A GUIDE TO

INCREASE
THE ROI
OF YOUR
CONTENT
STRATEGY

Tips and Tools for Getting the

Most Value from Content Marketing
Content marketing is not merely
blogging for blogging’s sake.
It’s a proven way to increase
brand awareness, attract the right
traffic to your website, build up
your authority in your industry,
generate new leads, and nurture
existing leads.
Whether you are new to content marketing or just looking to
increase your existing efforts, A Guide to Increase the ROI of Your
Content Strategy is your resource for evaluating and maximizing
your content marketing efforts.

This guide explores how to increase the ROI of your content

marketing by:
1. Having A Clear Strategy
2. Choosing the Right Time to Launch Your Strategy
3. Effectively Launching a Strategy
4. Creating Great Content Prospects and Clients Love
5. Picking Content with a Strong ROI
6. Making It Accessible to Search Engines

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A Clear Strategy:
Successful Planning
Just as you plan out your budget and expenses
for the year, you should plan out your content
marketing strategy. An effective content
marketing strategy includes projects, dates, task
managers, blog topics, content offers and more.

Why bother planning?

Spending time planning out your content
strategy for the next 3, 6, or 12 months will save
you time, money, and keep you on track. Keep Messaging on Track
By creating a clear strategy for producing
Save Time Brainstorming all of these content pieces, you can stay on
Start creating your B2B content marketing strategy track and ensure nothing gets lost or dropped.
by brainstorming topics and jotting down a few ideas Additionally, by outlining all the topics for your
for what to cover in each blog. For many people, it’s content pieces, you ensure you are staying on
easier to brainstorm a bunch of topics at one time message and creating content that your prospective
than to spread it out over several months. A little bit clients are interested in reading or viewing.
of planning now will save time in the future.
Improve SEO
Planning Now Minimizes Cost A content marketing strategy is great for SEO.
& Increases Revenue If you are focusing on a particular product or
Employees working late on blogs or content service offering each month, you can tailor
pieces can add up to additional overtime pay your content around that target offering. By
and keeping facilities open later. Or, if work is focusing content on that offering (and related
delayed, project deadlines are pushed out and key terms), you can work towards improving
that can manifest into a delay in collecting fees. your search engine rankings for it.

Once you have created your list of blog post topics,

assign them out to the appropriate team members Don’t Let Creating a Strategy Overwhelm You
and assign dates to them. Share the schedule with The process of creating a B2B content
everyone who will be contributing and remind them marketing strategy for your firm shouldn’t
of their duty a week or a few days in advance. make you sweat. Keep it simple.

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Don’t put off creating your strategy. While a
strategy may change slightly over the course
of a year, a content strategy will ensure
your marketing efforts stay on message and
provide value to your potential clients.

HERE IS A MINI-CHECKLIST
TO HELP YOU PUT TOGETHER
A STRATEGY:
• Schedule a time to sit down and brainstorm
an editorial calendar (list of topics) for
your blog.
• From the list of monthly topics, determine
what content pieces to produce each month
that are consistent with the blogs.
• Write down the topic for each monthly
newsletter based on the blogs and determine
which blogs and content pieces to feature in
the newsletter.
• Start a list of 10 case studies that your sales
team has been asking about. Schedule a case
study to be created every 6 weeks.
• Look at your website. What’s missing? Write
down a wish list of new content pages to
create. Add those to the editorial calendar.
• Finalize your calendar and assign dates and
who is responsible for each content piece.

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Choosing the Right
Time to Launch
When is the best time to launch a new strategy Product or Service Launch Support
to get the best results? Generally, launching a
New product or service launches can be a very
content plan sooner rather than later is ideal.
exciting time, but if you don’t have a content strategy
However, there are several points in time when
in place to support the launch, you aren’t firing on all
it’s best to launch a B2B content strategy.
cylinders. During a new product or service launch, it’s
essential to equip your sales team with the content
Post-Website Launch tools they need to explain the benefits and features
of the new product or service. Having well-designed
The center stone of a digital marketing and content and carefully crafted content pieces ensures the
marketing strategy is a professional website. If you sales team is able to easily and clearly communicate
are in the process of redesigning your website or are how and why the prospect should be interested.
about to launch a new B2B website, now is the time
to plan for your content strategy. We recommend that During the process of a product or service launch,
our web design clients launch a content marketing design a content strategy that includes helpful
strategy 1-2 months after launching a new website. content resources for the sales and support team.
Why wait 1-2 months? The simple answer is to make Include things like blogs, press releases, FAQs,
sure everything is functioning optimally on the website product sheets, case studies, testimonials, etc. to
and management of the website is going smoothly. make sure you have a variety of material to address
questions, concerns, and any client doubt.

