Shrinking marketing budgets have led to higher expectations. The strategic solution? Move away from the vanity metrics to spotlight the actionable ones.

Today’s market is utterly fast-paced. Buyers demand more, and businesses stitch new ways to catch up. And even if they do, it’s not the end.

Marketing, once transactional, has made a transformational leap to being relational. But has customer-centricity ended at personalization and value addition? Not quite.

It’s become crucial for marketing to get every tidbit right, from strategy to execution. Businesses desperate to repair their strategic ruptures and keep up are investing in updating their old playbooks.

But investment doesn’t equal impact – it’s an age-old story.

Marketers fail at bridging content marketing’s value with business objectives. In simple terms, B2B marketers invest a copious amount of time and resources into content marketing, often failing to show how it impacts their revenue or pipeline.

This strategic disconnect between content’s performance and business goals has made it complex to justify the spend, let alone the content marketing ROI.

So, it’s become paramount for businesses to track whether their investments are actually worth it. The content marketing landscape is all too familiar with this dilemma.

How can you prove to your CEOs and other stakeholders that investing in content actually works? An efficient solution to navigating this pushback and doubt starts from the basics.

What Is Content Marketing ROI?

Investing in content marketing means playing the long game. But what if your marketing team can’t showcase the results of this investment and procure initial buy-in? According to recent statistics, 65% of marketers can’t.

It’s truly about finding the relevant measuring methodology for your content, starting with content marketing ROI.

Content marketing ROI is simply the percentage that demonstrates the revenue generated (the earn-back) compared to how much the business spent on its marketing efforts. It calculates the efficiency and effectiveness of your content marketing campaigns.

Why is measuring content marketing ROI vital?

This performance metric is crucial for businesses to understand the extent to which their content is making waves – generating revenue, and the like. Calculating website traffic and engagement doesn’t correspond with the spend, and their weight is significant in capturing demand, but it doesn’t justify the entire investment. The total investment into content marketing includes production, management, licensing, distribution, strategy management, and relevant software/tools.

These make it crucial to illustrate whether your content assets are actually moving the needle, i.e., converting prospects into active buyers.

Content marketing ROI plays an integral role here.

It assesses and offers tangible numbers to spotlight the impact generated through targeted campaigns and individual content assets such as blogs, email newsletters, and social media campaigns.

And the benefit of calculating content marketing ROI is that it can highlight qualitative and quantitative factors. Beyond the numbers, it also helps demonstrate how your content pieces are fairing to build customer loyalty, capture leads, and elevate brand awareness.

In short, your content marketing ROI is tangible proof to justify the overall marketing budget allocation. Because CMOs are asked to do more with less.

Marketing faces the biggest budget cuts. A 2024 Gartner report illustrated how the department has faced a 15% year-over-year decline in average marketing budget. And in 2024, it was attributed only 7.7% of the company’s revenue.

Why is this the case?

We have come full circle here. Marketing is perceived as a cost center. And with narrower budgets, there’s more pressure on teams to showcase quantifiable outcomes.

So, the vitality of content marketing ROI.

It’s easier to make informed decisions with clear metrics like which marketing channel is bringing in the profit, and which needs an upgrade.

This way, your content marketing team doesn’t spend unnecessary time churning out assets that don’t really influence the leads or build your brand. To do so effectively, it’s primarily significant to outline how to measure content marketing ROI.

How Should You Measure Content Marketing ROI To Assess Impact on the Bottom Line?

To measure real impact, marketers need to transcend the soft metrics and focus on what actually matters- the bottom line.

So, the commonplace formula for measuring content marketing ROI establishes a direct correlation between content marketing efforts and an increase in sales or revenue.

• Content Marketing ROI = (Revenue – total investment/total investment)/100

Revenue is at the core of every business function – it’s the final boss. Hence, the traditional content marketing ROI formula centers on business revenue.

Although it is important, this formula is a bit constricting. It takes months for leads to convert into sales opportunities. And without these sales, it’s ascertained that the final metrics would again fail to prove how investing in content marketing has moved the needle.

The need for an upgrade in the traditional ROI formula

There are other stages in your buyer’s journey where content illustrates substantial impact, especially in helping leads progress down the funnel.

It may take months to prove whether your content production and the relevant nitty-gritty have a fundamental role in revenue generation. But you can still demonstrate how it affects your pipeline.

Content impacts the deal velocity and lead volume, and is crucial to focus on.

Marketers require a much-needed upgrade in this formula – one that entails precision. This change is requisite because B2B customer journeys are rarely linear and straightforward.

Amidst the 95% of buying committees that make tech purchases, a whopping 49% of them don’t even speak to sales reps. They rely on the content assets available at the different digital touchpoints to finalize their decisions.

So, rather than the traditional formula, curate a more sophisticated one that allows you to measure different stats to build a more accurate picture of your business performance. It must be based on the Content marketing KPIs that matter to you, not what your competitors are following.

It’s true that industry benchmarks significantly matter, but don’t lose sight of what is relevant to your brand and your customers. Owing to this, it’s better to underline your own system that traces the KPIs you want.

5 Effective Strategies to Improve Your Content Marketing ROI

Each content type has its own set of metrics to consider.

