Just as brands and content marketers were settling into a post-COVID marketing rhythm, we’re all now facing another major upheaval – the looming threat of a global recession. Consumers are quickly adjusting their spending habits to adapt to higher interest rates and rising inflation, while businesses scramble to tighten their belts and scrutinise their marketing budgets to see what can be cut.
We understand that every new year brings a variety of challenges and opportunities for marketers, but many foresee 2023 to be a lot more testing than most, as businesses are still trying to recover from the global pandemic. While everyone may hastily jump to the conclusion that dialling back on content marketing spend makes the most sense for short-term budgetary concerns this year, experts are urging marketers to think twice and focus on maximising the effectiveness of their content marketing budgets and start preparing for the recovery instead.
Nielsen research shows that brands who cut back on advertising and marketing during previous recessions lost -2% of their revenue for every quarter they went dark and lost brand equity that took an estimated 3-5 years to recover from, post-recession. Nielsen’s Sales Manager of Marketing Effectiveness, Melinda Baker, stresses, “While variations in market conditions play an important role in determining strategies, there are tools available to marketers to plan for short-term budgetary changes, without sacrificing long-term brand ROIs.” And the good news is, historically, most recessions are short-lived, with studies revealing that 75% of recessions end within a year, and a full 30% only last two quarters.
Currently, most brands are already under-spending in the aftershock of the pandemic—depressing their ROIs by a median of 50%—so any further cutting of marketing expenses could only serve to reduce their ROI even more – and this could be detrimental at a time when brands need to maximise their profits the most. It’s clear that the solution isn’t to slash your budgets blindly but to carefully examine and optimise your content marketing mix and only invest in channels that are performing well. And it seems like some of the world’s most savvy brands and content marketers are heeding these words.
Brand agency The Matter released their 2023 Marketing Outlook Survey and found that almost all (89%) Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and senior marketing executives are planning to increase their marketing investments for 2023, with nearly half (44%) planning to substantially increase investments. “Our survey indicates – and historical data prove – marketers understand that while cutting marketing and advertising budgets during economic uncertainties may bring temporary financial relief, it often leads to significant long-term strain on sales pipelines, brand awareness and customer trust,” said Scott Signore, Principal and CEO of Matter, which is why many are choosing to increase their spend in areas that drive leads and conversions.
The top three areas where CMO’s saw the greatest return in 2022, were public relations and social media (69%), content marketing (49%) and video marketing (39%). And if these results are anything to go by, it’s should be more important than ever for content marketers and copywriters to offer consistent, high-value content for audiences this year. So read on to find out Wordsmith’s key recommendations you can implement in your content marketing strategy this January to be smart with your content marketing budget in 2023.
1. Ensure each piece of content you create has a clear goal linked to your KPIs.
It may seem overwhelming and time-consuming to try and link every piece of content to a marketing KPI, but if it doesn’t heighten brand awareness, educate audiences, boost customer engagement, or increase leads and conversions, it’s a waste of precious time and money in 2023. Informative e-books, long-form blog posts, Instagram posts and brochures should all directly contribute to a clear and specific business goal. Brody Dorland, Digital Marketing Strategist and Co-Founder of DivvyHQ explains, “Content marketing has one purpose – and one purpose alone – and that’s to serve your overall business goals. If you haven’t aligned your content metrics with your business KPIs, you can’t achieve your business goals with your content strategy.” She continues, “When you make that strategy the foundation of everything you and your content team do, it suddenly simplifies everything. The rest of the process is just executing on the details.”
Gaining more “likes”, “shares” or “retweets” shouldn’t be the basis of your content marketing strategy. Instead, think about the bigger picture and create an effective content loop. For example, if your goal is to sell tickets to your financial leadership seminar, you may want to create an e-book before the event that touches on key leadership tactics for interested audiences to download free of charge, as a teaser before the seminar. Throughout the e-book, you could promote the upcoming seminar and provide a QR code link for your audience to buy tickets.
2. Know your market
This may be an obvious point, but research from Price Intelligently shows that 99 out of 100 brands surveyed were unable to describe their buyer personas beyond a few generalities. And not only that, most are not putting budget aside into consumer market research or internal data that would provide essential information on who they need to target, which seems extremely counter-intuitive. “Most businesses should have at least a couple of buyer personas”, says Bob Ruffolo, CEO of Impact Brand & Design. Robert Glazer, Founder of Acceleration Partners, echoes this by elaborating, “With a smaller number of carefully researched personas, you can focus on the points of personalisation that matter. After all, we know prospects appreciate messaging that speaks directly to their needs.”