After a Rebrand
New Lead Generation
It’s not uncommon for companies to rebrand or shift
their brand focus to adapt to the market or to gain a Last, but not least, the best time to launch a content
competitive advantage. If you don’t already have a marketing strategy is when you want to garner new
content marketing plan in place, immediately after a leads. Inbound marketing is a proven way to drive
rebrand is the ideal time to launch a content marketing new traffic and garner new client leads. However,
strategy. Content pieces like blogs, brochures, white before you start blogging or creating press releases,
papers, case studies, email newsletters, social media it’s imperative you create a solid content marketing
posts, etc. are excellent ways to communicate and strategy.
control the messaging about a company rebrand.
Before launching a new brand or a rebrand, it’s
essential to have a clearly defined content strategy
in place to ensure the rebrand is a success. Prior to
flipping the switch on a rebrand, plan and put into place
an actionable content marketing strategy to address
the rebrand, anticipate questions, and discuss why the
rebrand was necessary. Launching a rebrand with
these items in place ensures clarity and easy
adoption for your audience.

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3 Steps for Successful
Content Strategy Launch
1. SMART Goals + Clear Strategy
Start with defining SMART goals for your
strategy. They must be specific, measurable,
attainable, relevant, and time-bound. A smart
goal for a content marketing strategy is to
increase new traffic to the website by 10% in
three months. Setting SMART goals ensures you
are able to track and measure your efforts.
Set a clear strategy. The strategy should include a
general plan of blogging, social media publication,
client newsletter distribution, etc. Additionally, the
plan should have specific details, such as how
many blogs per month, when the newsletters will
be sent, how often to publish on social media, etc.

2. Stakeholder Support
The most effective content strategies are
executed by multiple individuals across
several departments. It’s important to get
buy-in from not only the individuals who will
be directly contributing to the strategy, but to
get buy-in from the management team and all
others who can benefit from the strategy.
If the sales team doesn’t understand or support
the content strategy, they won’t use the content
tools effectively and the tools will be wasted. If
management doesn’t understand the importance
of the strategy and support it, they won’t prioritize
content-related tasks for themselves or members
of their team. It’s best to head off any of these
issues by presenting the B2B content strategy
and getting internal approval and support.

3. Execute!
The most successful strategies are properly and
consistently executed. Continually blogging,
sending newsletters, and sharing on social
media are key to an effective strategy. The
biggest failure for a content marketing strategy
is when a content strategy falls behind or
blogging drops off or gets pushed back. Content
marketing is like staying in shape, you’ve got to
exercise consistently and often to get results.

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How to Create
Great Content
The foundation of crafting great content is Statistics
content that provides significant value – it
In the B2B space, a sale isn’t just a sale, it’s the
helps your prospects to do their jobs better.
beginning of a partnership. A list of useful, relevant,
This should be the underlying value and
recent statistics about your products or services
the driver of all your content creation.
makes a case for your products or services and
provide your prospects with real metrics so they can
internally make the case for partnering with your
Types of Content to Create
firm. By providing your prospects with the tools they
You can turn any piece of content into a tempting need to succeed in their job, you are nurturing them
lure for prospects, however, several types of content into becoming clients or even client advocates!
tend to perform well for attracting visitors and will
increase the overall ROI of your content efforts.

How-To Guides
A How-To Guide that provides a clear step-by-step
7 TIPS TO CREATE GREAT CONTENT
process for completing a task or process is innately
alluring for prospects. Create a clear, actionable 1. Know Your Audience – create content from your
guide that will teach your prospects and customers audience’s perspective. Make sure whatever
how to do something related to their job. Many you create matters to them. You’ll find this isn’t
guides are gated, which means they are focused on
gathering new leads.
always what matters to you internally.
2. Fill a Need – answer a question, teach a prospect
Lists how to do something, make them look good to
Lists are popular because they are organized, their boss, and/or make their lives easier.
easy to scan, and typically offer quick tips. Top
10s, 5 Ways to, 3 Things you need to know, 3. Create an Enticing Headline – get prospects and
etc., are all great ways to communicate a lot of clients to check out your content by drawing
information in a succinct way. The popularity
them in. Headlines that appeal to emotions, are
of lists can increase the reach of your blog
post, which can improve the engagement with inflammatory, are negative, or discuss a benefit
it, and increase the amount of traffic to your all provide significant draw.
site – all good for your return on investment.
4. Make It Accessible – remove all references to
industry jargon or overly technical language
FAQs
(unless your audience is technical).
Every product or service will have a short list of
frequently asked questions. Create a list of 5 5. Review and Revise – internally vet your content
or 10 common questions and answers. These to make sure it’s a great piece of content and
are a great lead nurturing and sales tools to
delivers the right information.
help move prospects down the sales funnel.
6. Post and Promote – Don’t just post it and wait for
Case Study traffic. Promote it on the right channels – social
Not only do case studies demonstrate the value media, emails, ads, etc.
of your product or services, they tell a potential
7. Quality Over Quantity - By focusing on quality
prospect what they can expect in terms of
results and how the whole process works. Again, over quantity, you can create the right kind of
another great tool for nurturing leads and moving content or content that your prospects will
a prospect closer to becoming a new client. find irresistible.