You don’t need to focus on all available metrics to calculate performance, but on the right strategies that augment your existing capabilities. And improve your ROI.

The pivotal ones you can begin with are:

1. Ascertain that the set KPIs align with the overarching business goals.

First, underline the fundamental goal of your campaign and the channels you’ll leverage. They significantly impact the metrics you’re required to measure.

For example, if your priorities are sales and revenue, track the customer journey from awareness to conversion. As the lead progresses down the funnel, focus on every micro-conversion and assign it a tangible value.

2. Focus on the actionable metrics that provide you with tangible insights.

This will help you underscore what to optimize over time. Move away from misleading vanity metrics such as web traffic or CTRs.

Do all the 10k website visitors convert into your buyers? No. Views and traffic don’t demonstrate interest or value.

The relevant metrics are the ones that enable your marketing team to act. They don’t just look impressive on paper, but actually delve into what drives prospects to close deals with your brand.

3. Audit your authority and keyword rankings.

How your ICP perceives your brand is a crucial metric to study, i.e., your authority. It might be complex to track, but if you do it correctly, this metric can help supplement your efforts to improve the ROI.

Tracking your authority means auditing the number and quality of inbound links added to the brand’s social media mentions.

What do these illustrate? Whether your brand authority and awareness are growing.

The same goes for keyword rankings. Analyzing SEO metrics helps you monitor the impact of your blogs. When carried out effectively, your blogs should boost your domain’s SERP and elevate your ranking. In tangible terms, this signifies more organic traffic for your website.

But to get a clear picture of whether you’re doing content marketing right, pair SEO metrics with conversion rates. It will give you a clearer view of whether your marketing team is:

• Leveraging the right keywords
• Truly reaching your target audience
• Influencing leads’ journey through the funnel

4. Merge brand value into the metric mix.

Brand value is considered less significant in measuring success. And is often perceived as an intangible or fluffy aspect of a business.

It’s true that brand building takes time, patience, and consistency. But when paired with content, it functions as a multiplier.

But savvy marketers who have learned how to catch up with changing marketing dynamics know this is untrue. A strong brand ensures your prospects are warm, informed, and already leaning towards purchasing your solutions. This results in shortened sales cycles and improved conversion rates – two factors directly affecting revenue.

A strong brand identity attracts the most relevant leads (that fit your ICP) and pays off in the long term. Growing market recognition means you invest less in paid channels because your prospects are actively searching for you.

This results in compounding ROI, enhancing the value of all your content pieces, rather than just the latest ones.

5. Track the performance of the sales enablement assets.

Your sales teams utilize these content pieces to drive conversion. These aren’t blogs or LinkedIn posts.

These pieces are part of sales enablement directly offered to a potential client at the BOFU stage. They help prospective buyers to finalize their purchasing decisions. Think of one-pagers, proposals, objection-handling decks, among others, that are built by marketing and leveraged by sales.

What makes the sales enablement content vital is its direct involvement in sales deals, from a case study that can build trust to a one-pager highlighting the pricing model that accelerates negotiation.

If your sales enablement content is helping convert leads into opportunities, you’re looking at real and tangible impact – one that should be tracked and optimized.

Content Marketing ROI Is More Than Just Following a Formula.

This is what actually matters to accurately measure the success of your content marketing efforts – impact on the bottom line.

Measuring the ROI is just a means to convert the said impact into understandable terms. But in practice, it’s not a piece of cake. Its multifaceted-ness really puts a schism into the entire process.

“Sometimes, there are still gaps in the data where it’s just impossible to see the immediate impact of certain metrics on core objectives.”

– asserts Google’s VP of Large Customer Solutions.

The real game changer is knowing which metrics to actually track and using this knowledge to execute the right strategies. Content marketing ROI cannot prove your brand’s success and growth to the decimal, but it can help it grow and revamp.

Tracking your content marketing ROI is really just about highlighting the blind spots in your efforts and improving on what’s not working for you – setting you on the right track for the long term.

With information overload becoming mainstream, how can a multidimensional content ecosystem help you stand out?

Every channel available is saturated with content – from long to short form. With endless content at our fingertips, most of us end up fatigued. But overconsumption is a complex quagmire to wade through.

Entertained yet tired, we get into a rut, consuming snackable and scrollable content of little value. And so, the real value slips through the cracks.

Amid this complexity, marketing’s purpose is to be heard.

But when consuming irrelevant content takes a huge chunk of people’s time- how can we make space for what matters?

The industry has come up with one solution – content atomization.

What is Content Atomization?

As the name suggests, content ‘atomization’ is breaking down smaller chunks from a larger piece of content, such as a whitepaper or eBook.

But, when an audience is already experiencing content fatigue, offering them more content could become counterintuitive. Contrary to the common belief, constant access to the Internet is also unfavorable. We are unintentionally trading our attention span for addictive, low-value content.

It’s not merely this. If the brain is already saturated, it rarely has the space to digest what matters. Think of this- new ideas being dumped in your brain every few seconds- a cacophony of noise overloading your senses. The result is obvious- dissociation and attention-deficiency.

This has become a conundrum for B2B marketing.

The more people are bombarded with messages, the more they have learned to tune it out. Do you read through the 20 promotional newsletters in your inbox? Highly unlikely.

