Creating a Model for Content Investment
The growing investments in content marketing should be carefully scrutinized within a framework that optimizes the ROI of the content spend.
The growing investments in content marketing should be carefully scrutinized within a framework that optimizes the ROI of the content spend.
It’s a given in today’s marketing environment that organizations will have ongoing digital content requirements – lots of them. The constant need for content can challenge your resources and stress your budget. As your content needs and budget continue to grow, you need to make sure that those investments are rational, prioritized, and aligned with your business goals in order to maintain a return on that time, talent, and dollar investment. But how do you determine whether a smaller or largish investment makes sense?
Below is a checklist of questions that may help to clarify and prioritize your content expenditures. Ask yourself these questions before you approve that project.
Consider:
If answering these questions still leaves you waffling on level of appropriate investment, try this simplified diagram to help you project an appropriate level of investment given your particular circumstance.
$ = any investment is a big investment. It requires thought and effort and because budgets are never unlimited, it takes the place of something else that could use your dollars.
$$ = bigger investment. These might be bigger dollar commitments or they might be investments across a significant period of time involving lots of resources.
$$$ = biggest investment. These could include an enterprise initiative or complex or costly content builds like video or interactive games.
Every organization will have their own unique measure of what each dollar sign translates to for them. It may be helpful to think of each category as a range. Larger marketing budgets reaching larger audiences will logically require more content fuel, but some brand relationships, industries, and verticals have evolved to be more high touch or have set the bar high for frequent, quality content contributions in specific channels. For these marketers, content may take a larger slice of their overall budget.
These and other factors should be considered in a regular review or as part of the annual planning process to make sure that the content approach is tied directly to strategic goals. The budget should be funded with some flex to respond to competitive, environmental, or industry changes that are sure to crop up. We may not know precisely what content we will be sharing but we do know for sure it will be a priority and that those growing investments in content should be carefully scrutinized within a framework that optimizes the return on investment (ROI) of the content spend.
Are your content expenditures thoughtful and rational spends?