The Important of Content Marketing for B2B Companies
Content marketing is important for B2B and B2C companies.
Content marketing is a valid marketing approach for both B2B and B2C companies. However, many are skeptical of adopting content marketing as part of their strategy because they’re unsure of itsf ROI. Here, we dispel the myth that content marketing does not produce significant ROI and examine its importance in the marketing mix.
Content Marketing for B2B Companies Is Similar to Marketing for B2C Companies
Here’s a typical definition of content marketing;
‘A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (blogs, white papers, case studies, videos, social media posts, etc.) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.’
This definition shows that content marketing is crucial for every business.
There’s a need for B2Bs to understand their prospects' pain points and adopt content marketing strategies to educate and inform the prospects about their products and services and how they solve those pain points.
There are many reasons why content marketing is essential for B2B companies, from helping them build trust and authority to showcasing their products and services and generating high-quality leads.
7 Top Reasons Why B2B Companies Need to Have a Strategic Content Marketing Plan
1. Builds Trust and Authority
B2B buyers constantly try to mitigate risks and optimize purchases. They scrutinize every piece of information they receive before making purchasing decisions. When a company consistently presents itself as the go-to resource for expert industry information and insights, they become a trusted authority.
Smart B2B companies can use content marketing to build trust and authority by consistently creating valuable and relevant content. Building a B2B content marketing strategy that includes case studies, blogs, customer testimonials, thought leadership whitepapers, etc., signals industry expertise and helps build buyers’ trust.
2. Helps B2B Buyers Make Purchasing Decisions
B2B buyers are conscious of making purchasing mistakes that could negatively impact their ROI and customer relationships. They extensively research products and services before making any purchase decision.
B2B companies can use content marketing to provide relevant educational content that helps these customers make informed purchasing decisions. They can provide this information using marketing materials that show detailed product information, use cases, demos, and how the products and services help problem-solving.
By using transactional content for B2B marketing, companies can get their customers, who are at the decision stage of their buyer journey, to make instant buying decisions.
3. Improves SEO and Website Traffic
Strategic content marketing helps B2B companies rank higher on SERPs for different money keywords, increasing website traffic and driving MQLs. During product research, most B2B buyers use keywords to query search engines for specific information regarding their needs. This is especially true when they don’t know about companies offering the required solutions.
Because search engines reward quality content with high-ranking and qualified leads, strategic companies can rank for those keywords, have more visibility, and deliver exceptional content detailed enough to answer all the prospects’ questions. Creating content relevant to your target audience and search engines can generate high-quality leads, leading to increased revenue.
4. Helps Companies Stay Competitive
Most B2B companies are already leveraging content marketing to drive leads. And since B2B buyers conduct online research before purchasing, companies not adopting content marketing lose out on many sales and market share.
It has become a critical differentiator among companies with similar target markets.
5. Bring Higher-Quality Leads
High-quality lead generation is one of the many benefits of content marketing to B2B companies. Content marketing generates more qualified leads because it drives leads actively seeking solutions. These prospects don’t waste time making purchasing decisions when they encounter content they resonate with.
Different approaches to content marketing help companies attract people at different stages of their buyer's journey. With informational and educational content, B2B companies can attract customers at the awareness stage of their buyer journey. Companies can also attract higher quality leads at the consideration stage of their journey, with a different approach to content – transactional.
Knowing how and when to use each approach to content marketing for B2B lead generation is vital to increasing sales and revenue. . It all lies in the company’s content marketing strategy.
6. Content Marketing is Cost-Effective
Content marketing is a cost-effective marketing approach for B2B companies for valid reasons. Consistently updated quality and valuable content can rank at the top of search engines for years and generate leads year-on-year. This is cost-effective in the long run and requires an insignificant investment compared to paid marketing.
Furthermore, valuable content can be repurposed into other forms, such as infographics, videos, podcasts, eBooks, whitepapers, etc., which can be used in other marketing channels like email, social media, etc. This reduces the cost of generating separate marketing materials for these other channels, reducing the overall marketing cost for a company.
With a solid content marketing strategy, companies can save the costs of running daily, monthly, or yearly paid ads and achieve similar or even better results.
Showcase Your Products and Services
Content marketing is an excellent way for B2B companies to showcase their products and services. Customer-centric companies create content that answers their audience’s questions while suggesting their products and services as the necessary solutions.
Even more, they provide detailed content highlighting their products' specific features and benefits.
Since B2B buyers at the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey use online information to compare products and make buying decisions, content marketing becomes strategic for companies that leverage it.
The fascinating thing about using content marketing to showcase products and services is that, when executed well, it can be so engaging and fun that the customer never loses focus or interest. For instance, a product review can be developed to deliver value and drive conversions without the readers feeling they’re being sold to.
Leverage Content Marketing, Adopt a Strategy, and 10X Your Results
Companies that adopt content marketing and create valuable content are sure to win in a competitive B2B market. It’s a non-negotiable for companies that want to be future-proof and increase market share and profit margin. Hopefully, you have the insights to adopt an effective content marketing strategy, execute it well, and generate 10x your results.
Content Clusters: What Are They and How Do They Work?
Content clusters, also called a B2B pillar content strategy, consist of related groups of content on a website. This content may be a group of articles and blog posts, or multiple types of content, such as blog posts, articles, presentations, videos, infographics and so on. No matter what type of content pieces are featured, however, they are all grouped under a main idea or topic – an umbrella, if you will, or a pillar, whichever visual works for you – and are related through a series of logical, connected keywords.
