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Why Content Marketing Can Deliver Better ROI Than Paid Search

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There are so many directions in which you can take your marketing strategy these days, it can make you dizzy.

SEO, PPC, email, social… the list goes on! Of course, most brands will choose a combination of several of these methods.

But I’m going to explain exactly why I think content marketing is better than PPC and why you should focus the majority of your efforts on your content strategy.

Quick Takeaways

  • When implemented properly, content marketing offers a higher ROI than PPC in the long-term.
  • PPC might bring traffic to your site but it won’t make it convert. Only content can do that for you.
  • Paid search and other types of advertising have their place but it’s essential to have a solid content strategy to back them up.

What Is PPC Marketing?

But first, let’s recap what exactly I’m talking about when I say “PPC”. PPC stands for “pay per click,” is also known as “paid search” and is technically a form of advertising. PPC ads show up on top of “organic search” results on your search engine.

When you launch a PPC marketing campaign, you’ll place ads on a search platform like Google or Bing (this is also known as paid search marketing), on a social network such as Facebook or Twitter, or on other ad platforms.

Rather than paying upfront to place your ad for a set amount of time, you’ll pay the ad platform when your ad is clicked.

In most cases, there are many more advertisers than there are ad spots. The platform decides which ads to show by using a bidding procedure. The advertiser that has bid the highest amount for a particular search query or audience will get the best ad placement. However, they’ll also pay more when someone clicks through to their site.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategy that revolves around using content (blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.) to attract relevant visitors to your website, raise awareness of your brand, and boost sales and conversions.

Rather than being sales-focused like an ad, in most cases, this content doesn’t directly pitch your products and services. Instead, you provide useful, entertaining, or inspiring content that improves the lives of your audience in some way.

Publishing a blog is one of the most common types of content marketing and one that’s easy for anyone to start, whether they’re an individual on a shoestring budget or a large enterprise.

1. Content Marketing Is Significantly Cheaper in the Long Term

When comparing different digital marketing strategies, PPC is right up there with some of the most expensive.

PPC can get you to the top of Google if you’re willing to pay for it. But you’ll have to keep paying to stay there.

These costs can add up quickly, especially in competitive industries where keywords can go for several dollars a click.

Source: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/29/google-adwords-industry-benchmarks

On the other hand, content marketing needs only a modest initial investment to get you started. If you’re really running on a tight budget, you can create content yourself with the only cost being your time.

With time and effort, high-quality content can reach the top of search engine results naturally. This means you can be getting those clicks for free instead of paying for each one. And you won’t lose your rankings until someone creates better or more relevant content than you.

Research by Kapost found that content marketing gets three times the leads per dollar spent compared to paid search.

Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/5-content-marketing-trends-that-you-should-leverage-in-the-next-year/

The ROI of content marketing and PPC has too many variables to suggest an “average” for each method, even on a per industry basis. But whatever industry you’re in, while PPC may seem to offer a more attractive ROI initially, content marketing almost always offers a better ROI in the long-term.

Source: https://alecanmarketing.com/blog/content-marketing-crushes-ppc-over-time/

2. Content Marketing Attracts Better Quality Leads

Content marketing not only attracts more leads for your money, but it generates better quality leads too.

Lead quality is critical for optimizing ROI and increasing revenue. There’s no point in paying for leads (via any method) if they’re not converting.

One of the biggest complaints coming from sales teams is that the leads they get from marketing are low-quality ones. This situation can easily happen when sales and marketing aren’t in alignment and only care about their immediate targets. 55% of sales reps surveyed by Demand Gen said that what they want most from marketing is “better leads”.

Source: https://www.demandgenreport.com/features/industry-insights/study-communication-is-greatest-challenge-for-sales-and-marketing-alignment

Producing high-quality content is one of the most effective ways of attracting high-quality sales leads.

Just because you’re paying for leads, it doesn’t mean they’re great quality. A lot of the time leads from PPC are poor because they don’t know your brand or understand your product when they click your ad.

On the other hand, leads generated by content have already been introduced to your brand and educated on some level. And the longer they stick around and keep consuming your content, the better these leads become.

