Content is key to inbound marketing. Companies need to have content when potential customers contact them. Blog articles, social media posts, as well as white papers, ebooks, webinars, videos and newsletters, case studies, user guides and newsletters are all content that companies require to present themselves in the best possible light to potential customers.
Many businesses are interested in the cost of different content pieces per piece. It's fully understandable, because the content strategy must also consider how much content will be covered by the budget. However, content costs are not about the price per piece. It's about the quantity of pieces.
What does it mean to have a lot of content?
Neil Patel, a marketing pro, is proably one of the best content marketing pros in the world. He has been able to generate sales of eight to nine figures and attract two million people to his site using content marketing. To do that, he produces a lot of content for different channels:
- YouTube: 12 videos per month
- Instagram: 5 posts per Week (without Stories)
- TikTok: 5 posts per week
- Facebook: 1 post per day
- Blog: 11-16 blog articles per Month
- LinkedIn: 5 posts per week
- Podcast: 1 podcast per day
- Twitter: Two tweets per Week
That's around 140 pieces per month. Keep in mind that there's a whole team behind this content creation machinery.
How much content should you produce?
HubSpot's study found that companies publishing 16 or more blog posts per month receive three times as many visitors than companies publishing fewer. Our own experience shows that medium-sized businesses should publish around three blog articles per calendar month.
You can quickly publish three articles per month or more to build the critical mass of content for search engines. Our experience shows that having 50 blog posts online can generate enough momentum to search engines, resulting in noticeable organic traffic to your site.
What about the content quality?
High quality content comes with a cost. It is easy to assess the quality of blog posts. It is easy to judge quality by the following criteria: Does this article actually work?
This means that the article ranks well in search engines. Does it help, builds trust, and converts? Are you able to get new leads from it?
You can have simple, long, or complicated articles. It all depends on the purpose of the article. Text costs can also vary widely.
You'll notice that many blog articles are around 1,200 words long. That's the a reasonable length for articles that can rank well for certain keywords.
How to put the keywords into my blog post?
In order to get ranked for keywords, you must make sure that your article fits to the keywords. This means that you should use keywords in
- blog post titles
- subheadings
- image descriptions
- meta descriptions
Our recommendation
For medium-sized companies that want to generate approximately 50,000 website visitors per month and 500 leads we recommend this content creation fequency:
- Blog articles: 3 per week
- Pillar Pages: 1 per month
- Minimum 3 LinkedIn posts per week
- YouTube videos: 4 per Month
- Website Videos: 4 per month
- Whitepaper & Other Downloads: 1 per Month
- Text for CTAs or landing pages: 2 per monthly
- Newsletters: 1 per month
- Email outreach: 5 emails per month
- Workflow nurturing content: Video, downloads and content for a nurture sequence (upto 6 emails).
- Case Study: 1 per month
This is about 40 content pieces per month.
How much will cost you each month?
An external copywriter or content market agency can create a blog article for EUR350-EUR900. Pillar pages are long-form content that can be as long as 3,000 to 4,000 word and you can expect EUR1,000 to EUR2,500. Videos are mainly "low-budget videos", which are captured using the screen camera just like in webinars. The "Selling 7" videos are the most important types of inbound marketing video. External video production companies charge around EUR1,500-EUR3,000 for videos with higher quality and a day of filming. There is virtually no upper limit for real image videos.
White papers can be more expensive than blog articles due to their scope and graphic design. They cost around EUR1,800 to EUR3,600. Although the text for call-to actions and landing pages is shorter than blog articles, every word must be considered. Costs similar to those of a blog article can be expected to be EUR350 to EUR900. The same is true for newsletters. You don't pay for the text length, but rather for the expertise of the copywriter in communicating the essentials in just a few words. Although case studies usually have a shorter length than a blog post, they are more difficult to create, so be prepared to budget for costs up to EUR 900.
Here's an example of the monthly cost of content:
- 12 blog posts starting at EUR 700
- 1 page per pillar at EUR 2,100
- 2 website videos at EUR1,800
- 1 white paper for EUR 2,400.00
- 2 landing pages and corresponding CTAs at 600
- Flat rate EUR 1,200.00 Newsletter & E-mails
Total EUR 18,900
Is it worth the effort to invest in content?
EUR18,900 per month is quite an investment. If you generate 500 leads per monthly for this investment, the costs per lead will be EUR37.8 which is a fair price that you have to pay.
Content Manager
If you outsource content creation to freelancers or agencies, you will be responsible for the above-mentioned costs. However, you can also hire your own content manager and potentially save some money.
A content costy you EUR54,000 annually with a monthly salary of EUR3,000. But don't expect that this person will be able to produce 40 content pieces per month. A full-time content manager will be able to create two or three pieces of content on your company blog each week, so you'll end up with 12-15 pieces per month (if all goes well).
If you want to produce 40 pieces, you're looking at a team of three people (the content manager being one of them). This puts the costs in the neighborhood of 13.500€ per month, which is also quite substantial, although lower the the external solution. Keep in mind that this doesn't include the costs you have to find content managers in the first place and additional overhead costs.
Key Takeaways
Content is king. The more quality content you produce the better since this will help you rank your business on search engines. A mid sized company can expect 20.000 € monthly cost for producing content in order to generate approximate 500 leads. Internal content managers can save some costs, but you'll have to find them.
Get in touch with us and learn how to create a content strategy to generate leads for your business.
Source: TakeOffPR
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