Why Develop Content Clusters?
I’m not exactly sure when the term content cluster came about, but over the past several years, it’s become apparent that using big, long form content pieces (pillar posts) with layers of related yet separate content pieces works wonders to boost a site’s organic search traffic.
How Search Engines Work – How Content Is Discovered
If you think about how search engines work, the answer to “why develop content clusters?” readily becomes apparent:
- Search engines send scouts, called spiders or bots, to scour the internet for new content.
- They follow links from page to page to find and review new materials published online.
- Materials are indexed according to keywords – what the bot considers the main topic of the content piece.
- Google and other search engines use an algorithm to rank the content according to usefulness, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (the infamous E-A-T formula).
When search engines encounter content, they look for links as they scan the web page, and then they follow those links, and so on…and that helps the content rank well. We know from experience and data tracked over many years that the more your website interlinks in a logical, helpful way to the visitor or reader, the better.
B2B Pillar Content Strategy
A B2B pillar content strategy starts with pillars, or big concepts related to the heart of your website. On my gardening website, Home Garden Joy, pillar topics include vegetable gardening, composting, and seed starting, all basic concepts for new gardeners to master. On a fashion website, pillar topics might include capsule wardrobes, choosing flattering colors, or classic pieces to add to your wardrobe.
Each website’s pillar content varies according to the theme, unique spin, or ‘tilt’ as Joe Pulizzi calls it, of your site. A B2B pillar content strategy focuses on key concepts a business might be marketing to other businesses. Each topic, or pillar, in a B2B pillar content strategy should be broad enough to cover the idea thoroughly. Keyword-rich articles, linked from the pillar topic, create an ecosystem of content pieces related to a single concept or thought.
How to Begin a Content Cluster or B2B Pillar Content Strategy
Newcomers to content clusters or B2B pillar content strategies often wonder where they should begin. Ask yourself these questions:
- What questions does my audience ask that my business is unique positioned to answer?
- What key search terms do these questions relate to?
- What is the search volume for this term?
- Are there synonyms or related topics? If so, what is the search volume for those topics?
- What has my competition published on this topic?
- Have I published anything on this topic? If so, how many visits does it get?
- Could my previously published pieces on this idea benefit from a rewrite?
The Seven Oaks Consulting Technique of Building Pillar Clusters
At Seven Oaks Consulting, our team of professional B2B content marketers uses a technique we call spider mapping to develop content clusters.
- We put the main idea or big concept for the pillar content strategy in the middle along with its search volume, competition, and links to the top 3 content pieces into the big center circle.
- Then, we brainstorm ideas around the big idea. These ideas go into the little surrounding circles.
- We then conduct additional keyword research to develop out the shorter articles in the circles that looks like planets orbiting the sun.
Here’s an example from my own gardening website, Home Garden Joy. The primary idea is how to grow beets. We then spun off “beets” into multiple interlinked concepts, including recipes, to build a content cluster around growing beets.
And then – voila. We have a content cluster. Writers receive their assignments, with the pillar content piece (the big idea in the middle) a long form topic and each orbiting topic developed into a supporting yet unique article.
We make sure that the pillar links out to the shorter pieces, and the shorter pieces link to the pillar. Then, we make sure that there are other links from our website into each piece.
Tools to Help Develop Content Clusters
There are a ton of SEO tools available to help you develop content clusters. I’ll share some of our favorites here.
- SEM Rush – the big daddy of SEO tools. On the expensive side but you get a ton of great tools in one monthly package. It will help you assess keywords, compare competitive sites, and develop ideas.
- Moz – another great SEO tool to help you find keywords and develop your strategy.
- Keysearch – a low- priced yet feature-rich keyword search tool that also helps you pinpoint the top sites currently ranking for keywords you’re hoping to use and rank for.
- Yoast – I absolutely love the paid Yoast plugin and it is worth every penny. We use it on all of our sites. It finds orphan content, or content that is not linked to anything else on the site and thus harder to find for search engines. It also helps us see if our content is readable and hits the right SEO buttons to rank well. Lastly, a paid Yoast subscription provides access to their library of educational materials, which is also great if you are new to SEO!
- AnswerthePublic – this tool used to be free but is now a reasonably priced paid tool. It lets you assess keywords and develop conceptual lists around keywords.
Again, there are dozens more platforms and tools just like these out there, and every content marketer will have her favorite. I recommend starting with free or low priced tools (Google search analytics tools, Keysearch, AnswerthePublic) if you’re just starting out.
2B2 Pillar Content Strategy Part of Our Services
We provide B2B pillar content strategy creation as part of all of our content marketing packages, so if you’re reading this and feeling overwhelmed, give us a call. We worked with technology and manufacturing companies to develop robust content marketing strategies to boost website traffic, brand awareness, leads, and sales.
Our content clusters include keyword research, content topics development, writing and editing for proper organic SEO, and our unique subject matter expert review (which no other content marketing agency provides!). Please contact us for a free consultation and discussion of your content marketing goals.
Video: Content Clusters, Creating B2B Content Pillars
The Power of Customer Success Stories: How to Leverage Content Marketing for Maximum Impact
The Power of Customer Success Stories: How to Leverage Content Marketing for Maximum Impact
Customer success stories offer B2B companies a powerful way to share their work with customers.