3. Content Marketing Generates Long-term Results

Content marketing campaigns must be planned on a much longer timescale than other marketing techniques. Some people consider this a negative, but being a slow burner offers huge benefits too.

Content marketing builds traffic and rankings that you own. This may happen very gradually, but once you start seeing the results you want, you’re not going to lose them overnight.

The time and money you invest in content marketing now will continue paying dividends well into the future. A single piece of content that might have cost you a couple of hundred dollars to produce could end up generating business and leads worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for years to come.

Source: https://www.growthramp.io/articles/content-marketing-roi

PPC, on the other hand, is most definitely a short-term strategy. You’ll see the results immediately but if you want to keep having success, you’ll need to keep going.

Anyone can buy clicks, but the value drops to zero once you stop.

4. Content Marketing Is a Simple Model That’s Hard to Mess Up

There’s a real art and science to successful PPC marketing. Not only do you have to know what keywords to bid on, but you also need to bid the right amount, optimize your ads for a high click-through rate, and craft your landing pages carefully to get the results you want.

PPC can be very effective when done well, but in most cases, you’ll have to invest a significant amount of cash before you can see results. If managed properly, PPC can be a good investment but you need a decent budget to get started.

For this reason, it’s sheer madness to attempt a PPC campaign unless you know what you’re doing. If you get lucky then you might see results, but more often than not, you’ll burn through a significant amount of money and have no results to show for it.

As PPC is so complicated, with many moving pieces, most brands using PPC marketing will either employ an in-house expert or outsource to a marketing agency specializing in PPC. Of course, this adds more expense to an already pricey marketing model.

Content marketing, on the other hand, is about as simple as you can get. While there’s certainly a lot to think about when you’re putting together a content marketing campaign, you can’t really get anything “wrong”.

In the worst-case scenario, you’ll publish some content that doesn’t really do anything for you. But all you’ll have lost is the time it took you to create that content or what you paid for it (and content marketing is very affordable compared to other types of marketing, remember).

I’ve seen organizations achieve impressive success with content marketing without following any real plan or tracking results, which just goes to show how simple it is. Those who regularly publish high-quality content and consistently deliver value will be rewarded for their efforts eventually, even if they don’t get all the fine details perfect.

5. People Trust Content More Than Ads

Google is constantly changing the way in which paid ads are displayed in the search results to try and make them blend in more seamlessly with the organic results. The reason for this is that most of the time, searchers don’t want to click on ads.

Most web users these days know that companies have paid to appear in the ads at the top of the search results, whereas web pages that are listed at the top of the organic results are there because they’ve earned it with a great reputation and high-quality information.

Research by Nielsen has found that 53% of consumers don’t trust ads listed in search engine results and 52% don’t trust ads on social media.

Trust in advertising, in general, has been gradually declining in recent years, with customers preferring to do their own research and more likely to follow recommendations from their peers than brand ads.

 

Source: https://digitalwellbeing.org/word-of-mouth-still-most-trusted-resource-says-nielsen-implications-for-social-commerce/

Content marketing isn’t advertising. It’s a great way to build trust rather than erode it.

5. You Can’t Succeed in PPC Without Also Investing in Content Marketing

So let’s say you do have the budget to inject into running a PPC campaign and you’re working with an agency that really knows what they’re doing.

You still won’t get the best results unless you also concentrate on creating really great content.

Just think about it – even if you’ve got a really well-written ad and your targeting is spot on, you still have to win over the users that click on the ad.

So that comes down to sales copy, right? Well, yes and no. It’s certainly important to have really well-crafted and optimized landing pages. But your success will be limited unless you’ve also thought about your content marketing strategy.

You might get some sales from users who’ve never heard of your company before and end up on your landing page. But you can greatly increase your chances if you’ve got a library of great content to back you up.

Great content gets shared and comes up frequently in search results. So, if you’ve been doing your job with content marketing well, there’s a good chance that the user who sees your ad and clicks through to your landing page might have seen one of your articles or videos while researching or on their social feeds. When they keep seeing great content from your brand, they’ll remember it and you’ve got a much better chance of making that sale.