Even though these pieces have been crafted with purpose, they lack agency. Buyers are not interested in self-serving messages.

Even though brands consistently churn out content, it doesn’t receive the required engagement or reach. This is also a downside of content marketing that marketers need to address and counter they must grab their consumer’s attention.

To do this, they choose to create more content. But there’s no guarantee that this works every time because curating effective and resonating content at a stretch is demanding.

16% of marketers feel it’s a challenge to brainstorm fresh content ideas. So, in this attention-deficit age, it’s true- modern marketers must cut through the content clutter without alienating the consumer.

Especially when there are unique requirements for every touchpoint of the buyer’s journey.

This is why making the most of your content marketing strategies has become crucial for modern marketers.

Content atomization is one such strategy- it’s all about working smarter.

Content atomization is a modular approach in which a single entity (content) breaks down into atoms (smaller pieces of the same content). This structured method is akin to a Lego tower- each piece creates another whole but also exists in itself.

Content atomization ensures your content is amplified across multiple channels while retaining consistency and quality.

But don’t confuse it with content repurposing.

Content atomization involves breaking something into self-contained pieces that reflect the original intent. Here, it’s a deconstructive strategy. Consider long-form content, such as an eBook based on “AI & Machine Learning: A Winning Combination for Your Brand.” Now, content atomization states that this specific eBook can be broken down into the following smaller chunks:

1. LinkedIn carousel or text-only post
2. Infographic
3. Mini-guide or a how-to
4. Podcast topic, among others.

It’s just the surface layer of what a brand can achieve with content atomization. This top-down approach is a treasure trove for modern marketers in the age of multichannel and multiformat approaches.

Meanwhile, content repurposing means recycling and modifying an existing piece. It’s about transforming or reshaping a piece of content into something new for different purposes. Repurposing content primarily focuses on two things: reformatting and reframing.

It’s unnecessary if the original intent remains because most repurposed content is reformatted to fit a different context that appeals to the other party.

Consider the example by Hubspot: “Sharing an old blog post that you’ve updated with new, relevant data and thought leadership quotes.” Just like how you can reformat a blog into a slide or a ‘how-to’ YouTube video.

Both strategies, although distinct, are part of modern marketing campaigns to elevate visibility and reach. It helps set your business apart amid all the noise.

Benefits content atomization poses for businesses.

Content atomization holds all these benefits for businesses, irrespective of their size. One of the most significant ways it stands out is that the approach can be mapped across all active marketing channels depending on the marketing mix.

From podcasts and landing pages to email marketing and infographics, atomization is a 360-degree marketing strategy rather than a one-off one.

The decent and simple reason why it should be more widely adopted by marketers is because it’s effective, cost-efficient, and time-saving. It doesn’t require a lot of resources and targets multiple touchpoints.

Know Your Audience

One of the nippy things is that it helps with strategic pre-planning. Knowing your target audience has always been paramount for marketers – whether modern or traditional. Deciding on smaller chunks of content necessitates this.

How else can marketers know which piece to extract and present?

Boost Visibility and Awareness

The second aspect is that content atomization serves as a built-in amplification of your brand. When singular core ideas are distributed through different marketing channels the brand leverages, each is amplified in its own way. The objective, channel, and audience might be different, but this strategy makes your brand omnipresent.

The audience feels your brand is everywhere at once, significantly elevating brand awareness and visibility.

Increase Engagement

Third, content optimization increases audience engagement as it leverages multiple channels and formats. When broader topics are broken down, the content becomes more spearheaded and niche.

This means the extracted content is a more in-depth and focused attribution of a subtopic addressed in the more significant content piece. It makes it more relevant and digestible for website visitors who prefer a particular type of content.

Enhances SEO efforts

Content atomization, very simply, allows brands to explore one topic to the nucleus and post it across different marketing channels. This strategy could drastically improve SEO efforts. Every new content could target a unique keyword and trigger different search queries.

Ensures Consistent Messaging

When a brand publishes multiple content pieces under an umbrella topic through numerous channels, it suggests the brand is a subject-matter expert. The truth is that even when the content is different, brand consistency is ascertained throughout.

Content atomization offers your brand messaging a stereo effect.

When done right, it’s a very efficient and quick roadmap to this common marketing objective – increased ROI of your content marketing budget.

So, how should you atomize your content?

1. Update and tweak your content periodically.

Trends significantly change every couple of years. The information in the content could become outdated and irrelevant, becoming out of touch with the latest ongoings.

Maybe content atomization could include copy-paste, but with stale content, this isn’t possible. Marketers must refine and revise content to fit the latest context, especially across each channel’s unique requirements.

Similarly, with time, user expectations drastically shift.

So, it’s paramount for content marketers to gauge the current patterns and optimize the atomized content.

2. Leverage sufficient time and resources.

To a great extent, content atomization focuses on selecting juicy and compelling bits. Additionally, each channel requires its own content. It can take significant time amid other core tasks that require focus.

However, what if the marketer doesn’t have the required skills? It could be challenging to retain the core idea of the content with significant knowledge gaps.

