Marketing Thought Leader Seth Godin has said
that “Content marketing is all the marketing that’s left.” If you believe him,
then your budget for content had better reflect the strategic role it has in
your marketing plan.
Nearly all businesses have at least some sort
of funds allocated to content marketing. According to eMarketer, [84% of all businesses used digital content marketing in\\
2018](http://www.emarketer.com/Chart/US-Companies-Using-Digital-Content-Marketing-B2B-vs-Total-2015-2019-of-total/215455).
But how much should you expect to invest in
the creation and promotion of content?
There’s obviously no one-size-fits-all answer,
but there are some benchmarks that can be referenced to use as guidelines.
What Should Be Included In Your Content Marketing Budget?
Your specific budget will be determined by
your content marketing strategy and the specific content production and
promotion required to execute that strategy.
Will you focus entirely on blog posts, or
require video production?
Will you promote your content with paid ads,
or focus on getting organic traffic to your content?
These questions will be answered as you define
your specific strategy, and will ultimately determine the specifics of your
budget.
But we’ve found that many business owners and
marketers are unfamiliar with the amount of work that goes into content
marketing.
Let’s take a look at typical activities that
go into executing a content marketing strategy that’s focused on written
content:
● **Strategy, Management, Evaluation**
— Someone
will have to create your content plan, manage it, and measure performance.
Whether it’s done by you or an agency, the investment should be accounted for.
● **Writing**
— The costs of paying a writer to
write the content for you.
● **Editing**
— The costs of proofreading the piece
and ensuring it fits your editorial guidelines.
● **Graphics and Formatting**
— Good design has
become increasingly important in consumer decisions.
● **Content Promotion Costs**
— Promoting content
ensures that each asset provides as much performance as possible.
● **Agency/Freelancer Overhead**
— If you’re paying
someone else to write content for you, they will charge on top of the direct
content production costs to cover things like admin, taxes, etc.
● **Content Publishing Administration**
— Content
doesn’t email or upload itself! Tasks related to putting your content online
and ensuring it appears as expected take time and therefore money.
● **Content Management and Measurement Tools**
—
Content marketing-related tools like SEO rank trackers aren’t necessary, but
they do help you get more out of your budget. They also ensure your money is
being well spent.
Does your content marketing strategy include
video? A podcast?
You can see how the list of activities can add
up very quickly!
Content Marketing Budget Benchmarks
As we’ve already made clear, your budget will
depend on the specific nature of your content marketing strategy. That being
said, industry data give us a few clues that can help establish benchmarks to
help you with your budgeting.
First,
the U.S. Small Business Administration recommends
companies doing under $5 million a year in sales spend
7-8% of gross revenue on marketing and advertising. They also suggest that this
number could go as high as 20% in a more competitive industry.
Looking at individual companies, 27% of business to customer (B2C)
and 23% of B2B companies
spent between 1% – 9% of
their total marketing budget on content.
However, **the**
**B2B companies considered the most successful at reaching their content goals**
**spent an average of 40% on content marketing**
, and **the most successful B2C companies spent an average of 38%**
. A
quarter of both company types also said that a bigger budget helped them find
more success.
A Formula For Success
Based on the numbers above, we created a
simple formula for doing a back-of-the-envelope budget for content marketing
success at a typical smaller business:
\[Revenue x .10\] x .40 = Total Content
Marketing Budget
Using our formula, a $5 million dollar per
year business would have the following budget:
\[$5m x .10\] x .40 = $200K
You Get What You Pay For
Ultimately, the decision for how much to spend
on content is a blank canvas and will depend on the scale and scope that your
strategy dictates.
However, using the benchmark data and our
rough formula above should give you a reasonable starting point to create your
budget.
Hopefully, you now have a clearer idea of what
your content budget consists, and if not, we’re here to help! Reach out to us
via email, comments, or our contact form to get the conversation started.