Over the years, from the days of marketing gurus like Gary Halbert, David Ogilvy, etc., stories have been a powerful marketing tool. Now, companies leverage customers’ success stories as a content marketing tool. Stories build trust and credibility. They improve lead generation, nurturing, and conversion.
There are many ways to leverage customer stories for content marketing. Case studies and testimonials are the most common. We’ll go beyond case studies and testimonials to evaluate and discuss other creative ways B2B companies can leverage their customer success stories to boost their content marketing returns.
What Is a Customer Success Story?
A customer success story, or client story relates the tale of customer’s encounter with a company’s product or service. It includes detailed information, from the point of contact to the challenges, positive experiences, and how the products or services addressed their needs. Smart B2B companies understand that prospects trust what a customer says about a company and its products and services more than what the company says about itself. Therefore, they leverage customer stories to boost their content marketing effectiveness.
Customer success stories work best with prospects in the consideration stage of their customer journey. Early in the customer journey, customers may be eager to hear from others who have used a particular product or service they want to purchase. Customer-centric companies use customer success stories to dispel these fears and show how they’ve helped customers with similar challenges. They highlight challenges and pain points, and how the company solved these challenges.
Here are some ways B2B companies can leverage customer success stories to enhance their content marketing efforts:
Case studies are the most common ways companies show prospects how their business operates. Beyond sharing customer success stories, companies use case studies to narrate the customer journey and how they address every customer’s needs.
Sharing customer success stories with case studies requires B2B companies to highlight how their customers used their products or services to overcome challenges and achieve their business goals. They include key metrics, testimonials, and use cases and add compelling narratives to show their offerings’ value and effectiveness.
Companies can use blog posts to share their customers’ success stories. This is useful, especially to B2B companies that wish to show detailed use cases of their products or services to enable their prospects to see how they are the best fit for their business.
To successfully share customer stories with this method, B2B companies must make blog posts about their customers, detailing their pain points and how their products or services provide the solution. These blog posts can be presented as interviews or guest posts from customers.
Videos are powerful content marketing tools with multipurpose use in content marketing. B2B companies that want to leverage their customers’ success stories to drive visibility and conversion must use video testimonials.
Video testimonials don’t just capture your customers’ stories more engagingly and compellingly; they also build trust and credibility faster, as the prospects hear directly from the customers. Video testimonials can be incorporated into other content marketing formats like published blog posts, shared on video-sharing networks like YouTube, posted on social media, or attached to emails.
With over 4.2 billion social media users worldwide, companies understand the impact building trust and credibility on social media platforms using their customers’ success stories would have on their business.
To effectively leverage social media for sharing customer stories, companies develop social media campaigns that focus on sharing their customer stories. Share them as quotes, short video clips, infographics, and other repurposed content.
Encourage customers to share their stories using specific hashtags; when they do, they respond and engage with them by quoting their stories and pushing the success stories to their followers. This increases engagement on the company’s social media accounts, thus, increasing visibility and leading to more lead generation and sales.
Webinars are fast becoming a vital content marketing channel companies can leverage to share exciting news and information with their prospects and customers.
B2B companies can use webinars to share customer success stories by inviting customers for interviews. In these interviews, their customers will share their stories, beginning with their challenges, how they sought solutions, and how the company’s products or services addressed their needs.
Given the nature of webinars, companies can have more in-depth conversations with their customers, highlighting the key benefits they derive from their products or services. This gives prospects a detailed insight into the customer experience success stories and helps them envision telling their stories someday.
Email marketing has remained a powerful content marketing channel companies adopt to nurture leads into buying and repeat customers.
Leveraging email campaigns to share customer success stories helps companies handle customer objections and convince them to try their products and services. This strategy will work best in multichannel marketing where other strategies, like video testimonials, podcast episodes, webinars, blog links, etc., are incorporated to give the prospects more reasons to trust the company.
Customer stories and testimonials are powerful content marketing tools that future-centric B2B companies adopt to build trust and credibility. They make it easy for companies to showcase their values and benefits.
Success stories also make products and services relatable. When prospects see other customers who have been in their shoes and had a successful experience, they imagine themselves achieving the same feat. This influences them to purchase the products without further objections.
Furthermore, customer stories enhance content marketing efforts as they can be repurposed into valuable content that supports lead generation and conversion.
Learn more about the power of stories: How Brand Storytelling Increased ROI 2,700%!
Like a typical story, customer success stories and testimonials follow a structure. They move from problem to solution.
That means companies should first narrate their customers’ challenges. Then, talk about how they sought solutions. End with how their products and services provided the customers with the needed solution.
This approach enables the prospects to envision the customer’s journey. It also provides insights into how their problems can be addressed with the company’s products and services.
Customer success stories can help a company generate massive leads and help it nurture prospects into buying customers. However, handling B2B customer success stories is delicate, as companies must seek their customers’ consent and tell the story strategically. Always ask permission before sharing success stories.
Leveraging customer stories for content marketing is a powerful marketing approach for fB2B companies. When executed properly, it can greatly improve ROI.
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The Cost of Poor Business Writing
Poor business writing is an often overlooked problem. Most business leaders will agree that effective communication is a key driver of success. But budget constraints can be a stumbling block in improving communications within the organization.
A study by Grammarly revealed that poor communication costs U.S. companies an estimated $1.2 trillion in annual losses, or about $12,506 per employee each year. Workers spend more than 20 hours a week on business writing, so the ability to get their point across clearly and succinctly has become an essential skill.