Your brand promises to deliver unique and engaging content. But then, it sounds like a broken record. This could be detrimental to the brand image and reputation. Your marketing skills should entail skills that ensure the audience doesn’t disengage.

3. Include clear CTAs in the atomized content.

Marketers’ target audience interest. This is why content marketing KPIs entails developing unique and compelling content that is informative and offers value.

When atomized content piques interest, it should connect to the original content asset. What if your audience finds it interesting, too? Now, they can thoroughly investigate a topic, improving engagement for both the original piece and the atomized content.

These atomization best practices are to ascertain and build positive relationships with prospects and existing customers. It boosts the impact of your content marketing efforts with relatively low effort. Each marketing channel is utilized efficiently, ensuring a significant change in ROI and conversion rates for your brand.

But a worry plagues marketers.

Is there a future for content atomization amidst the unpredictable waters of marketing?

The nucleus of content atomization is impact, reach, efficiency, and personalization. These also reflect the core of marketing functions besides storytelling and creativity. However, marketers’ concerns highlight that content atomization could mar this storytelling and creative facet.

Still, content atomization remains a powerful tool. The only concern is-

Will marketing be able to scale content production while retaining its quality and uniqueness?

A fresher approach to content marketing isn’t just a must-have but an imperative. Content atomization could answer this dilemma, proving the efficacy of content-focused marketing strategies.

AI and automation have created tension. Jobs are under the threat of being replaced, and our intrinsic value is at risk. But is that true?

Everyone has been afraid of AI disrupting their survival. One industry at the forefront of this onslaught is marketing or, rather, content marketing.

Creatives in the field are terrified and excited about what this technology will do. Will it transform how we consume content and deliver it to the user?

But let us present a hopeful future—one that shows that AI cannot replace the value of creativity.

Look at the screenshot above—we call it a gem. It was found through human experience. While the search volume and KD ratio can be automated, finding the keyword that might attract the right audience needs lived experience.

Marketing, especially SEO, is full of these gems. It can be found by understanding that people of all backgrounds are curious about topics, especially ones that intrigue or scare them.

Human beings want to know the answers immediately and are equipped with an encyclopedia in their pockets to answer queries, doubts, or fears, usually in the form of content.

We look for answers in the stories of others, hoping one would match our circumstances and provide an answer.

The answer to end uncertainty.

AI and Content Marketing

HBR wrote a piece on the three priorities of a CMO. In it, they declare that the principal role of a CMO has always been to be a great storyteller.

We can say it is a fact.

Great marketing is born out of stories. In technical terms, it is positioning yourself.

What perspective are you bringing, and what value does it provide? The CMO then directs their team to work towards that single goal. Sure, there are pivots along the way. Maybe a campaign does not meet its goal, or there are not enough qualified leads, but the story continues in a new iteration. Perhaps it’s rewritten.

But for a CMO— talented individuals who bring their vision to life is vital. Yet, they are still human and prone to errors. Writers may take time to write the content, or designers may create designs that are not on-brand. Maybe someone important on your team is on maternity leave.

Everyday problems disrupt businesses. After all, we are not machines that can work 24/7.

But now, there is one that can! AI.

It can write content that is informational, helpful, and in-depth— depending on the prompt, of course.

It can tell an expert story for you. Sounds great. Though, there is one hiccup.

The content will no longer be that of someone with similar experiences. Why? Because, as far as we know, the intelligent machine does not have any experience.

Content quality and prompts

This conversation with Anthropic’s Claude reveals something profound. And for now, this is the definite way of how AI works.

They provide a reflection for the questions you ask. What you input will be the output, and everything that follows will be a refinement of your thought processes. To get something unique out of the AI systems, you will need to spend time and dig deeper into your own experiences to ask the right questions.

AI is the extension of all accumulated human knowledge. It is the natural evolution of our desire to inquire and reflect on the answers provided to us.

The type of content you produce will depend on the accuracy of your prompts and the subject matters involved. If the process were fully automatic, there is a chance AI could hallucinate the information and feed an incorrect story to your prospects.

That’s why AI machines can be prompt hacked. They cannot be perfect because the data they are trained on is inherently biased.

Marketing Teams and the lived experience

With strategies like demand generation and brand awareness campaigns, marketing teams stir the natural curiosity of the human mind. The prospect is identified, and their pain points are tackled.

But we are quickly hitting a saturation point. Products, solutions, and the content surrounding it have surpassed the limits of production. Ahref reports 96.55% of content does not get traffic from Google.

Imagine, that is almost millions of pages. A lot of good businesses with good content probably fall under that spectrum. Why is that? It is because the whole of the web is inundated with outdated content, and now we have AI-made content in the mix. Marketing messages are just not working as effectively as they used to.

However, there is one thing that works like no other: Out-of-the-box-thinking.

Every successful campaign follows this. Either it simplifies things or creates a novel way of experiencing. These are created through understanding the present condition of the market, by relating to the pain points of the target segment, and by providing an experience that delights them and makes them feel understood. Automated systems cannot do that.

But your teams can. They can craft strategies that are in relation to prospects’ life experiences.

You can create ICPs based on data that AI can analyze and create content around, but actual understanding needs a lived experience.

Why content strategy cannot be automated.

