Every business has a bottom line. 

As I’m sure you know, the bottom line refers to your net income, earnings or profit. Your bottom line is a culmination of all of the systems and processes in your business, including content marketing campaigns. Whether you take charge of lead generation efforts yourself or outsource it, you should have a clear picture of the value and traction you get in return.

Why is content marketing ROI important?

Returns on investment (ROI) are an indication of the value gained from your marketing efforts. They are important in ensuring that your business spending is below the level of revenue, and that your profit margins are high enough at the point of sale. Moreover, content marketing ROI indicates the overall health of your company digitally. It relates to web traffic, online visibility and social proof. 

But here’s the catch 22: the effects of content marketing are notoriously difficult to measure.

Fintech content marketing ROI formula

We’re going to start with the basic formula: 

(return -  investment costs) / investment costs

In this calculation, you can find the percentage returns on investment by multiplying the final result by 100.

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as it sounds (shock). 

Let’s get into what exactly your return is, and what constitutes towards the cost of your investment. 

Calculating Return

Return simply refers to the income gained from your efforts. In this case, we are taking a magnified picture of your returns, which means only considering returns generated from content marketing. 

Here’s the first hurdle: it’s hard to know which leads come from content marketing.

Sometimes, prospects will see our content six or seven times before they make a purchasing decision. Other times, they are primed to buy immediately and we happen to be within the top organic search results. Are both of these sales due to content marketing efforts? Yes. 

The confusion comes when you consider sales from paid advertising, returning customers and other customer acquisition methods. The easiest way to ‘zoom in’ to income generated from content marketing efforts is to set up tracking and conversion. You can use a Google Analytics account to set this up, for example. 

Calculating Investment Cost

Alternatively, the investment cost of your content marketing should be much easier to calculate. Here, we’re thinking about several categories of cost. 

Firstly, you’re paying for the talent. You may have an internal content marketing manager who forms the strategy and briefs. Then you might outsource the writing to a freelance content marketing writer (like me), who has their own separate costs. The work might also pass through an internal editor, the compliance department or go back to your content manager for upload. 

The costs of salaries and payments in each of these areas must be accurately calculated. But if you’ve got an internal marketing manager who works on campaigns that aren’t content-related, then the entirety of their salary can’t be included into the investment cost. It might be helpful to determine the percentage of time spent on content marketing efforts, and then convert this to an economic cost.

Secondly, utilities are investment costs that should be considered when determining content marketing costs. Are you working from an office where you pay for electricity, lighting, computer equipment and more? All these overheads contribute to the total investment costs of your content marketing efforts. 

Finally, content promotion costs must be considered. Will you distribute your content organically, or do you pay to release it to certain channels? Do you create landing pages, sponsored posts or ads? These charges are all associated with your total investment cost. 

Example Calculation

Now that we know what goes into both content marketing returns and investment costs, let’s work with some numbers. 

Imagine you’ve got an internal digital marketing manager with an average salary of £40,000. They spend 40% of their time on content marketing efforts, which leads to a monthly expenditure of £1,333. This, plus you work with a freelance writer who generates 4 pieces of content per month at £250 per blog. 

Luckily, your in-house employee works from home, so there are no office-based costs in this case. You decide to promote 2 of the monthly blogs in facebook ads, and create one landing page for a gated content report. This comes to a further £1,000. 

That brings your total investment cost to £3,333. 

Alternatively, you set up conversions on google analytics and find that four clients are generated through this content. You’ve made two sales relating to a 12-month subscription product, at a cost of £1,000 per month. The other two sales were for one-off products at a cost of £3,000 each. 

Total revenue is therefore £30,000. 

Using the calculation:

(30,000 - 3,333) / 3,333 = 8. To find the percentage, multiple by 100 = 800% returns on your content marketing efforts. 

Of course, these numbers are all fictional and just used as an example calculation. 

If your content marketing efforts aren’t currently up to scratch; get in touch with us here at The Search Cure. We can help you determine your bottom line, and move your content marketing efforts into the direction you need.