As the CEO and co-founder of Amplified NOW, I am focused on content marketing that helps you get your expertise on video and on all of the different platforms where your prospects are hanging out. We believe that video content marketing helps you shorten your sales cycle and grow your business.
In that spirit, I want to talk about return on investment or ROI. The question of ROI comes up when people are thinking about investing in content creation and marketing. We are often asked how long to expect to wait before there is revenue from the content you are creating or if spending time and money on content marketing is a good investment.
Revenue from content is not instant, nor are you going to see immediate pay-offs from the work you put into creating content. That possibly may have been the case 15 or 20 years ago, but the internet is noisier now. It takes some time.
Plant The Seed
I like to think of content marketing as planting a seed. If you plant a lemon seed today, you will not be eating lemons tomorrow. But, if you don’t plant the lemon seed, you will never get a lemon tree, and you will never get to eat a lemon.
Making and putting content on your blog or different social media platforms is the planting of the seeds in your garden. You do not get to reap what you have sown until it germinates. It takes time and patience.
As you plant the seeds of your content in different places and platforms, you’re getting out there, and you’re growing your audience. Before long, you’ll start to notice that the right kind of people are coming to you because they are seeing what you are all about.
When you think about it that way, the exact ROI of creating content — whether it is videos, blogs, or social media — can hardly be measured because the results are not instant or guaranteed. Just as you wouldn’t expect your seeds to turn into plants overnight, you often have to wait for some time before you can begin to quantify the results of your investment in content creation.
Often, when you grow your platform slowly, in six to eight months, you won’t know where or how somebody found you. They won’t even know where they found you because they’ve just been following you for this whole time. It could have just been an errant tweet that they picked up two months into your content marketing plan.
The more content put out there the greater the chance you have of connecting with those who are looking for what you bring to the table.
Consistency Brings Results
Another reason you may not be noticing an ROI on your content marketing is that you aren’t being consistent — either at creating or publishing content.
When people work with us, we ask them to commit to a quarter of content. This allows them to get used to the idea of putting content out at least bi-weekly. Then they can take that content, put it out on all of their different channels, and start seeing the results right away.
However, they may not be the results you’d expect. You can’t put out a video tomorrow and have that video result in 10 calls booked the next day. It just doesn’t work that way.
By consistently increasing your digital presence and creating valuable content, you’ll increase your pageviews and the attention that you get. Now the people who are looking for what you have to offer are more likely to find you.
That’s going to be so valuable for you in the short term and the long term. When people are hearing from you consistently, it usually turns into increased conversion and opportunities for your business. It also increases your client retention and loyalty.
The Content Creation Challenge
We often find, for our clients, the biggest challenge is getting over the thought that creating and posting content is too challenging. Often, the assumption is that coming up with ideas, creating content, and posting it is going to be difficult and time-consuming. But, it doesn’t have to be.
You are probably already full of ideas that you want to share with your potential audience. Once you start getting into the pattern and the rhythm of putting out those ideas in content form and setting up the machine that allows you to do it consistently, opportunities are going to come to you that you never expected.
It could be that somebody is going to flag you for a book publishing deal. Or, maybe one of your social media platforms is going to take off, and some company will want to partner with you. At the very least, you’ll be increasing your chances of being seen by the people who need to hear your message. You don’t know until you try.
The only way to ensure that you’re not going to get any of that is to not put content out there.
We Can Help!
If you are tired of being the best-kept secret in your industry, start being visible. Start thinking your thoughts out loud. Start publishing content at least twice a month on your blog, on your website, on YouTube, or anywhere that you have a presence and you want to grow it.
If you need help getting started, book a call with us today. I’d love to chat with you and help you begin planting seeds that will allow you to reap benefits for years to come.