Tips to Choose Content Marketing Topics That Positively Impact ROI

Content has been, is, and always will be king. Why? Because it’s the stuff that turns a business into a sales producing, loyalty generating, social media sharing brand. Content is the way your business engages with your followers; it’s how you keep users updated with all the amazing things you’re doing; it’s how you show potential employees why they should work for your instead of your competitors. Content is the blog posts, pictures, videos, webinars, podcasts, newsletters, emails and everything else that tells the story of what your business is all about.

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72% of marketers agree that content increases engagement. If you post things on social or send out an email blast prompting for a response, of course you’re going to get engagement from your followers or from users on that mailing list! This isn’t rocket science. Content is about starting a conversation with your following, whether on social media or otherwise. Content ideas can be anything from a day in the life of one of your employees, to product tutorials. These content topics can vary greatly and in a lot of cases, always do. Different pieces of content can be posted for each day of the week, or you can even run free and choose a theme for an entire month. The best thing about content marketing in 2019 is that there is no one way to produce, create and publish content. Below, we’ll go over some stats that every marketer should keep in mind this year when producing digital content ideas.

Content Marketing Stats That Every Marketer Needs to Know in 2019

These content marketing ROI statistics will show you where marketers are placing their efforts in B2B and B2C businesses. They will also give you an idea of how and where you should divvy up your time, energy, and budget when it comes to your eCommerce content marketing strategy.

B2B Content Marketing Stats

• 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing
• 73% of B2B marketers either rated their content marketing efforts as moderately or very successful
• 78% of marketers attributed their success to higher quality and more efficient content creation for their brands
• 94% of B2B marketers revealed that their main form of content marketing is through social media posts
• 47% of respondents stated the top two reasons why they don’t measure the ROI on their content marketing strategy is because there was “no formal justification required” and because they needed “an easier way to do this.”

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B2C Content Marketing Stats

• On the other hand, 96% of B2C marketers revealed that their main form of content marketing is also through social media posts
• 86% of B2C marketers believe content marketing is a key strategy
• 97% of B2C marketers reported that Facebook is their social platform of choice when it comes to content marketing
• 60% of B2C marketers are committed to content marketing
• Although it’s obvious that content marketing plays a huge role in every B2C marketer’s digital strategy, 34% of respondents stated they do not measure the ROI on their content marketing tactics.

Content Marketing Tips from the Experts

From seasoned agency veterans, to entrepreneurs and freelance consultants, these content marketing professionals will have you thinking about how to generate content ideas for your business 24/7. They will have you thinking about your content from a completely new perspective. Here are some of their best tips for how to choose content marketing topics that will positively impact your ROI.

• “If repurposing your content isn’t part of your plans, it should be. Nearly every piece you create can and should be repurposed, and you can optimize a project from its start to ensure you can take it a few directions.” – Erika Heald, Chief Content Officer at Arment Dietrich

• “Great insights really can pop out of nowhere. But to have that happen, you have to first practice recognizing patterns and then making some sort of sense of them. If this feels like a stretch for you, start by some simple reading about trends that are happening in the world, and what leads people to believe they matter. You’ll be able to reverse engineer your way into what it was that people observe to get these insights. Then you can practice the journey on your own.” – Carla Johnson, Best-Selling Author & Keynote Speaker

• “Your Instagram shouldn’t just be a place to showcase product shots or employee selfies, but a platform for sharing your brand values, aesthetic and voice, she says. If those are clearly on display and in alignment with your customers’ values, your Instagram feed can be a valuable tools for creating a strong sense of community with customers and potential customers alike.” – Melanie Deziel, Award Winning Branded-Content Consultant and Speaker

• “Assessment is vital. There are ways to effectively track content for sales by using UTMs to ensure each piece of content is unique to each individual. Use content libraries and distribution platforms internally then measure the contribution the content is making to the sales pipeline by using marketing automation technology.” – Bernie Borges, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Vengreso

• “In marketing, we might not talk about important global issues, but we all have our own versions of important but ignored stories.Our products or services might solve very real problems, but still it’s hard to get anyone to listen to a story about, say, your B2B solution or your law firm or your pharmaceutical products. The key, then, is to make the story smaller.” – Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

Understanding KPIs to Measure Content Marketing ROI

Some of the biggest issues marketers have when it comes to measuring the success of their content marketing strategy is that they either don’t know how to do so, or they find measuring to be too difficult. In order for your content marketing topics to positively impact your ROI, you need to measure how published content impacts your audience and whether or not the content your producing is impacting sales. Here’s a list of top KPIs you should be tracking to measure your content marketing success:

1. Page Visits. You want to see where you users are coming from organically before you can begin measuring what other factors are driving traffic.
2. Time on Page. Page time is important because it’s a good indication that your content is either relevant or irrelevant to users. If they spend more time on your page, chances are what you published is what they’re looking for. If they exit from your website in three seconds, you can probably deduce there was either an issue with the content or maybe even just technical issues.
3. Cost per Click. When you’re running a paid social campaign your CPC is going to show your higher ups how much they paid per click.
4. Conversion Rates. In relation to the KPI above, your conversion rate is important because if any clicks turn into a conversion, you will know your efforts are positively impacting your ROI.
5. Followers and Subscribers. For social media specifically, one of the best ways to judge your ROI is through how many followers or subscribers you have because it shows your users are interested in your content.
6. Engagement Rates. This is also super important for social because you don’t want a bunch of ghost followers who don’t interact or engage with your content at all! Your engagement rate will show you whether or not what your posting is interesting and exciting to your target audience.

Key Takeaways

This blog post has hopefully shown you some of the content trends 2019 has to offer and some still yet to come! Content marketing plays a huge role in today’s digital world because it’s the stuff that people share, interact and engage with. For any business in today’s tech age, those things are priceless. Here are the key takeaways from the blog one more time:

• Content marketing is about starting a conversation with your followers
• Content tells your brand story
• Keep updated with recent stats in the industry to help inform your digital marketing strategy
• If you’re unsure of how to choose content marketing topics, research what the experts in the field are saying and what they’re doing to drive traffic and engagement to their brands (Each expert we sourced also has their own blog!)
• Tracking your KPIs will help you understand how your content marketing strategy is impacting your ROI

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out to us! Good luck!