Your content marketing budget depends on a few things such as goals, clients, your competitors …
Content marketing is an important part of your chiropractic practice, as through it you can introduce yourself to your community, build your brand, bring in new business, and expand your practice. In order to get the most from content marketing, your first task is to create a content marketing budget.
A budget not only helps you stay within your spending boundaries, but it also tells you where your money is going — and how well it is doing. Setting a marketing goal without funding is like mountaineering without a map — you may or may not accomplish the climb, but knowing the terrain in advance makes it more likely.
Content marketing budget factors
Your budget will change from year to year, or even from month to month. It is important to know how much you want to spend, and to be able to adjust your spending as you see returns on investments (ROI) change from one form of content to another.
Your content marketing budget depends on a few things:
- What are your content marketing goals? New clients? More exposure? More pageviews?
- What is working for your competitors?
- How much can you contribute to a content marketing budget?
Some of the costs of content marketing include:
Labor: There are many hats to wear in content marketing. You will need someone to ideate, write, edit, and post content on websites, blogs, social media, newsletters, and other forms of communication.
Some businesses contract with a content marketing agency that can do everything in-house or act as a general contractor that puts together a team of experts in every area. You can assign someone in-house to manage content marketing, but keep in mind this is a time-consuming position that could interfere with an employee’s already-scheduled duties. A content manager will oversee a marketing strategy, freelance writers and editors, link building, SEO, graphics, and more.
Promotion: Your content needs to be promoted through advertisements, sponsored content, posts, or through influencers (someone who uses social media and other platforms to advertise your product in a conversational way).
Equipment: Although your practice has technology set up for your business, you may need a few extras for your marketing goals:
- Content management system, or CMS. This is a “headquarters” where team members can create, manage, organize, and publish content. WordPress or Drupal are examples of content management systems.
- Social media management tool or scheduler. These tools allow your team to schedule posts or cross-post content in advance on social media. Buffer and Hootsuite are examples of social media management tools.
- A content calendar such as Monday.com or Trello helps you stay organized, plan future content, remind you to post consistently, and help your team collaborate.
- Email marketing tool. Email marketing tools included in your content marketing budget such as Sendinblue or ActiveCampaign automate emails to clients.
- Video cameras, software, lighting, podcast hosting, etc. If you are interested in videos or podcasts as part of your marketing budget, you may need additional equipment to create good content.
Calculating ROI
There are four basic steps to measure content return on investment, or ROI:
- Do the math. How much have you spent on labor, equipment, and promotion?
- Do the math again. If you are using equipment, software, or other costs for other purposes, calculate how much of the cost is actually directed to content marketing.
- Determine your accomplished goals — such as new clients, pageviews, or exposure — that resulted from specific content. This could be an article, a post, a tweet, or an email.
- Find out your exact return on investment. Your return minus your investment, divided by the number you get when you multiply the investment by 100, is your percentage of your return on investment. This is the equation: ROI = ( return – investment ) / investment x 100 (for percentage). If you invest $1,000 of your content marketing budget on a post that generates $20,000 worth of business, your ROI is 19%.
Remember, your content marketing budget will change annually, and it should. Invest in a good marketing team that can manage all aspects of content, and with the help of a content marketing map, soon your ROI will reach the summit you have in your sights.
Sources:
https://www.and-marketing.com/measure-content-marketing-roi/
https://prosandcontent.knotch.com/posts/content-marketing-budget
https://jtn.agency/2017/08/23/simple-4-step-process-calculate-return-investment-content-marketing/
https://wordable.io/content-marketing-budget-2/
https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/how-to-budget-for-content-marketing/