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Pick Content with a
Strong ROI
You likely already have a good idea what your next
content topic should be - you just don’t know it yet.

What Is Severely Lacking?

A triage-style of content marketing creates a clear
priority list for content topics. It’s not worthwhile
to create entertaining blogs if potential clients
have no idea what your software actually does.

What Is Sales Asking For?

Stop ignoring sales. Whether you are trying
to determine a content topic for a blog post,
premium content piece, or social media campaign,
your sales team can provide excellent insight
into what potential clients are asking about.

What Will Make Closing a Sale Better?

Now, this information may come from sales,
but it could also come from product, customer
service, accounting, or the management team.
This can be a variety of things from a typical
project schedule to an estimated budget to a
list of deliverables. Whatever content marketing
piece you determine to create next, make sure
to repurpose it for a variety of different formats
to ensure it reaches all potential clients.

Retain Clients & Make Projects Smoother

Content marketing isn’t done once a client
signs on the dotted line. There are a lot
of things that you can create to keep that
client and make the relationship smoother.
A blog can be a great retention tool to share
posts about how to get the most out of your
services or answer common questions.

Always Ask “What’s Next?”

Don’t ever get complacent with your B2B content
marketing. Always be fishing for new ideas
and new content pieces or blog topics that will
add real value to your team and your clients.

A Guide to Increase the ROI of Your Content Strategy // 619.330.0730 // www.bopdesign.com

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SEO + ROI Go
Hand in Hand
Let’s face it - search engines are the middleman
of content marketing. You have to work with
them and adhere to their rules in order to
get to the end user who is searching for your
products or services. Therefore, anything that
is great for SEO is also great for your content
investment. By simply making your content
accessible to search engines, you can increase
the ROI of all your digital marketing efforts.
WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE
ACCESSIBLE CONTENT?
Accessible content can be easily
crawled by search engine bots.
What? Is that even English?
Here is what you need to know:
accessible content = good SEO.

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How +toROI
SEO Make
GoContent Accessible
Hand
(It’s Good
in Hand
for SEO and ROI!)
Now, let’s take a look at what makes your website Why Use Schema on Your Website?
content accessible to those little search engine A person looking at a web page can typically
bots that are crawling around the internet-sphere. identify these things easily, but a search
engine cannot. The microdata labels the
4 Tips to Make Your Website things in the code so search engines can
Content SEO-Friendly understand what they are and improve
the accuracy of search engine results.
1. Use Headlines and Sub-Headlines
3. Provide Transcripts for Video and Audio Media
In the code for your website or in your Content
Management System (CMS), use H tags (H1, Search engine bots can identify video and
H2, H3, etc) to categorize your titles and audio files on a website, but they can’t crawl
subtitles according to their importance. (The them for content like they can text. Create and
H in H tag stands for “Heading.”) Search provide written text transcripts of the videos
engine crawlers look at these header tags and audio files you host on your website.
for clues on what the content is about 4. Make PDFs Accessible with OCR
and the overall structure of the page.
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition.
Here is an example of H2 and H3 tags In terms of accessibility and your website, OCR
used in the HTML of a blog post: technology is helpful for converting uncrawlable
from a ton of different places. files, like PDFs, into crawlable text. The benefit
<h2>Here are 10 ideas for your next blog:</h2> here is that if you have a lot of information in
<h3>Share How-To Tips</h3> PDFs, since that makes them easy for users to
<h3>Give the Highlights</h3> download, you can now make them easy for
search engines to view and understand as well.
2. Schema Mark-up Provides a Map
What Is Schema? According to Schema.org,
“Schema.org provides a collection of shared Keep an Eye on Your ROI
vocabularies webmasters can use to The return on investment for your content marketing
market up their pages in ways that can be efforts is something that needs to be continually
understood by the major search engines: tracked and evaluated. What worked well last year
Google, Microsoft, Yandes, and Yahoo.” for content offers may not be effective this year.
Keep your finger on the pulse of what is improving
Schema mark-up is essentially microdata that
your ROI and adjust your strategy accordingly.
provides additional information to search
engines that people reading the webpage
would normally understand. This microdata
labels different items on a webpage, such
as “name,” “address,” “person,” “review,” etc.

Got questions about content marketing?

Contact Bop Design for the answers.
TWITTER T FACEBOOK F LINKEDIN

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