While PPC might be great for attracting people to your funnel, you still have to get them through the funnel. And websites that have adopted content marketing convert at a rate that’s six times higher than those that haven’t.

PPC ads can convert well for users who are ready to buy. But for the rest? A report by Gleanster Research revealed that only 25% of your leads are ready to buy at any given time. So what do the other 75% want?

They want to find out more about your company and products or services. They maybe don’t even know yet that they have a need for your products and services. By publishing high-value informational content that addresses their challenges, you can ensure that they stick around for longer. You have a much better chance of making that sale when they’re finally ready to buy.

 

Source: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/why-is-content-marketing-important/

Ready to Start Focusing on Content Marketing?

PPC can still be an effective part of your overall marketing strategy when planned carefully. But it must be used in combination with content marketing if you want to achieve the best results.

Content marketing is a low-cost marketing technique that offers an impressive ROI if you’re willing to stick with it for the long-term.

If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content published consistently, check out our Content Builder Service.

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Sourced from Marketing Insider Group

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Return on Investment: Is ROI the Right Measure of Agency Success?

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By  Ryan Yaeger 

Marketing and advertising agencies have been a part of the marketplace for more than two centuries, helping product manufacturers and service providers connect with those in need of what they have to offer. Agencies like ours exist symbiotically with business – when our efforts do well in promoting a business, the business succeeds. “We succeed when you succeed” is more than a throwaway slogan – it’s the truth of agency work, and words we live and die by.

Retaining a client or sticking with an agency often comes down to deciding how beneficial the relationship is for both parties. But how can a client really measure the success of their marketing agency? What is the right way to tell whether or not the investment is worth it? While many would say that it simply boils down to the ROI – return on investment – the reality is that the answer isn’t always quite so clear cut.

First Things First – Marketing Is an Investment, Not an Expense

Before we dive in, it’s important to first dispel the notion that anything you spend on promoting your brand, your business and what you have to offer the market is a cost. Most organizations understand that marketing is an investment – something you put money into for the betterment of your organization and the growth of your business – and not an expense. It’s why they call it “return on investment” and not “return on expense,” after all.

Promoting your brand and your products or services is how new customers learn about you and what you offer, and how existing and previous customers keep you in mind for future needs. Being at the top of mind within consumers’ minds is a must. If they need something you offer and don’t think of you first – or at least know of you and what you can provide – you’ve at least put yourself at a disadvantage if you haven’t outright lost a potential sale.

Marketing helps you succeed, and marketing agencies offer experience in the best ways to find that success for your business. They deliver knowledge and expertise with different types of advertising and creative staff capable of concepting and delivering a unique and fresh idea for you and your organization. You wouldn’t ask just anyone to help you put an addition on your house or repair your car – you’d want an expert. When it comes to promoting brands and business, investing in a marketing and advertising agency that works on your behalf is an investment in your organization’s growth and development.

A Partnership for Measurable Success

Now, to really gauge how successful any given marketing or advertising efforts are, it often comes down to the numbers – but which numbers? The definition of success can vary, depending on the specific goals of the client. Do you want to increase product sales? Drive more queries to the website? Get more foot traffic at your storefront or make the phone ring more often?

Credit: iStock

The goal of the campaign has to be well understood before you start, and agencies and clients need to trust one another and provide transparency in the process. A client needs to be able and willing to share information like customer inquiry and sales data with the agency – this allows the agency team to track what campaigns or strategies are working and to what extent. On the other side, agencies need to be transparent about the costs for different services and deliver the trackable data available from campaigns run on digital or third-party networks.

To succeed, clients and agencies need to work as partners, sharing data, collaborating on ideas and cooperating on measuring results. For campaigns to be fairly evaluated, clients need to know what was done and agencies need to know how it impacted business. Together, each approach can be assessed, improved and refined, making each new campaign better than the last and helping to grow business.

Where Things Fall Apart

If you ask five companies or five agencies why their last relationship with the other failed, you’ll probably get five different stories. Maybe the agency cost too much or they weren’t transparent enough, or perhaps the client failed to pay bills on time or never provided any concrete input on a project. At the end of the day, though, many client and agency relationships fail for the same reason as personal relationships – a lack of communication and understanding.

