How content generates revenue

Nick Anscombe | 4 September 2020 | 04:00

We all know now that in order to reinforce a strong inbound marketing strategy, you need to be generating great content for your audiences. Whether you are making blogs, infographics, social media content, or videos, content educates your leads and prospects about products and services you offer, builds relationships, and creates a sense of community around your brand.

Despite doing all these great things, marketing is still often criticised. Yes it may be important in doing the above, but is it really affecting that bottom line? Read on for some tips on how you can make sure your content is generating revenue for your organisation.

Align with sales

Your marketing team doesn’t just exist to spread the word about your brand - the content they create is also your primary sales enablement tool. Come to an agreement around a mutual goal, with sales informing marketing about the content prospects actually need. This can include frequently asked questions, explaining your most important service processes or product features, or highlighting the results your customers should expect to see after working with or buying from you.

Picture this: a salesperson is right on the verge of closing a big deal, and the prospect suddenly asks a complicated, highly specific question. Instead of panicking and trying to formulate a response on the fly, they can simply send them some existing content like an infographic that provides them with the perfect answer.

When your sales team can tactfully navigate these types of situations, it demonstrates to prospects that you’re prepared and have plenty of experience with the product or service you’re selling, therefore giving them that extra power to close that all important sale.

Track your results

Contrary to what some agencies may tell you, there are actually a variety of ways to track the ROI of your content marketing efforts. It all starts with clearly documenting your content strategy and goals and knowing exactly what you’re trying to achieve with each individual asset. 

For example, if you’re using social media to generate leads, track how many became marketing-qualified leads, and then how many converted into sales. With this data, implement a lead-scoring methodology to both evaluate lead quality and keep track of where engagement is coming from. Ultimately, the metrics you choose to use are up to you, but they should always be tied back to specific business objectives.

Once you’ve found your desired metrics, bin off all the content that didn’t work and start creating content that actually affects that bottom line.

Great content at a price

If you’re a solutions provider, some content you create may be more valuable than you might think. If you think some content you are creating is highly sought after, why not charge for it via a content subscription? 

Develop a truly unique offering that sets you apart from your competitors. As long as the value is demonstrated before purchase, making them pay for content such as high quality, technical video training can be deemed as justifiable, especially if your competitors offer a similar service at a much higher price.

Content is an extremely important facet for your B2B business. Contrary to popular belief, it really does generate revenue when created effectively. With the marketing expertise here at BBD Boom, creating successful content strategies for B2B businesses is something we specialise in. Check out our recent webinar we did with Lumi Global’s CMO, Kerry Leighton-Bailey, where we discussed how our content strategy was key in helping her build a seven-figure revenue machine with HubSpot.

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