Strategy sounds elusive. Because it is not planning, it is trying to create an intended outcome by hypothesizing the needs of the market. And yet, marketing teams and business leaders know that strategy is what brings success.

It offers tangible outcomes in uncertainty. However, there are a lot of inherent risks in playing a strategy.

1. It might fail
2. There will be a monetary loss
3. Time invested in the strategy will go to waste.

Money and time cannot be recovered when it is gone. Competition will not wait for your strategies to succeed, and failure can threaten your position in the market. These are real concerns that leaders have to gripe through.

So, it becomes easier to rely on AI that is perceived as more concrete. Think about it— automated systems make fewer errors. Machines are tight-bound by laws and rules that human beings are not. The question, then, is: Why not automate strategies and make them definite?

Strategic Choices for Certainty

Roger Martin, one of the most prominent business strategists alive today, says that there are five choices a business must undertake to ensure strategic success. It is called the Strategy Choice Cascade.

They are: –

1. What is our winning aspiration?
2. Where will we play?
3. How will we win where we have chosen to play?
4. What capabilities must be in place to win?
5. What management systems are required to ensure the capabilities are in place?

If this is all it takes, an AI system created solely for this task might use this logic and craft strategies—content marketing and business— for wild profits. It might even generate something novel and creative. Viola, there’s success.

Strategy is strangely human.

But as we know, AI and automation are based on rules and logic. It does not account for the changing dynamics of human behavior. Our models have trouble predicting long-term behaviors—we cannot even accurately predict weather beyond 10 days.

That’s because our models are incomplete for analyzing small details imperceptible to them. They are created by people, and we cannot account for everything. Changes happen on a minute scale, and they cascade rapidly, making it difficult to predict the future.

You must use these methods, data sets, and tools to enhance human intuition. For some reason, strategy is strangely human.

There is one trait common among good leaders: An imperceptible eye or “good taste”. Successful CMOs have developed an instinct for what resonates with their market because they have in-depth knowledge of their audiences and buyers.

The CMO, marketer, and writer who understands this will craft a creative content strategy that resonates with its intended audience. And that is how successful brands thrive.

We call it intuition, but it is pattern recognition that happens quickly and without thought. It follows the same logic as understanding what your spouse or friend will like as a gift.

This accumulated pattern recognition is not happening through mathematic models, and for now, it cannot be automated by a machine. Strategy is finding relatable experiences and bringing them to a market segment that will appreciate them.

Content strategy automation is unlikely because…

There are two examples that illustrate why content strategies cannot be automated. Do you remember the above screenshot? It was found through searching for a topic.

Our team found it while discovering topics for our newsletter. It came through discovery and a deep understanding of our SEO team’s understanding of our core audience’s needs. Through this, we can find such gems.

Another is this that we found by capitalizing on trends.

This is another gem. The keyword Claude 3.5 V.S. GPT 4o is relevant and has a low KD of 33%. Making it possible for teams to talk about a relevant and timeless topic (Machine vs Machine), helping brands rank. Through such unique activities, we were able to find and create strategies that helped us identify keywords to rank for.

This process of discovery is difficult for a machine to do because it cannot, as of yet, self-direct itself and self-reflect.

Two metrics of effective content creation that urge its readers and move them.

Now, Let us talk about the second one.

Staying on trend is essential.

Sensory marketing is picking up steam. It is essentially the ability to make your potential buyers feel the product or what it does. The above post is one of the hundreds that talk about a makeup brand called Rhode by Hailey Bieber.

This example may seem very B2C or better for tangible products. But it can be used in B2B contexts. Through design, teams can give the illusion of software tangibility.

The question is: How can you and your teams leverage your unique propositions to create this new experience? And what will be the context for it?

Automating your content strategy might be an option. But it is not the correct one.

Content marketing will always be about conversations and relationships with the ideal buyer. They will need their risks mitigated and experiences validated.

Marketing teams, through ingenuity, must show them that you understand the value of their problem and have a solution. The strategy you take differentiates you from the competition.

But as AI becomes accessible and you rely on the same tools as your competition, you will need free-thinkers and creatives who think in novel ways and create experiences. CMOs are asked to do less with more and operate on a lean model. Stakeholders and C-exes must ensure that the CMO is free to tell the story of your product.

Automation and AI are an extension of your teams’ creativity, but they must not be conflated with the certainty you seek.

Content creation is the fusion of experimentation and creativity. But as the buyer becomes self-directed, what role does content play in their journey?

Content marketing is about answering a question. Advertisements, blog posts, snippets, and designs answer a question in the reader’s mind. Effective content adds value to an audience, pointing them in the right direction.

From the early days of our ancient literature to the value-providing pages of the modern blog, audiences seek to elevate their understanding of a subject in response to a need. The need could be an intellectual curiosity, or for the B2B buyer, it means ending their analysis paralysis.

Content is the cornerstone of effective marketing. It is a win-win solution in this pay-to-go digital era. Imagine all the content you have read and the value it provides. With some brands and suppliers, you might have felt they were still holding something away from you.

On the other hand, some brands like HubSpot, SEMrush, and Gartner (Just like our very own Ciente.io) provide high-quality content because they understand the value of giving something in return.

It enables the buyer to control their buying journey and increases their trust in the brand.

