) across multiple people involved in the buying decision (the insights team, marketing, branding, procurement, etc.) and spread out over multiple months. There are simply too many variables to draw a direct line from a particular piece of business back to just one marketing activity.
But even with all of that complexity, there are still a number of benefits to investing time and effort into creating and sharing content…
1. Building awareness. Buyers can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist… and creating and sharing content (especially well-thought-out social posts and blog posts) is a helpful, non-salesy way to stay ‘top of mind.’ Posting a few times every week on LinkedIn gives your target audience continuous opportunities to see you in their feed and become familiar with who you are. Similarly, writing one or two blog posts every month – then promoting them on social media and with email – further add to your awareness.
Note: building awareness in the mind of your buyers is an ‘additive’ process… the more frequent and consistent you produce content, the further you move up toward that coveted ‘top of mind’ position. But you can’t stop! If you build a high level of awareness, then stop your efforts for a period of time, you’ll fall back down to the bottom and will have to start over.
2. Cement your reputation. You don’t just want to be known (awareness), but you want to be known for something (reputation)… and content can do this for you. Blogs, webinars, videos, LinkedIn posts – and, as importantly, your smart comments in response to others’ posts – all help you to share your expertise and thought leadership with the marketplace and become known for that.
3. Differentiation. The expertise and thought leadership you share also becomes a differentiator for you. Write and post frequently and consistently about data analytics, for example, and pretty soon, you’ll become known as the ‘go to expert’ for that. Potential buyers will seek you out because of it.
4. Lead generation. You’ll give away a lot of your content… but not all of it. The ‘higher value’ content – like webinars and e-books – require that the recipient register (their name, company and email address) to access it. And when they do, you’ve just generated a sales lead.
But it’s not just a name… you also know a little something about them. Let’s say, for example, that you create a webinar on segmentation. If someone is willing to sit in on a 30-minute webinar on segmentation, then they are genuinely interested in that topic. And so, if you decide to follow up with that person after they attend your presentation, you know where to start that conversation… around segmentation. That’s so much more effective than ‘cold’ outreach.
Wrapping Up
One final comment about content creation… especially long-form content like blog writing. My lunch guest this week told me it took him several days to write a blog post. When I asked if he was overly critical of his own writing, he nodded that he was. Please don’t let that I-don’t-know-if-it’s-good-enough feeling stop you from writing. You went to college… you’re smart… it’ll be fine. If the topic you’re writing about is of interest to even part of your target audience, then write it and get it out into the marketplace. Remember… better done than perfect.
Good luck and good selling.