Working with an agency offers many benefits for a client. Agencies have staff that are experienced and knowledgeable in the marketing world and in a range of advertising strategies, creative development approaches, content and copywriting, digital and traditional media and much more. Having an agency puts all this at the fingertips of a client, allowing them to adapt and grow in any channel without having to hire an in-house staff to cover all the different avenues.

But the partnership works both ways. Clients need to know that their agency can react to their requests and are able to deliver results on time and on budget. At the same time, clients need to respect that agencies have costs of doing business, and when a client requests a project, there will be a price attached to that work. That can include a range of different fees, as well, depending on the type of campaign – research and concepting, printing costs, media purchasing and placement, creative or technical development, project management and more.

But What About ROI?

That all said, measuring the success of your campaign won’t always boil down to a clear-cut gain in profits. The typical calculation for an ROI holds that an organization’s gross profit during a given campaign minus the marketing investment divided by the total of that investment and then all multiplied by 100 should result in a campaign’s ROI percentage. Or, in more clear terms:

However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. While that math works great for a campaign that’s directly tied to increased sales of products or services, it doesn’t work when the campaign has a less tangible goal. Is your goal to increase awareness in the marketplace or expand your reach into a new territory? You can’t necessarily measure that in increased revenue. Instead, that may be better gauged by surveying people in the area, tracking visits to your website from that area or using a new phone number that’s local to the region and counting call volumes.The standard calculation of ROI also doesn’t factor in things like residual customer values. For example, if a campaign brings 10 new customers to you, and two of them go on to make regular annual or quarterly purchases, that grows not only a company’s immediate sales, but develops long-term returning customer value. Similarly, growth in search engine rankings or increased website traffic doesn’t necessarily show an immediate gain, but instead sets a foundation for long-term growth and value by improving visibility and market awareness.

Credit: iStock

A Different ‘R’ for ROI

At the end of the day, perhaps it’s not so much a “return” on investment that should be the target term in “ROI,” but instead “results.” What success is can take many different forms depending on a campaign’s goals, so for a client to gauge the merits of an agency partnership on financial gains alone isn’t always the appropriate measure. Instead, look at what the agency delivers for investment and decide if that meets or exceeds the goals of a given marketing effort.

Growing an email list or placing a billboard doesn’t necessarily tie immediately to a financial growth. However, both offer long-term benefits. Having more customers on an email list increases the reach of digital marketing campaigns, allowing for more current or prospective customers to be reached with future incentives and promotional materials. Increasing awareness of your brand in the community doesn’t mean they will need your product or service immediately, but it does make them aware of who you are and what you offer when they do need you. Marketing isn’t just financial gains alone – sometimes it’s playing the long game and investing on efforts today that make campaigns in the future more successful.

If both the client and agency agree on what a campaign is setting out to do and what success looks like for any given effort, it’s easy to determine if a campaign is delivering ROI – results on investment. Success isn’t always measured by the same yardstick. By deciding what success looks like, clients and agencies can thrive together.

This article was originally posted on the J. Fitzgerald Group blog. 

By  Ryan Yaeger 

Sourced from Business 2 Community

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Does Facebook Ads really generates ROI? People are tired of ads…

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Facebook Ads have revolutionized the world of advertising by making the process easier. We’re already familiarized with its interface and everyone with a facebook profile and fan page can have access to it. Facebook brought paid advertising opportunities to big and small companies regardless of their budget. But, what about conversions and ROI? Is Facebook Ads really delivering that kind of revenue it promises?

I would say it depends. Due to all the information we give freely to Facebook when we open our personal profiles, this social network has a big database of our interests, demographics, migratory movements, hobbies, idols, education, among others. Ad targeting is easier and more effective, and it’s more accurate to know how many people match our targeting criteria for a specific campaign.

A social platform

In terms of reach, Facebook is a big tool to increase awareness whatever the objectives of your campaign are: promoting an event, launching a product, getting people to know your brand, promoting your content. But when it comes to conversions… well, that’s a different story.

We can’t forget that Facebook is a social network. Social, not specifically a sales channel. It’s a platform to create connections with people (customers and potential customers), to entertain, to inform, to educate, and nowadays due to the growth of influencers, to influence.