An audience will think: If they can provide free content of such high value, what do their paid efforts look like? They purchase because of this.

Look at HBR— they provide two free articles every month. A patient audience member might wait a month, or an audience with agency will subscribe to it. And for the value they provide in two free blogs, many choose to do it.

Effective content creation always gets the buyer asking for more. It gets them thinking: What else is possible?

Content Marketing is a multi-platform opportunity to interact with the buyer at every step of the funnel.

Resonating with the prospect is critical for marketing campaigns to work. If they are disinterested in what you are saying, your emails, blogs, and newsletters can quickly become spam for the audience.

The only way to gain their interest is to:

1. Provide value and confirm what they already believe in.
2.  Create compelling copies and designs that provide style and substance.
3. Create content that is uniquely positioned to cater to their needs
   1. i.e., Why my product is suited for your specific needs and how we can enable your teams to become more efficient.
4.  Describe clearly, through communication, that your product will empower them to solve existing problems and avoid any incoming ones.
5. Position yourself as a cost and time-saver in an uncertain world.
6.  Promise an achievable and doable positive outcome.

Many marketing firms in the past were contended with top-funnel leads, but the buyer is not a decision-maker anymore; they are a committee. And each individual is armed with knowledge and information from your competitors providing similar high-quality content. That is why ABM is so necessary in today’s information age.

How does an organization differentiate? It is within every individual marketing team to create a unique message. It is necessary to let the team experiment with their creative styles and acquire data for what works and what doesn’t.

The message

The market is saturated with solutions for every problem. They exist because there is a problem or potential problem that can be mitigated through these unique solutions.

The message is always crafted through these products. These messages are called product-led marketing and have picked up a storm. It is part of the Go-to-Market strategy and is an effective way of acquiring, activating, and retaining customers.

Product-Led Marketing Campaigns

A product-led marketing campaign is a complete funnel journey. It targets potential self-directed buyers throughout the funnel and guides them through an actual journey.

Many complain about the B2B routine, and 48% are bored with B2B marketing. Some call it a “snooze fest”.

Content throughout the funnel lacks a certain electricity that is so natural to the competitive landscape of B2C marketing. And often, marketing teams debate that the prospects are methodical.

Absolutely! But aren’t methodical buyers also interested in acquiring knowledge about available solutions in the market without being bored? And what better way to do that than to present it in engaging content!

Messaging Example: Computer A vs. B

Imagine a blank paper: you are asked to promote two computers with the same specs. What does a marketer write in it?

Imagine one writes computer A is the fastest in the world. It has a graphic card! You should buy it.

And someone else writes computer B solves your computational problems in seconds. Plays games at a high framerate with crystal clear audio and visuals.

Which computer would you choose? There you have it. The message is what your product does for the user. Not what the product does for itself.

Revealing the message and delivering it to the right audience are two separate endeavors.

When we think of the delivery, the core idea behind it is to draft creatives outlining all possible benefits for the consumer, for every possible need, at every step of the funnel.

Content Marketing to the entire funnel is a rare yet rewarding marketing strategy.

And it has become crucial for success. The majority of prospects are now self-directed. A group of C-suites are industry experts, add external knowledge from third-party sources, and the group becomes hyper-aware of the industry problems and its possible solutions.

If they are in the market for a solution, they want to know why your solution is the perfect fit for them.

Steps for Marketing Teams:: –

1. Understand their product and its story
2. Analyze and observe the product-fit market
3. Anticipate all storylines a self-directed buyer would assess before buying the product.

Pushing compelling content to the right audience will ensure a basis of trust. Buyers will purchase for this trust and the quality of the product.

If teams are sure the product is the perfect market fit, the message should reflect it. The buyer should come to buy; the brand shouldn’t sell. They should strongly suggest that their product is the right fit for a particular audience.

The case study: Ahrefs

And no one does this better than Ahrefs.com

Do you see how diverse the first six blogs from Ahrefs are? They are masters of the Go-to-Market strategy. One could say they revolutionized the full-funnel marketing strategy.

How did they do it?

1. By having a top-class product.
2. By creating content around that product for every stage of the funnel.

Ahrefs understands their market to perfection: People/marketing teams who want to increase website traffic.

Can you spot the trick here? Their content is compelling because they understand that teams and people could belong to any industry and designation. Not just a marketer. From lawyers to healthcare, their content goes in-depth to provide free and comprehensive guides for unique.

Their content has seamless buyer journey integration. An exciting offer for each stage of the funnel.

Top-of-the-Funnel

Ahrefs offers free SEO tools. They have limitations, but for what they do, the tools are impressive. Especially the backlink checker. It is the best in the market.

Any SEO specialist or professional will land on this page if they are venturing out into organic ranking for the first time. Users will generally search for the keyword Free SEO tools.

And even from SEMrush data, a competitor, Ahrefs consistently ranks in first place for the keyword ‘Free SEO tools’.

This is a fantastic introduction to Ahrefs. You think: If their free tool can do this for me. What does the paid one do?

Middle-of-the-Funnel

Ahrefs offers comprehensive free courses on using their tool and organic marketing. They do not need people signing up or any information. Seems counterintuitive for MOFU content. And that is why it works.

