How to Advocate for a Bigger Content Marketing Budget

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Unique and compelling content has always been a rare and valuable commodity on the web. Consumers, brands, software companies and even search engines have created a booming industry around creating, organizing, consuming, sharing and measuring content. With the widespread adoption of social media and the maturity of email, sales and marketing automation platforms, content is more important than ever.

The cost of creating engaging content is significant and ensuring the content reaches the desired audience can further increase the investment required. This article outlines effective strategies for selling management on a larger content marketing budget in 2021 and beyond.

In a study of Semrush, 46% of consumer brand marketers surveyed said their biggest challenge with content marketing programs was getting the budget right. Despite this, the average brand marketer invests up to 40% of their total marketing budget on content. Before we learn how to increase that number for your organization, let’s take a closer look at how the content marketing industry has evolved.

Content Marketing Budgets Are Growing With Industry Growth

According to Forrester Research, your future customers have browsed between 67% and 90% of their purchases before contacting you. Consumers are also more empowered than ever to conduct their own self-directed research, which requires a deeper level of useful yet actionable content.

Despite the challenges marketers face in creating engaging content, experts say it works. In fact, 96% of content marketers say content marketing has helped them build credibility and confidence with their audience and a colossal 95% of buyers of B2B services and products consider content to be a reliable marker when evaluating a business. Surprisingly, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing programs while generating 3x the leads.

Seventy-seven percent of B2C marketers and 86% of B2B marketers use content marketing to successfully achieve their goals. According to a Forrester Research report, three out of four respondents indicated positive results, ranging from increased loyalty to reduced marketing and media spend. Nearly 60% of respondents said they saw positive business results, including increased revenue and sales.

According to Semrush, content marketing budgets are growing rapidly:

• 68% of marketers expect their content marketing budget to increase in 2021
• 14% of marketers plan to increase their content budget by a hefty increase of more than 25% in 2021
• Only 3% of marketers expect their content marketing budgets to decrease next year
• The most effective consumer marketers allocate 25-30% of their marketing budget to content marketing
• The most effective B2B marketers spend 39% of their marketing budget on content

According to Semrush, in 2020, 47% of businesses had a content marketing budget over $10,000 (up from just 38% in 2019).

As companies realize the astronomical benefits of organic content, companies should alter their budgets to better reflect the importance of content marketing. In fact, 68% of respondents expect their content marketing budgets to increase by at least 10% over the next year. These budgets are divided between content creators, tools and content distribution. According to the Custom Content Council, 5% of content marketing dollars are spent on people. Content creation accounts for 32% of content marketing spend, while distribution accounts for 18%. As the demand for content marketing services and tools increases, so does the investment. Venture capitalists have already invested more than $1 billion in content marketing technology companies since 2006 and the industry is on track to generate $313 in billing revenue by 2020, based on of one PQ Media Global Content Marketing Forecast.

Start with a plan

Before you go to your boss asking for more funding for your content marketing programs, develop a strategic plan. Identify the overall business, business, and marketing goals that content marketing can effectively support. Incorporate metrics and benchmarks for each goal. Develop a strategic plan, including strategic initiatives, support tactics, and human resource requirements. Identify target audiences, channels and key messages.

You should also consider whether you have all the necessary content creation resources in-house, or whether you will need additional budget for freelancers or agencies. Create a budget and schedule and assign owners to key initiatives. Consider internal, competitive, and industry data to justify the budget, which should include both content production and syndication, as well as any advertising budget to promote, drive, or otherwise market the new content to your target audience.

Don’t forget to budget for the necessary content marketing tools and platforms (i.e. HubSpot or Hootsuite).

A well-designed content marketing program can support a variety of goals and initiatives. The most common goals for content marketing programs (and related metrics) include:

• Increase customer retention/retention (renewals, lifetime customer value)
• Increased engagement (time spent on website, increased website activity)
• Increased website conversion rates (website conversions to leads or sales)

Leverage existing resources first

Many companies view content marketing as a separate marketing activity that is not integrated across their entire organization. Think inside your organization to leverage, improve and expand your existing content and distribution. Collect, edit, optimize and syndicate your employees’ existing content. Leverage relationships, resources, and budgets from other departments, including sales, customer service, and public relations. Look outside the company to strategic partners, vendors, and even customers for additional support with your content marketing initiatives.

go for gold

If you’ve struggled to get an adequate content marketing budget to fuel your inbound marketing efforts in the past, fear not. There are three effective selling strategies you can use to get an extra content marketing budget for 2021: appeal to logic or ego or simply apologize.

• Appeal to logic: I usually open content marketing budget discussions with research, which we provided in detail above. Regardless of your industry or customer profile, some kind of secondary research will be available online.
• Appeal to the ego: If the direction is not influenced by the analytical approach, then the ego approach generally works. Perform a competitive industry benchmark audit, assessing the use and effectiveness of your competitors’ content marketing initiatives.
• Apologize: If basic research efforts fail to obtain the desired resources, there remains a sales strategy. Due to the risky nature of this approach, I offer this disclaimer: Forgiveness Strategy can get you fired.

Armed with the content marketing research and best practices outlined above, you should have much more success securing the content marketing budgets you need to grow your business today and beyond.

Kent Lewis is president and founder of Anvil Media, a measurable marketing agency based in Portland, Oregon. He is also a co-founder of SEMpdx and was named AMA Marketer of the Year. For more information, visit www.anvilmediainc.com.