WHITE PAPER Content is King: Measuring the ROI of Content Marketing Operations Content is King: Measuring the ROI of Content Marketing Operations WHITE PAPER THE NEW MARKETING BATTLEGROUND The world of marketing is evolving The relationship between buyers and sellers is undergoing a major transformation. yet again as sellers shift from Social media and e-commerce have given buyers tremendous new power to research traditional product-centric pitches products, prices, reputations, and opinions — often before they even talk to the seller. To compete in this buyer-empowered market, business-to-business companies have to sophisticated customer-centric been forced to rethink how they market and sell their products and services. content that appeals to the real Yet companies have been slow to adapt to the changing landscape, and they are losing interests and business needs of out in the battle for new customers. Too many organizations still market the old way, buyers. In this study of eight randomly bombarding customers and prospects with generic brochure-ware, product Kapost-enabled companies, pitches, and banner ads. Increasingly this strategy is falling short. Marketing materials are routinely ignored, and companies continue to miss critical customer-growth and we found that the move to return-on-marketing targets. Marketers must move beyond traditional pay-per-click content-based marketing paid ad models or face tougher executive scrutiny of their digital marketing programs. off in significant ways — driving Findings greater Web traffic and uptake In this study of eight companies, content marketing operations using Kapost were of marketing assets. found to drive: At the same time, we found that • 133% increase in return visitors to their Website many companies struggled to • 253% increase in online engagement (downloads, blog reads, etc.) scale out content strategies across • 200% increase in email open rates the enterprise. Kapost provided • 75% increase in Web traffic the content-centric collaboration • 512% increase in marketing qualified leads processes, best practices, and • Six-fold revenue lift from content marketing activities platform integration needed to help • 30% reduction in asset production cycle time companies drive sales with more • 24% productivity improvement for content marketing resources leads, rein in staffing costs through efficient management, and boost program success by accelerating content production and publishing. According to Forrester Research, 62% of senior-level business and IT decision-makers find much of the marketing materials they receive from vendors are useless; and 59% say they usually scan the materials and then “throw them in the trash.”1 1 Source: Q4 2013 North America And Europe Executive Buyer Insight Online Survey: Based on interviews with 319 senior-level business and IT decision-makers at companies with 1,000 or more employees. 2 2 Content is King: Measuring the ROI of Content Marketing Operations WHITE PAPER The failure of traditional product-centric marketing has We also report on what we call the “content marketing Get to Know Your spawned a new approach called content marketing. journey” — the learning curve that companies go Buyer Personas The aim of content marketing is to create and distribute through as they embrace content-based marketing consistently valuable, relevant content to attract and and then build out these programs with targeted The best content acquire a clearly defined audience — with the objective investments. marketing programs of driving profitable customer action.2 When done right, target a specific content marketing matches the company’s message DRIVING REVENUE WITH CONTENT MARKETING type of customer, with the buyer’s needs during each step of the selling or “persona.” process — or think of it as the “buyer’s journey” — The number one goal of every marketing program is to Buyer personas are from generating awareness to building qualified generate leads that drive revenue. Traditionally this job research-based leads to closing sales. has been more of an art than a science, with marketers relying mainly on experience and intuition to capture archetypes of your Research shows that content marketing yields better the attention of prospects and turn them into sales. customers, complete results — more traffic, leads and customers — in with descriptions of today’s multi-channel, social-mobile world. More and Now that content is king, companies are shifting their their personalities, more, buyers want to be informed, educated, and even focus to creating subject matter that will grab the how they think, and entertained about topics that genuinely interest them. buyer’s attention and serving it up in compelling formats what drives their Less appealing are all the unsolicited product pitches at just the right time. To efficiently orchestrate this buying behavior. and company ads that are devoid of relevant content. process, the companies we studied pointed to the As the VP of marketing for a multi-billion dollar scientific criticality of implementing Kapost’s cloud-based equipment maker told us: “Content is king.” enterprise content management solution. Quantifying Business Value The shift is paying off: Across the board these compa- “At the end of the day, This paper explores how businesses and organizations nies are reporting significant boosts in the key indica- having a tool like across industries are embracing content marketing to tors of lead- and revenue-generating potential, including Kapost in place had Web traffic, return visitors, content consumption, and achieve strategic business goals. We interviewed eight a multiplier effect on companies that had launched content marketing email open rates. As shown in Figure 1, these improve- our ability to use initiatives, enabled by the Kapost platform, within ments have helped companies increase the flow of the past several years, including leading business-to- prospects through each stage of the classic “marketing content across funnel.” Along the way, Kapost is helping to engage business enterprises in high technology, manufacturing, channels faster. and biotech, as well as one business-oriented non-profit more of these prospects and more effectively convert We’re hitting on organization. These companies understood the value of them into marketing qualified leads (MQLs). creating relevant and informative content that would all cylinders with 75% Increase in Web Traffic appeal to key customer segments and personas. content.” Before adopting a content marketing platform, We paid special attention to how these companies are companies suffered from weak Web traffic — the – VP of marketing, deploying Kapost’s content marketing platform to deliver result of poorly coordinated outreach and distribution global scientific the speed, agility, and scalability required to drive strategies, and too much unfocused content “sprawl” equipment business success. From our research, we were able to replete with company-centric, one-size fits all assets. manufacturer capture a range of business impacts, including revenue More often than not, these strategies failed to stimulate enhancement, customer engagement, operating cost interest among customers and prospects. savings, and resource productivity. 2 From the Content Marketing Institute. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/ 3 Content Marketing with Kapost Traditional Marketing 10^5 75% Increase 10^4 512% Increase 10^3 Prospects (logarithmic scale) 10^2 Content is King: Measuring the10 ROI of Content Marketing Operations WHITE PAPER Pre-MQLs MQLs SQL STC Marketing Funnel by Stage Leveraging Scientists Figure 1. The Content Marketing Funnel to Create Compelling Content Marketing with Kapost Content Traditional Marketing With pay-per-click 75% Increase banner ads failing to generate ROI, 512% Increase this Fortune 500 bio-pharma company Prospects wanted to enlist its global team of 2,500 scientists to help sell its high-margin, Pre-MQLs MQLs complex solutions. Marketing Funnel by Stage The Kapost content marketing platform By setting up a Kapost-driven content marketing 133% Increase in Customer Engagement helped the company mobilize scientists to operation, companies efficiently mobilized company- Not only did these Kapost-enabled content marketing create a steady flow wide resources around a content plan custom fitted to programs help companies attract more “eyeballs” to of content for journals the needs and interests of specific buyer personas/ their Web sites but marketers said these same visitors segments — and then sustained this effort over time. returned more often because content distribution was and other forums that synchronized with customer buying cycles. Marketers resonated with buyers. A large global tech manufacturer, for example, at a large bio-tech company, for example, coordinated The result: a three-fold shifted from product-centric to industry-specific a global team of scientists and researchers to produce increase in traffic vs. solution messaging that zeroed in on the customers’ a series of easily “snackable” blogs and articles, driving paid advertising. unique business and technical challenges. Within a a 2–3 times increase in customer engagement. A global Meanwhile, integrating year, the manufacturer saw an estimated 75% increase technology manufacturer increased customer engage- Kapost with systems in Web traffic. Another major global tech-services ment 15–20% by creating and distributing highly “usable” like Salesforce.com