The business case for long form content
What’s the ROI for that blog?
It’s a question that can make even the most experienced marketing manager quake in their boots. Because how do you measure the direct return from a blog, article or white paper?
That’s why investing in long form content can be so tricky. It’s an essential cornerstone of any good content marketing strategy but sometimes the numbers simply don’t add up. How can you build a good business case and overcome the challenge of determining the ROI on long form content.
The role of long form content
When the pressure’s on to make an impact and get results it’s easy to turn to ads, social media, direct email and other short form content channels. Long form can seem a bit self indulgent and time consuming.
But the best marketing strategies combine long and short form content to target client’s at different stages of the marketing funnel.
Because the self-indulgent nature of long form content is its superpower. It provides you with the opportunity to demonstrate your subject knowledge and flesh out the first impression your audience has from your short form content.
If your short form content is your dating app, then your long form content is the first (and hopefully subsequent) date. You start to show who you are, what you stand for, what you offer and whether you’re the right fit for your client.
That’s the role of long form content to move your audience through the nurturing part of your funnel and push them towards buying from you.
Does long form content have an ROI?
There’s no beating about the bush. Long form content costs more than short form.
Whether that’s because of the time and staffing resource in house or because you’re paying a freelancer or agency to produce it for you. When budgets are tight there’s a need to demonstrate the ROI from your investment.
But that’s where it gets tricky.
Because content, of all varieties, is part of a long game, it’s part of an omnichannel marketing approach, you can’t attribute specific value to a particular piece of content.
But here’s how you can start to track your content’s ROI.
Have the right tracking in place
To start to calculate your ROI you need to make sure you can track clicks, traffic sources, dwell time and all those other juicy stats. That means you need GA4 set up, you’re using UTMs from your promo posts, and landing pages where appropriate. If you can’t track where, who and how long someone is on your content then you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
Defining your conversions
What is a successful conversion from your content? Is it someone booking a call or someone signing a contract? Unless you know what you define as a conversion you won’t be able to track your ROI.
For example if you’ve gated your latest white paper and 100 people download it, is that a success because you’ve gained 100 new email details? Or is it only a success if 20 of those people go onto book a call?
This is where the line starts to blur for content ROI, because the content isn’t responsible for following up with those email addresses - that’s your sales team. But the content has attracted attention in the first place.
Know your costs
The cost of a freelancer might only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to content production costs. Throw in a keyword or SEO tool, a Canva subscription for images and some paid ads to promote it and suddenly you’re looking at a much higher production cost.
Knowing your numbers is the only way to accurately calculate ROI.
How to make the most of your long form content
But proving the ROI for long form content goes beyond being able to show the direct financial impact. That’s because long form content can be the foundation for your entire content marketing strategy.There’s no denying the price tag on long form content is higher than for other content forms, but when you’ve got a great white paper, blog or article you can then use that to create all of your other content.
It can be broken down into social media posts, inspire the topic for a podcast, spur an idea for a spin off article, pull out key stats or ideas into emails. While you pay for the initial piece, you’ll benefit for months to come.
Not only does that save you time but it creates a cohesive approach to content marketing. Making sure that across all channels and formats you’re talking about the same topics, with the same voice and the same opinion.
That’s priceless.
Making the numbers add up
The part no one ever talks about. How much will it cost? We know there’s a hefty price tag, we know that there’s value from it, but what type of investment are you looking at if you want to embed long form content into your strategy.
Because at the end of the day, you’re going to need to justify it at some point. And if you want to start calculating your ROI or building a business case to introduce content into your marketing strategy then you need some hard figures.
But that’s where it gets tricky. All freelancers or agencies will charge slightly differently. They’ll include different things and have slightly different offerings. It can sometimes make it feel like you’re comapring apples to pears.
I can only talk about my offering, which has been crafted after lots and lots of research.
Let’s start with the commonalities.
All my work includes one round of amends.
All of my work includes on page SEO optimisation.
All of my work includes original research with cited reputable sources.
All of my work includes me, just me - no Chat GPT or AI involved.
For a 1200-word blog I charge £350
For a 1500-word article I charge £400
For a 3000-word white paper I charge £500
That’s all well and good if you’re thinking about ad hoc content. But the way I prefer to work is on retainers.
I get to know you, you get to know me, the content gets better as a result. That’s where bundles or packages that are delivered monthly come into play. With regular monthly content, mixed up between articles, blogs and white papers, you’ve got the fresh content that keeps Google happy and provides variety in your content marketing strategy.
We all know the value of long form content for your business. But we also know that proving a direct ROI can sometimes feel impossible. When you’ve already got a content strategy in place, investing in external content support is the best way to deliver that strategy to a high level and build a strong foundation for your marketing success.
Get in touch to arrange a chat about your strategy, your needs and whether I’m the right long form content writer for you.