Nowhere does Ahrefs ask for sign-ups in any course, blog, guide, or FAQs. Yet, these are still MOFU content. From Tim Soulo, the CMO, to the VP of marketing, the courses feature industry leaders.

This content nurtures the prospect without any additional efforts on their side. As the prospect interacts more with Ahrefs as a company through their content, prospects will form a bond of trust between them.

And then comes the next step of the middle funnel.

Their tool section is part of their MOFU content. It has very soft CTAs and a beautiful presentation-esque media kit embedded into the website. Here it is below.

Through their meticulous use of content, we can see Ahrefs understands the value of content. But wait, they aren’t done yet.

Bottom-of-the-Funnel

The dissection of Ahrefsʼ website offers a masterclass in content creation. But where is the BOFU content? Obviously, it is in the emails they send. And the offers they give out. Their sales collateral and everything else in between, right? Of Course!

But there is one hidden right underneath our noses. Their blogs.

Wait, wait, hear it out. Their blogs are full-funnel content.

Their blog contains beneficial information for teams across the board, especially for those who use Ahrefs. Their product blog offers deep dives into the strategies a marketer would need to rank their website. From building high-quality links to finding out what keyword relevance is, there is a blog on their website addressing all the possibilities written by experts in the particular domain.

Their blogs are written to attract, activate, and retain. The core of a successful Go-To-Market strategy.

Ahrefs understands that with attractive and original designs, you can get the prospects’ attention. But to hold it, you need to go a step further and provide real value. Let them ask for more.

They let their content speak for their product. And let the prospect come to them.

Effective content creation for the self-directed buyer is about helping them overcome decision fatigue.

Decision-makers need to be extremely careful while making decisions. Changing vendors is costly. Especially for Enterprises, since businesses charge them differently than SMBs and freelancers. As such, the self-directed buyer will be rigid and hyper-aware of each decision.

Content is the way to break their decision fatigue and get them out of analysis paralysis.

Content Creation: The How

Sales and Marketing Alignment: –

The way to create content that breaks analysis paralysis is by aligning your sales and marketing teams. No one can provide feedback better than sales. They understand the market. They know what the buyer is looking for. The crucial insights a sales rep can provide to the marketing team have the potential to make or break the message. They can answer the question: What are the buyers looking for?

Understanding the Audience: –

The next step is to understand your audience’s creative needs. What type of content do they love to read or watch? Your content must reflect or be an upgrade of the current industry standards. The current industry standard is to create in-depth articles and inundate the prospect with infographics, demos, and more.

But lately, leaders have realized that to reach an audience, they must speak from experience. Irrespective of the size of the content. The content an audience reads needs to touch on topics relevant to them.

1.  What does the audience care about?
2. What channels do they use to consume this content— LinkedIn, Instagram, or websites like Forbes or the Ahrefs blog?
3.  What does the best content in the industry look like, and why is it perceived as the best?
4.  What are the possibilities the audience deals with on a work-life basis?

Questions like these will help you answer the creative needs of your audience.

Departmental Collaboration: –

Collaboration across departments has become crucial for creative messages to resonate with the right audience. The product teams know what the product can do. The sales team knows what the buyer wants. Content has to be the cohesive line connecting all of it. If your team is writing about increasing CLTV, who should you consult but your finance department? They know which behavioral group has shown more CLTV.

Craft a story a.k.a. Brand Guidelines: –

Brand guidelines or the story of your brand ensure a consistent message. It is the tone of your organization or founder-lead teams. It stems from your brand mission.

Example, Atlassian positions itself as a workflow improvement software, and as such, all its content revolves around how businesses and organizations can improve time and workflows.

Give your team creative freedom: –

Once the marketing team has gathered the necessary data. Content creation requires a bit of risk-taking. Leaders must encourage it. If the team knows what their playground looks like, it is simple to play in it.

Every creative they create will have some truth in it. It might not be complete, but it will be there. Let the team craft what they feel would work. From long-form content to shorts like TikTok, B2B has evolved to accommodate all forms of media. There is no reason not to get creative and take risks.

Encourage a swipe file: –

All good ideas come from copying and then honing the message. A swipe file can be full of competitor strategies for keywords to their designs. Understanding what worked for them and not for you is crucial to creating content that is “disruptiveˮ. People love to watch and read a deconstruction of an existing trend. Swipe files help creative teams understand these trends and high-quality content look like.

Delete what is unnecessary: –

Having an editor on the team is like having a golden goose. Not only are they able to streamline the content creation and ensure brand guidelines are met. They provide a reign for the wild ideas the team may have and bring out the gem in them. Saying no to excess experimental creative ideas is finding the idea that feels “just right”.

Bring the experience together as a CMO: –

Marketing leaders must work with other departments to create an experience for the audience. By acquiring data from different departments to having a final say in what is published, marketing leaders will drive the message to the final audience. They must serve as the editor-in-chief, as content becomes vital for the survival of a business. And they must ensure the message delivers on the promise.

Creating content is not limited to the steps above. But it is a good start to create an experience that will seem frictionless to the buyer. To have them believe in a cohesive message that is unique to you.

As the buyer becomes more aware of the market, the content must meet their standards.