According to a recent research by Splashlight, fewer than a third of US consumers are influenced by Social Media when making a purchase decision. And with the increasing number of people investing on Facebook Ads, I’m sure you have noticed how the social platform has become a shop window by bombarding people with ads promoting services/products they even didn’t know they need it or want it.

People are getting tired of so many ads

People on social media are not on search mode. In fact, people are being bothered by constant ads. A survey carried by Lithium Technologies in 2016 shows that 56% of native digitals are using less frequent or even have stopped using social media platforms due to ads on their news feeds.

Targeting on Facebook is getting better. Recently Facebook is testing ads when people make an in-store visit. We are chasing customers and potential clients in a very aggressive way and this is causing a massive rejection to ads. So, what should ads really do to avoid this kind of response from people they want to target?

Instead of a sales discourse, ads should call attention and take people to the website, a better place to generate sales. If you are looking for instant conversions (in terms of sales) with a small budget, you are wasting time, effort and money. Try to focus on other aspects such as sparking curiosity, inspiring or entertaining. The objective can be the same, but another approach can be more effective.

If you are just starting with Facebook Ads, take this into account:

6 aspects to improve Facebook Ads

–Set specific, measurable goals to track the ROI of your campaigns: page likes, engagement, opt-ins…

–Narrow your target: if your audience is too broad, the conversion is more difficult. More reach doesn’t mean better reach.

–Choose the right ad format: a video, image, carrousel… depending on what you’re trying to achieve, choose the one that will adapt better to your message and audience.

–Try different ad sets and test them!

-Create eye-catching optimized images and a clear copy

-Don’t forget the CTA (call-to-action) for the goal you set for your ad, not for your intention to sell.

Remember that people go to Facebook to connect with their contacts and to relax watching amusing content. So try to create ads that engage with people’s expectations. Give it a try and let us know!

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Sourced from MJC Studio

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Instagram Closes Gap with YouTube Among Advertisers as Twitter Continues to Fall

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By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Instagram continues its surge in generating advertiser interest while Facebook remains the dominant social platform. This is according to a first quarter survey of advertising agencies conducted by Strata.

The survey also found a continued multi-quarter decline in YouTube’s lead over Instagram, bringing the two within one point of each other in advertiser interest. 54% of agencies report plans to use YouTube against 53% for Instagram. Facebook remains entrenched in first place as 95% of agencies are interested in the platform. Twitter, which historically held third place in agency interest until the second quarter of 2016, continues its slide with interest from 37% of agencies, finding itself just 10% above fifth-placed LinkedIn.

The interest in these social platforms is reflected in agency spending, as well. 93% percent of agencies are currently spending money on Facebook, with 53% planning to spend on YouTube, and 49% planning on Instagram. The current spend lagging behind agency interest could indicate increased spend in the coming quarters.

More than half of agencies now plan to spend more than 5% of their overall advertising budgets on social media, with 22% allocating between 11-25% of their budgets on social, compared to 18% in 4Q16. The increase in budget for paid social coincides with the proliferation of live streaming tools, such as Facebook Live and Snapchat Live as 42% of agencies report that clients were interested in these innovations for their campaigns.

“Though Facebook has remained the dominant player in the social media space, the gradual shifts in focus to other platforms has been interesting to watch. There’s always been a premium on live, so it’s not surprising that agencies have an interest in exploring Facebook Live, Snapchat’s Spectacles, and Instagram’s Stories,” said Judd Rubin, senior vice president at Strata.

When agencies were asked which form of media they prioritised the most, 24% reported that digital video was their primary focus. Although that leaves digital video in second, behind local TV and cable at 36%, the interest in digital video has seen a 351% increase over the past year.

The rise in interest in digital video may be surprising in light of the fact that agencies appear split on the effectiveness of digital video. Twenty-five percent feel that it can be as effective as traditional TV, but 33% feel it isn’t, and 42% are unsure. When asked more broadly about perceived ROI from digital video, over 50% felt fairly confident that they were getting good value for their money. Forty-one percent noted they were unsure, and only 9% of agencies felt they were not getting a strong ROI.

 

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