To stay ahead of competitors in 2023, you need to know what makes your audience tick. What desires, fears and real-life experiences do they have? The more you know the more you will be able to speak directly to your personas in each piece of content, and ultimately increase your conversion rate. And with consumers being increasingly more price-conscious, brands will need to adapt their marketing plans, and messaging, to match. Focusing on recession-friendly messaging and supportive tips for the sector you’re in can help reinforce brand value and instil consumer loyalty beyond the recession. It may be tempting as a brand to increase slash prices and bump up promotional-led copy, but if overdone, it could potentially condition your consumers to only buy when there is a sale, leading to a dip in purchases of regularly priced items and margin compression.
So, instead of relying heavily on promotions like your competitors, consider which marketing channels can be reduced or cut with minimal impact to ROI – like Pay Per Click (PPC) for example, that typically needs continually high investment with little return. If results in one channel are lacklustre, it might be time to reallocate your budget to channels with better metrics and higher ROI potential. If you’re looking to learn how to write captivating content that will delight audiences at every stage of the customer journey in 2023, take a look here.
3. Don’t underestimate the value of creating long-form content
We’ve bet on it once, and we’re willing to bet on it again that long-form content will continue outperform shorter content in 2023. Over the years, they may have minimised the length of a tweet, and TikTok videos may be on the rise, but for the vast majority of branded content, it pays (literally) to add value with long-form, in-depth content. According to research from Medium, the best-performing blog posts took around 7 minutes to read, which translates to around 1600 words.
Not only do consumers like reading long-form articles, Google likes them too – that makes them rank better in terms of keywords and backlinks than short-form content, which all helps to draw in more potential prospects to your site. Backlinko found that long-form content has 77.2% more backlinks than shorter pieces! So, this suggests that it’s also better when it comes to maximising your content budget in terms of economy of scale. You’d have to write three different 500-word pieces to attract the same audience and search rankings of a 1,500+ article – so why not write a long-form article instead, which ultimately saves you time, and boosts your bottom line?
4. Remember to track your content performance with analytics
Aaron Agius, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Louder.Online urges content marketers that, “Before launching any content, get your analytics software in place: Google Analytics, Hotjar or whatever suits your needs. Then, review your data at least monthly to strike poor-performing campaigns and double down on your best performers.”
Using analytics will pay off dividends in the long run and help to assist you in making more informed decisions about reaching your target audience and meeting your marketing objectives. It’ll also help you save money, allowing you to allocate more of your budget to creating higher-performing pieces of content. Studies indicate businesses that use data-driven marketing strategies generate five times more ROI than businesses that don’t. Content marketing isn’t a guessing game, and in this ever-changing volatile market, numbers speak volumes – so don’t waste a significant portion of your content budget on strategies that aren’t driving clear results.
5. Get in the habit of tactfully repurposing your content
One of the most underutilised and effective ways of getting the most out of your content marketing budget is repurposing. And the easiest and fastest route to repurposing your content is creating content round-ups in email campaigns, Randy Wolken, President of MACNY - The Manufacturers Association explains. “We have content overload in our lives. So, routine notices on a weekly and periodic basis give users a satisfying way to know when and what contact is available. Most users need content to be pushed to them regularly. This is how they find content they missed. Grouping similar content on websites and within emails offers greater usage of pre-existing content.”
While Robin Ganzert, CEO of American Humane suggests that content teams should continue refreshing their best-performing blogs. “To keep content relevant, it is all about the packaging. Take evergreen content, make sure it's up-to-date and then tie it in with the calendar, the news cycle or even the changing seasons.” You could even take your best pieces of content add some design formatting and create a downloadable e-book. Or take a blog post and turn it into a 3-part podcast episode? You’ll soon find the options for repurposing truly good content is endless and it’s a brilliant way to stretch your content marketing budget as far as possible.
As content marketers, we’re always faced with the question, “How much do we need to allocate from our marketing budget?” And this year, with a looming global recession, we have to create just as much content while tightening our purse strings. But, luckily for us, there are innovative ways we can stretch our marketing budgets, that not only help to make our strategies more cost-effective but allows us to connect and resonate with our ever-increasing cost-conscious consumers in new and different ways.