What Is Effective Business Writing?
Good business writing follows correct sentence structure, grammar rules, and punctuation. A haphazardly written piece riddled with errors lacks professionalism and risks sending the wrong message.
Isn’t it infuriating to wade through rambling business emails? How about long winding reports that don’t connect the dots? Meandering sentences are a surefire way to lose your audience. Keep your messaging focused on one main idea instead of several competing ones.
A good rule of thumb is to write the way you speak. Use active voice to make your written communication more precise and direct. The passive voice sounds stiff and makes sentences wordier. Make you written materials easy to read. Aim for a readability score that meets the average reader's needs.
Do away with filler words. For example, instead of ‘due to the fact that,’ say ‘because.’ Make every word count. Ditch unnecessary jargon unless you are writing a technical document. Big fancy words impress no one. Consider the purpose of your content and what you want your audience to gain from it. It will determine the appropriate style and tone.
Poor Business Writing Hurts Your Business
Here are a few examples of how substandard writing can impact your organization:
- Low productivity and disengaged teams
- Poor customer retention and tarnished reputation
- Marketing campaigns that don’t convert to sales
Low Productivity and Disengaged Teams
As more companies shift to remote and hybrid work environments, teams rely more on collaborative software tools. Writing with clarity and brevity is more important than ever. The Holmes Report shows that companies with effective communication enjoy as much as 47% higher returns, more engaged employees, and lower attrition rates.
Workers are overwhelmed by the volume of information they digest daily. Leaders who can’t express themselves effectively won’t get desired outcomes. It results in confusion, wasted resources, and productivity loss.
Writing is a core skill not just for higher-ups but is essential for most white-collar employees. If business writing skills are lacking, team members will struggle to decode information. It can cause delays, increased costs, and lost opportunities.
Take the case of FedEx. The company wanted to assess how well employees understood their ground operations manuals. After hiring a consultant, they discovered that readability was low. On average, it took five minutes to find the correct information, and errors were spotted 50% of the time. Revamping their collaterals increased productivity and resulted in a savings of $400,000 in the first year.
Poor Customer Retention and Tarnished Reputation
High customer retention rates are a boon for businesses and are crucial for sustained revenue. Acquiring a new client costs more than keeping an existing one. According to Forbes, the probability of selling to new clients is only between 5% to 20% compared to 60% to 70% for current customers.
Loyalty rides on excellent after-sales support. Customer service agents who lack business writing training will negatively affect your brand. Problems arise when technical personnel hired for their knowledge take on customer-facing roles. They might have the expertise, but without business writing skills, they will struggle to communicate effectively, leading to a poor customer experience.
Marketing Campaigns that Don’t Convert to Sales
It only takes a few seconds for visitors to scan your website or collaterals and immediately form an impression about your brand. A typo or grammatical error can instantly kill your credibility.
Place your audience front and center, and the rest will follow. Aim for clarity and truth when building a company website, creating blogs, or sending out newsletters. False claims and misinformation can erode trust and even lead to lawsuits.
It’s tempting to hire content farms or depend on article spinners as part of your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. The new Google updates can quickly recognize auto-generated or unhelpful content. Your website will be penalized, and your page ranking will suffer.
Develop a Culture of Clarity in Writing Communication
It is not always easy to measure the negative impact of poor business writing. But imagine the time saved from wading through fuzzy and confusing text or spending fewer marketing dollars on campaigns that deliver better ROI.
It’s time to cut through the noise and champion a culture of clarity. Invest in training and tools that can improve business writing. The productivity gains will be well worth it. Vague, incomplete, and stuffy communication is frustrating and will cost your business big time.
Seven Oaks Consulting is a unique content marketing agency that can help. We have a team of talented writers that produce quality SEO articles. The more content you have, the more internal links you can build! Visit our website to discover how our services can bring your business to the next level.
How to Build a Robust Internal Linking Strategy
A well-defined internal linking strategy is critical for SEO. It helps search engines understand your website's structure, improves your ranking, and makes it easier for users to navigate between relevant pages on your site. Learn the fundamentals of building a solid internal linking strategy for search engines and your visitors.
What Are Internal Links?
Internal links point from one page to another on the same domain. When you link from one page to another within your site, you are creating internal links.
Internal linking is a powerful SEO strategy. It helps search engines understand the structure of your website and pass authority between pages. The more internal links there are pointing to a page, the more likely it will rank well in search results.
Benefits of Having an Internal Linking Strategy
An internal linking strategy is crucial for:
- Helping search engines understand your site's structure
- Improving organic search traffic
- Increasing user engagement
Help Search Engines Understand Your Site's Structure
Linking pages together is one of the best ways to help search engines understand your site's structure. It establishes the relationships between your pages:
- What they are about
- Who they are targeting
- How they fit into your website
To rank well, you want search engines to comprehend the topic of your pages. Let's say you have a blog article about the best burgers in San Francisco. If you link to a page that discusses burgers in general, Google knows that the two relate. In turn, it provides visitors with better search results.
Boost Your Website's SEO & Ranking
An internal linking strategy is vital for search engine optimization. Strong internal links tell search engines which pages are most relevant to people's queries. In turn, Google ranks those pages higher in their search engine results pages (SERPs).
