Content marketing is an effective way to keep customers engaged and informed. Since educated customers mean increased customer satisfaction, building a platform of educational content marketing can help businesses achieve their financial goals.

However, quantifying the returns on educational content marketing can be difficult. With no direct sales numbers and revenues attached to content marketing itself, gauging the value and quality of your content depends on other metrics. 

Here, we will break down how to value content marketing for B2B and more, showing you just how to gauge your return on investment (ROI) and set your expectations.

Education Marketing in B2B

Content marketing that takes an educational approach is an essential aspect of modern digital business and a good SEO strategy. It brings about greater levels of customer success, which in the B2B industry is vital. The right educational content marketing approach can bring about a host of other benefits, including:

• Customer awareness of solutions offered by your business
• Research giving your customers the information they need to make the right choices
• Factors, tips, and strategies to consider
• Greater purchasing influence and power

With benefits like these, a content marketing approach that brings in customer education components is a valuable addition to any digital marketing strategy. By focusing on the client, you stand to increase your traffic and build greater conversion rates in the long term. Additionally, the continued success possible from educational content is invaluable for B2B companies as they provide products and services designed to help other businesses thrive.

But how exactly do you quantify the returns of the educational content you create?

ROI and Expectations

With consumers 131% more likely to buy from you after reading early-stage educational content, your ROIs stand to gain from the inclusion of this strategy into your toolkit. However, the direct value of educational content returns isn’t always clear. That’s why you need to understand your key performance indicators (KPIs) and set your expectations firmly in reality to best judge the effectiveness of your educational content marketing strategies. 

This can be done in a matter of three simple steps. We’ll break them down here:

1. Analyze Consumption Metrics

The way your audience engages and consumes your educational content will play a direct role in how you quantify your returns. You can use a host of platforms such as Google Analytics to study and mark these results, exploring everything from page clicks to direct engagement. 

Here are the consumption metrics you want to focus on:

• Page views
• Unique visitors
• Downloads
• Unsubscribe rate
• Bounce rate
• Likes and shares

Each of these metrics, alongside your other pre-defined KPIs, will demonstrate the effectiveness of your educational content. You want your growth to be around 15%, shooting for new audiences and targets brought into your overall approach. Users should be clicking on your content and staying there. If your bounce and unsubscribe rates are high, you know your content marketing strategy needs a revamp. 

2. Analyze Conversion Metrics

Conversion metrics demonstrate how your educational content is feeding into your overall sales, so this is an essential aspect of quantifying your content. You want to focus on conversions as they occur across leads, customers, and followers.

Take note of metrics such as:

• Opt-in percentage
• Subscribers
• Social media growth
• Revenue generation

You can keep a direct eye on the revenues associated with every page through your Channels report on Google Analytics. This metric is key to quantifying whether your strategy is successful or unsuccessful, giving you a direct dollar amount that you can compare to your expenses. 

3. Analyze Costs to Content Creation

The next essential metric to keep track of in gauging the value of your content strategy is the cost to time ratio in creating and publishing your content. It’s best to track these metrics within an internal spreadsheet, a place you can easily access and manage your data.

Keep track of the time you or others spent creating the content alongside costs to produce that content. These numbers in combination with the metrics listed above will ultimately show you the value of your educational content. 

At this point, you can easily utilize the equation for your ROI as the difference of the current value of your investment minus the original cost. Divide that difference by the original cost of your investment, and you have your return percentage on your educational content marketing efforts. 

By analyzing all this data and putting it in direct comparison, you can better understand how your educational content is serving your site and growing your returns. Not every content marketing approach will be immediately successful. These metrics help you study and review your process to know what works and what doesn’t in terms of building customer success and conversion rates.

Quantifying the ROI

Returns on educational content marketing aren’t all about the immediate revenues, however. You can use this content to build a loyal, informed customer base, carrying your potential as a business into new products and services.

Keep up your engagement and determine your success by following these strategies. Then, build a better process for producing educational content that boosts your returns.