There is a lot of content out there. Emails, blogs, e-books, social media posts. Itʼs endless. The buyer, as they evaluate options, needs to feel as if they are being understood. And if the content you create doesnʼt resonate with them, ending just as another voice, then that is not possible.

Your content is a reflection of your product. When the decision is business critical, it is time to make each content count.

Hyper-connectivity and FOMO have got everybody hooked onto social platforms. Are businesses leveraging this untapped goldmine of potential leads?

With 2024 around the corner and the focus on maximizing demand generation, this is the optimum time to formulate and adopt new social media lead generation strategies for social media platforms. What worked in the previous or the current year might be redundant for the upcoming period. Keeping up with the social media trends means consistently fine-tuning the existing scheme to churn out better leads and engagements. 

In this article, we explore eight fool-proof strategies for 2025 that would help your brand get better prospects through social platforms. 

Before we delve into the strategies, here are some interesting Social Media Statistics all enterprises must know about: 

1. Globally, over 4.59 billion people used social media platforms in 2022 to engage with brands. 
   
2. On average, a person spends over 2.5 hours daily on these platforms, browsing videos or discovering brands and businesses. 
   
3. For B2C marketing, Instagram offers the highest ROI for selling products (33%), followed by Facebook (25%), YouTube (18%), TikTok (12%), and Twitter (6%). LinkedIn ranks as the best platform for B2B Marketers, and 97% of companies trust its offerings as compared to other platforms. 

Source 

4. Brands are predicted to spend massively on social media ads, to the tune of $207.1 billion, to attract prospects. 

Needless to say, these are some of the most thriving platforms for businesses to identify their audience or simply put, their leads. 

8 Reliable Tactics for Enhancing Social Media Lead Generation in the Coming Year

Optimize your handles

If your business has its presence across social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, or Twitter, optimize these pages with the correct details. From the perfect image dimension/resolution, website link, email address, or phone number, all details should be visible on your platforms. Experts recommend using a CTA on the bio like “click on website/call for a free consultation” for a quick engagement with the prospect.

Create a gated community

Gated content helps create a sense of exclusivity for your potential customers. Content that needs sign-up or limited-access webinars not only procures data for email marketing but also makes the prospect feel special and substantially increases your brand value.

Go live

Businesses often overlook a vital fact i.e., the human connection. Static ad campaigns do their job of attracting leads, sure. But going live during a webinar, launching a new service or product, or community events affirm consumer trust in the brand, and they are likely to engage with your brand more. Sharing your expertise after a thorough preparation, emphasizing the quality of products or services, or sharing about your latest ventures during a live event ensures your leads look up to you as a thought leader.

Launch referral programs

A referral program is a great strategy to incentivize your audience instead of word-of-mouth publicity or content sharing. Giving free access to educational content, free products or services, and discounts to users encourages them to create user-generated content that attracts better leads. Statistics reveal that user-generated content like comments, videos, and testimonials appear 2.4X more authentic to consumers.

Leverage the power of influencers

There is a profound reason why brands engage with influencers to promote their products or services in exchange for perks. Influencers have a strong social connection with a wide audience base that finds them relatable and trusts their user-generated content. 92% of consumers trust influencer marketing over traditional marketing, and this is precisely why businesses must leverage the power of influencers.

Incorporate chatbots

By incorporating chatbots and conversational AI mechanisms, brands can ensure sending a robust response to a potential lead round-the-clock. If your business targets globally-based leads, it is impossible for a round-the-clock response to a potential lead. AI-integrated chatbots can execute professional conversations around acknowledging, providing FAQs, generating sign-up forms, and understanding the customer’s pain points. 63% of consumers interact better with a brand with a chatbot integrated with their social media platforms.  

Harness the power of ads and later add personalization

Lead-generation ads on social media help elevate the social media advertising strategy to the next level. The leads can sign up on pre-populated forms on social media platforms, easing the sign-up process. LinkedIn lead generation forms have an average conversion rate as high as 13% and generate high-quality leads, affirm the ad campaign’s ROI, and help better management of the leads across the sales funnel. Other platforms like Facebook and Instagram also offer lead-generation ad features to gauge better leads. Through further research on buyer personas, analytics, and data-driven insights, brands can personalize offers to the target leads to help convert them into customers.

Generate lead magnets through offers

It is imperative to launch lucrative offers like free tools, consultation, discount codes, free-trial products, and services to attract the right audience to your brand. This strategy boosts sales prospecting to a great extent. 50% of marketers confess to having better conversion rates by leveraging lead magnets in their sales prospecting strategy.

Takeaway

As we wind up 2023, we have already witnessed how social media strategies evolved and led to newer mechanisms and pathways for 2024. Social platforms offer a hyper-connected network of prospects, and many enterprises are hitting the bull’s eye by following the right strategies aligned with their business goals. Optimizing pages, launching lucrative deals and gated content, harnessing influencer marketing, floating social media ads, and using the power of chatbots are pivotal to acing the lead generation game.

The key is to attract better leads, drive meaningful conversions, and forge stronger connections by adopting these fool-proof strategies discussed. Ultimately, it is the fusion of data-driven insights, compelling story-telling, and adoption of the above critical strategies that help brands achieve unparalleled growth and revenue along the way.