Furthermore, an internal linking strategy is beneficial for anyone aiming to be a well-known authority in their niche. It is a great way to bring exposure to other pages and informative articles on your website. Internal linking passes authority, which in turn boosts your rankings. Since internal links help search engines understand your site's structure, it improves their ability to crawl and index it.
Make It Easy for Visitors to Navigate Your Site
A strong internal linking strategy helps users navigate between relevant content on your site without leaving the current page. It also removes the need to click through many pages to get where they need to be. This makes it easier for them to find what they are looking for without getting distracted.
Let's say you have an article about how to use Adobe Photoshop. There are several sections within that article including an intro, a lengthy step-by-step guide, and a conclusion. It can be helpful to have a link at the bottom of each section directing viewers back to the beginning of that section. This helps users navigate your article without having to scroll around.
If you have other blog posts related to Adobe Photoshop, find an opportunity to link to them. Think about what kind of information people may be looking for. For example, photographers use Photoshop to edit photos. So, an existing article about photography tips may be a seamless tie-in to the current piece.
Best Practices for Internal Linking
Internal links, the 'bread and butter' of SEO, are a powerful way to guide users through your website. But you want to make sure to use them correctly. When building an internal linking strategy, consider these three things:
- The number and placement of your internal links (where will they point?)
- The relevance of your internal links (do they fit well within the context around them?)
- The number of keywords in the anchor text
Create Ample Content
Before you start building your internal linking strategy, you need enough content. Make sure that there are several valuable pages on your website for people to find.
Many businesses use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to find out the number of pages they have on their website. Use their "Pages" report to see all the pages within any given URL. It displays how many indexed URLs there are within that domain and subdomain level.
Not familiar with these tools yet? Don't worry. Both offer free trials! The best way to become familiar with them is to explore their features. There are also plenty of YouTube videos showing handy tips and tricks to help you learn the ropes.
Types of Links to Use
There are two types of internal links you can use to support your strategy: navigational and contextual internal links.
Navigational Internal Links
Navigational internal links are the most common. They live in the header and footer of your website and make it easy for users to navigate through the pages. Navigational internal links help people quickly find the information they are looking for.
Contextual Internal Links
Contextual internal links are popular in blog articles on a website. When you write new blog posts and link to older relevant ones, you are incorporating contextual internal
links. These links encourage users to explore related reading material without leaving their place.
A Proper Internal Linking Strategy Boosts Organic Rankings and Traffic
Internal links are the foundation of your site's architecture. They help search engines understand your site's structure, pass authority and improve rankings, and make site navigation a breeze for users. But creating a robust internal linking strategy can be overwhelming and time-consuming. In fact, according to a benchmark study, 41% of SEO experts say that link building is the hardest part of search optimization.
Seven Oaks Consulting is a unique content marketing agency that can help. We have a team of talented writers that produce quality SEO articles. The more content you have, the more internal links you can build! Visit our website to discover how our services can bring your business to the next level.
13 Social Media KPIs to Measure For Business Growth In 2022
If you use social media for business, you need a plan in place to assess and evaluate your social media KPIs. Having a digital content strategy is great, but tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) allows your social media team to understand if the content connects with the audience and helps achieve business goals.
What Are Social Media KPIs?
KPI means key performance indicators.
Businesses use KPIs to assess and evaluate a company's performance over time. This assessment helps marketers understand which goals are met and the strategies that need to be tweaked to improve business performance.
In a similar vein, social media KPIs measure the effectiveness of a social strategy or campaign on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram, where you share the brand's content.
There are several key performance indicators when it comes to social media marketing. The goal is to choose the metrics that align with your marketing campaigns and outcomes.
In this post, we list down crucial social media metrics that you can track and measure to improve engagement:
Important Social Media Metrics To Track For Your Business In 2022
Reach
Reach is the number of unique visitors who saw your post when it went live. When trying to increase the reach of your posts, it’s crucial to target the right audience
interested in your products and services. Once you have determined your target audience and the posts they like, you can create content that is engaging and meaningful to them.
What To Measure
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your post appeared on someone’s timeline or newsfeed. This doesn’t mean the person has engaged with the post. It’s possible they scrolled past it, but it counts as an impression.
Follower Count
This KPI measures the number of followers on your social media channel at a specific point in time. When tracking the follower count, looking at the engagement rate is crucial.
Suppose you have 1000 followers on Instagram, but only one or two people engage with the post through likes, comments, or shares. This can either mean the account has bots/fake followers or the content doesn’t connect with the intended audience. Either way, you need to take a hard look at your content strategy and understand what needs to be fixed.
Website Traffic
This is one of the most important KPIs that tell you how much website traffic your social media posts generate. It’s how you move the users down the funnel and convert them into paying customers.
Engagement
Social media engagement is the quality of interactions with your followers. This measures how the target audience responds and reacts to your content and how effective your brand campaigns are.
What To Measure
Likes
This KPI measures the number of times your social followers interacted with the brand by liking a post on social media. Though many see this as a vanity metric, it can boost engagement as more people are likely to interact with a post when they see others like it.
Shares
Social shares tell you how popular your content is with the target audience and help drive visibility to your brand. This is a great metric to understand the content formats that work for your brand and how you can double down on those to improve engagement.
Mentions
This social media metric keeps you up-to-date with what people say about the brand on different social media channels. It’s a great way to tap into users' thoughts about the brand, content, and products/services. You can use this data to know more about their preferences and create content best suited to their interests.
Comments
Comments are not only a great engagement metric but also tell you how a user perceives your product or post. All comments may not always be positive, but even the negative ones can help improve your product or marketing strategy. A high number of comments indicate users like your content and are willing to engage with the brand.
Clicks
This is the most effective metric to measure the success of your social media strategy. Most businesses use social media to divert traffic to an external website to facilitate the sale of a product or service. If a user clicks on the website link, they are interested in the product/service and want to know more about it. This means your content marketing strategy is effective in bringing qualified leads, which is ultimately the goal of social media marketing.
Conversions
This KPI measures how many social interactions with the followers or visitors convert into product/service sales, newsletter sign-ups, product demo sign-ups, etc. The conversion could be monetary or non-monetary, depending on the brand’s goals, but it can establish the effectiveness of a social media strategy in leading users to take the final step.
What To Measure
Leads Generated
Generating leads is crucial for business. Not every lead will convert, but it’s worth considering how many people are visiting the website through social media channels, downloading e-books, and signing up for newsletters and product demos to refine the social media strategy that suits the interests of the target audience.
Social Media Conversion Rates
You are posting on social media, and people are liking or commenting on the post, but how many users convert into customers? A straightforward way to determine this is by dividing the total social traffic from the number of social media conversions. You can also track these numbers using Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Salesforce.
Sales Revenue
This refers to the revenue generated from social media conversions. Once you know the number of people who visit your site through social media and the total revenue generated, you can assign a number or value to a prospect. This allows you to set a budget for social media campaigns and anticipate ROI from the efforts.
Measure Social Media KPIs To Drive Business Performance
Tracking social media metrics isn’t easy, but it’s worth the time and money. It helps to improve marketing strategy, calculate ROI from social media efforts, and improve long-term customer standing. Not all businesses need to track all KPIs. Depending on the campaign goals, social media managers can choose to follow some metrics and ignore others. Measuring the correct KPIs can help you understand the best way to communicate with your target audience and the strategies to help you achieve business growth in 2022.
Average Social Media Marketing Costs in 2022
Social media marketing costs depend on several factors across platforms and industries.
According to the Search Engine Journal, 84% of the US population use at least one social media channel. The active number of users worldwide stands at 57.6%, which means at least half of the population uses one social media channel a month.
Brands are monetizing social media more than ever, making it an essential part of their content marketing strategy. As a result, companies are spending more on social media ads, with a projected ad spending of US $0.23 M in 2022.
This leads to the question: How much should you expect to spend on social media marketing?
This guide will help you uncover the typical social media marketing costs, the amount organizations spend on it, and the factors that can affect the spending.
What are the Average Social Media Marketing Costs?
Social media marketing costs vary based on what services you need and how frequently you need them. Here's what you can expect to pay local US professionals:
- Average cost (per month): $400 - $650
- Minimum cost (per month): $295
- Maximum cost (per month): $1000+
- How Much Do Organizations Spend On Social Media Marketing?
The marketing spend is influenced by several factors such as the company size, the industry, the services offered, and the total revenue.
On average, businesses invest $4000 to $7000 per month on social media marketing, which includes advertising on one or more channels. If outsourcing, the social media cost ranges from $900 to $20,000 per month and $75 to $500 per hour for a consultant or freelancer's services.
What Changes The Cost Of Social Media Marketing?
The amount you'll pay for social media marketing depends on the following factors:
1: Taking It In-House
Average cost: $30 - $100 per month
If you're planning to create and manage everything yourself, set aside a minimum amount to get started. You can use this to build knowledge or purchase tools to help you get started.
As a one-person team, you must create content, keep up with posting on social media, respond to mentions and comments, and track the critical KPIs.
There are affordable subscription-based services that can help to automate social media marketing. Tools such as Buffer have a scheduler to create and schedule posts in advance. Hootsuite tracks all the social feeds together, so you don't have to open activities in different tabs.
If you're looking to take your social media in-house, consider investing in free or paid tools to help you ideate, plan, and manage content marketing, so you have time to look into other business areas.
2: Outsourcing on a Smaller Budget
Average cost: $500 - $1000 per month
Small businesses have tight budgets, but it's possible to outsource social media marketing to an agency on a limited budget.
Agencies have different packages and pricing models that you can choose from depending on your budget. In addition, each agency charges differently depending on expertise since there is no standard industry pricing for social media marketing.
Seven Oaks Consulting offers outsourced social media post creation and adding posts to scheduling tools at prices within this monthly range.
3: Outsourcing on a Larger Budget
Average cost: $1500 to $5000 per month
If you have a larger budget, the world is your oyster. You can opt for a superior, more expensive agency with a faster turnaround and more resources dedicated to your account.
But hiring an expensive agency might not always translate into results. You want to hire an agency that is credible and has significant achievements to show. A good marketing agency will ask you about your niche, industry, current marketing strategy, and previous marketing failures. Make sure the agency you choose can deliver consistent results while staying true to the brand vision.
Hiring a Social Media Expert — Is It Worth The Investment?
If you lack the resources and expertise to manage social media channels, getting an expert on board is worth the investment. They can plan the content for social media channels, schedule them, and monitor the performance.
Maintaining an edge via social media can be tricky, but experts can help to streamline content based on the target audience to get the most from your buck. A dedicated social media expert can help you determine what works for your brand on different platforms and how you can maximize the revenue with current strategies.
If you need help with social media marketing, Seven Oaks Consulting can help. We are a full-service marketing agency specializing in social media marketing and content creation. Contact Jeanne at (434) 574-6253 or email jeanne@sevenoaksconsulting.com for more information on our social media post creation and scheduling services.
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Where Should You Focus Your Social Media Campaign - and Why?
Running a social media campaign is one of the best ways to reach new customers and grow your brand. But it is easy to waste time and energy if you do not know where to focus. In addition, you are likely spreading yourself too thin by establishing a presence everywhere you can think of. As a result, you have less time to engage with followers or post consistent updates. Instead, by identifying exactly which platform is best for your audience, offerings, and budget, you can use social media to skyrocket your business.
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Don't Blindly Choose a Social Media Platform
Social media is a crowded space. Avoid getting lost in the noise by learning where your audience hangs out. Focus your efforts there.
Do not choose a social media platform simply because it is popular. Instead, consider which platforms would be best for reaching your audience and growing your business. Having a plan in place will make you successful with social media marketing.
Do Determine Which Platform Is Best for Your Business
The power of social media is impressive, especially given that it is free to use! You can reach a large audience of potential customers with the right strategy.
Common social media platforms that businesses use for content marketing include:
- YouTube
- TikTok
While each platform has something unique to offer, not all businesses benefit from each one. For example, if you are a fashion brand trying to sell trendy clothes and accessories, you may have better luck on Instagram than on LinkedIn. This is because Instagram has built-in shopping features that make it easy for consumers to buy items as they see them on their newsfeeds. On the other hand, LinkedIn may be more suitable for freelance writers looking to connect with businesses that may need their service. At the end of the day, we are all selling something, but where we focus our social media campaign matters.
When determining which platform is best for your social media campaign, ask yourself:
- What are you selling?
- Who is my target audience? Where do they like to get information?
- What kind of content does my audience prefer? Short-form or long-form videos? Infographics or blog posts?
- How often do I need to post content?
- How does this content fit with my overall content marketing strategy for reaching customers?
- What is my budget? Is there one platform that may be more budget-friendly? (i.e., Let's say you feel video content is best for reaching new customers. But you don't have the skill set to create quality videos efficiently. You may need to spend extra money to outsource the work.)
- What are my long and short-term marketing goals and social media KPIs?
Be a Master of One... Or a Master of None
Having a presence on all popular mediums is great for letting people know you exist. But maintaining quality content on every platform is not sustainable for most businesses. If you spread yourself too thin, it will show in the quality of the work you put out. Your scattered efforts will be ineffective in delivering results.
Want to get people talking about your product or service? Don't try to be everywhere at once. Instead, focus on mastering one primary platform. Once you decide which to move forward with, think of creative ways to encourage discussion around your brand.
Reach New Heights With the Right Social Media Campaign Strategy
Social media is an excellent way to reach new customers. You can get your brand in front of them without investing a ton of money. But it is crucial not to jump on the latest social media bandwagon just because everyone is doing it. Every social media campaign needs a thoughtful strategy behind it to be effective.
Still not sure which platform is best for your business? Seven Oaks Consulting helps small and large companies execute successful social media campaigns. Contact us at 434-574-6253 - we would love to help get you on the right track.
How to Track Blog Performance: Blogging KPIs
A blog is an integral marketing channel for any business, so it is important to know how to track blog performance. A blog is where you can showcase your expertise and share knowledge with the world. But how do you know if yours is successful? In this post, we will cover 8 key metrics that every blogger should track to identify trends and measure their performance against set benchmarks.
Why Is It Important to Track Blog Performance?
Tracking your blog’s performance is crucial because it helps you understand how well it is performing. You can use this data to guide future strategic decisions about what types of content to create for continued community engagement. For example, if a certain type of post does much better than others, then it’s your cue to focus on creating more like that. If people are commenting, social sharing, and reading something to the end, it shows they found value in that piece of content.
How to Track Blog Performance
Many know the importance of having a blog but don’t know how to track blog performance. Make sure the metrics you track align with your business objectives. Most businesses blogs fail to increase website traffic or email subscribers. If that is the case for you, then focus on the key metrics to improve and measure blog performance:
- Engagement Rate – The ratio of likes, shares, and comments divided by total views
- Bounce Rate – The percentage of visits that last less than 30 seconds before leaving your site
- Time Spent on Site – How long visitors stay on a page (the longer they stay, the more engaged they are)
- Referrers – Where did they come from? Google Analytics will tell you what keywords drove traffic to each article so you can optimize future posts based on these findings.
8 Blog KPIs to Evaluate for Measuring Success
One could evaluate many blog KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure a blog’s success. Let’s go over eight main ones:
Organic Traffic
This is the number of visitors that came from search engines. Google Analytics (GA) tracks organic traffic by measuring how many people visit your website through a Google search, then visit one page on your site and leave without going any further.
To increase your organic search rankings, make sure all of your content is written with high-quality keywords. This will help customers find you when they search those terms online.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a popular metric used to measure the effectiveness of your content. It refers to the percentage of visitors who land on your site but do not visit any other pages. Bounce rate is a good indicator of how well you can engage your visitors and keep them interested in what they are reading. The lower this number, the better.
Time Spent on Page
Time spent on page is the amount of time a user spends on your site, which can be broken down into two parts:
- How long they stay (time spent)
- What they do while they're there (actions taken)
As you might imagine, the more time people spend with your content and the more actions they take while browsing it, the more likely they will become engaged with your blog.
Page Views Per Visit
To calculate page views per visit, divide your total page views by the number of visits. Use this metric to understand how your readers are engaging with your content by comparing it to other metrics. For example, do readers who read more pages have higher conversion rates? Or do they usually bounce right away?
Pages Per Session
Pages per session is a metric that measures how many pages each visitor views on your blog. It gives insight into which stories are resonating most with readers.
A high average of pages per session shows that your visitors are reading through multiple posts and spending time on your site. The more they read, the greater their chances of seeing ads or clicking through to offsite links.
Exit Rate
Exit rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site from a given page. It can be calculated by dividing total exits by total visits to that page. Exit rates are used as an indicator for content engagement.
The higher the exit rate, the more likely it is that people aren't finding what they came looking for. They are leaving quickly instead of scrolling through your content library, looking for something to keep them around.
Social Media Shares
Social media shares are a great way to measure whether your blog content is thought-provoking to your audience. People tend to share the posts they find interesting, so it's a good indication of how much engagement the post gets.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate refers to the number of people who convert your desired action divided by the total number of visitors. This can be a monetary conversion, like when someone makes a purchase on your site. It can also be an action that doesn’t involve money, like filling out a contact form or subscribing to your newsletter.
Measure Your Blog’s Impact by Studying Its Data
What is the best way to measure a blog? That depends on your goals and how you define success. This article looked at eight KPIs that can help you manage your blog and track its impact on your business. In addition to keeping these KPIs in mind, always prioritize quality content output. It builds brand trust, increases website authority, and improves engagement.
Ready to level up your marketing game? Get in touch with Seven Oaks Consulting to discuss your business goals and how we can help you achieve them!
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How to Improve Email Metrics
Understanding email marketing metrics is more important than ever before, given that the email marketing industry is growing at a rapid pace. Today, around 90% of all adults have an email account. As a result, businesses of all sizes have the opportunity to reach this massive audience!
As you continue to learn more about content marketing KPIs, consider these email marketing metrics as part of your overall program to measure and monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns.
What Are Email Marketing Metrics?
So you’ve grown your email list and sent out emails as part of your business marketing efforts. But do you know how well they are performing?
Email marketing metrics help businesses understand how effective their email marketing is. Email opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounces are all examples of email metrics. Businesses use these metrics in Google Analytics (GA) or other analytics software packages to better understand how well your emails performed over time.
How to Elevate Your Emails
Here are some sure-fire ways to take your email marketing up a notch… or two.
Personalize Your Message
Personalization is a must in email marketing, and it's an easy way to stand out. You can gain trust, get your message read and opened, and create positive experiences for your customers.
Provide Value to Your Potential Customers
The best way to improve email marketing metrics is to provide value for your potential customers. If you can present something helpful, entertaining, and informative, you will skyrocket your open and click-through rates!
Produce Compelling Copy
It would help if you made your audience feel something while telling a story with your landing pages and emails. Be mindful of your target audience's tone, word choice, and headlines. This is crucial because different audiences prefer different things. For example, young adults will likely respond better to conversational language than senior citizens.
Write a Catchy Subject Line
When it comes to successful email marketing, the subject line is the first thing that people see, and it is what draws people in, so you want it to make an impression.
You need a good subject line that:
- Is relevant to the content of your email
- Is short and concise (no longer than 15 words)
- Personalizes each message sent for maximum engagement
- Factors in when your customer sees their email (e.g., don't send emails during peak hours if possible)
Craft a Well-Designed Email
Your email should look good no matter the width of the screen. People viewing it on mobile or desktop should be able to enjoy the same aesthetic. Use a responsive design that works across all devices and browsers. This way, the email will resize according to its available space. If you use a service like MailChimp, you won't have to worry about this—the platform does it for you!
Use Striking Images & Colors that Complement the Text
Images and colors can highlight important information, illustrate your message and break up the text. They also create a sense of urgency and add charisma to your email.
Images should have a purpose in helping you to deliver a point. If an image does not match the topic of your email, it will distract subscribers from what is most important.
Include a Call-to-Action
You should always include a call-to-action (CTA) and conversion triggers in your email marketing campaigns. A CTA is a request for action from the reader, while conversion triggers are actions the reader takes after reading your email. These can be as simple as clicking a link or as complicated as filling out a form. It can also be a purchase if you sell things online.
Clever Email Campaigns Get More Conversions
We have all seen generic email blasts go out to a large group of people, hoping that a few customers will respond. Unfortunately, this strategy is ineffective and can result in lost money and wasted marketing efforts. So, create personalized emails that are more likely to yield positive customer responses.
The first step in personalizing your email campaign is understanding your customer base and what makes them tick. Once you know their preferences, it's time to create an email campaign with those preferences in mind.
The second step is making sure the content speaks directly to each recipient as if they were having an actual conversation with you. For example, use text like "Hi [name]," rather than "Hey there." Studies and tests have shown that personalized emails can increase email open rates by 23% and click rates by 57%!
Measure Email Performance to Meet Your Business Goals
Email marketing is a strategic and effective way to reach customers, build relationships, and get people to buy more. Businesses that can effectively leverage email marketing find it easier to close deals with new customers while maintaining their existing base.
Today, many companies still struggle with getting the most out of their emails. They do not know what metrics are important or how to use them to measure their success. If this sounds like you, get in touch with Seven Oaks Consulting to discuss your business objectives and how we can help elevate your email marketing!