“It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best-promoted content that wins.”
Think of your content as seeds of knowledge. Your website is the initial fertile ground, but content syndication allows you to sow those seeds across a wider digital field, reaching afr broader audience for potential growth and harvest, yielding the bounty of revenue.
Is content syndication worth the effort? Absolutely, if you can measure its return on investment (ROI). This guide will help you do just that.
Must Read: B2B Content Syndication Strategies
The Challenge: Where’s the ROI?
Many B2B marketers struggle to connect their content strategy to concrete results. It can be hard to know if your content is generating leads or boosting brand awareness.
Fear not! This guide will equip you with the tools to:
- Calculate your content syndication ROI.
- Understand the costs involved.
- Track key metrics for success.
Expanding Your Reach: The Power of Syndication
Imagine your website as a shop filled with valuable B2B content. Content syndication lets you open branches across the digital landscape. By partnering with relevant industry publications and social media groups, you expose your content to a much larger audience actively searching for solutions in your area.
Marketers are reporting that the expected revenue of the worldwide content marketing sector in 2022 was about $63 billion. According to Statista, it would increase to $107 billion in 2026.- Statista
Think about it: A great blog post on your site might get a few hundred views. But syndication on a high-traffic industry publication could put it in front of thousands of potential customers who need what you offer.
The Investment: What it Takes
According to Semrush, 80% of content marketers who are successful spend more than 10% of their marketing budgets on content. [Semrush]
Before calculating ROI, let’s be clear on the costs involved in content syndication:
Content creation:
This includes internal teams, freelance writers, or a combination of both. Consider the time and resources spent on research, writing, editing, and design.
Syndication platform fees:
Some platforms charge for access to their network of publishers and audience reach. Choose one that fits your budget and target audience.
Also, there are many free content syndication sites where you can syndicate your content to increase your ROI.
Promotion and monitoring:
This includes promoting your syndicated content and tracking its performance across different channels. Content syndication tools like social media marketing, email campaigns, and analytics platforms all play a role.
By factoring in these costs, you’ll get a clearer picture for calculating ROI.
Next Steps: Measuring Your Success
Defining Content Syndication ROI Metrics: Aligning Goals with Measurement
The beauty of content syndication lies in its versatility. It can be used to achieve a variety of goals, each requiring a specific set of metrics to track progress:
Website Traffic and Lead Generation:
Track website visits originate from syndication channels using UTM parameters (unique tracking codes embedded in links). These will tell you which specific syndication placements are driving the most traffic.
Monitor lead generation forms completed by visitors arriving from syndicated content. This helps you understand how effectively your content is converting website visitors into potential customers.
Brand Awareness and Thought Leadership:
Measure social media shares, mentions, and brand sentiment analysis to gauge audience engagement. Track how often your content is shared and discussed online, indicating its impact on brand awareness.
Consider industry benchmarks for website traffic growth and brand mentions associated with successful content marketing campaigns. Utilize resources like industry reports or marketing research to establish a baseline for measuring the impact of syndication on brand awareness.
Must Read: How to Measure Content Syndication Success?
Essential Tools for Data Collection:
Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot and Marketo are invaluable tools for B2B marketers. They allow you to centralize data from various sources, including website analytics, social media engagement metrics, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems.
This consolidated view helps you track leads generated from content syndication and attribute them to specific campaigns.
Additionally, Google Analytics remains a cornerstone for website traffic analysis. By setting up proper UTM parameters, you can identify website visits originating from syndicated content and measure their impact on your overall website traffic.
Calculating Content Syndication ROI: Putting Numbers to Value
Now, let’s unlock the magic formula! Here’s how to calculate your content syndication ROI:
ROI = (Gain from syndication – Investment) / Investment
Quantifying the Gain:
Lead Generation:
If your content syndication efforts generate qualified leads, estimate the average customer value (ACV) – the average revenue generated per customer. Multiply the number of leads by ACV to calculate the total revenue generated.
Brand Awareness:
Estimating the impact on brand awareness can be trickier. Utilize industry benchmarks for website traffic growth or brand mentions associated with successful content marketing campaigns.
Must Read: Video Content Syndication: Reach More Viewers, Faster
Example: Lead Generation ROI
Let’s say you invest $1,000 in content creation and syndication platform fees for a white paper. Your syndication efforts generate 50 qualified leads. Your average customer value is $5,000.
Gain: 50 leads * $5,000/lead = $250,000
Investment: $1,000
ROI: ($250,000 – $1,000) / $1,000 = $249
By following these steps and tracking the right metrics, you can finally demystify content syndication ROI and see if your content marketing efforts are truly bearing fruit.
Vikas Bhatt is the Co-Founder of ONLY B2B, a premium B2B lead generation company that specializes in helping businesses achieve their growth objectives through targeted marketing & sales campaigns. With 10+ years of experience in the industry, Vikas has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by businesses today and has developed a unique approach to lead generation that has helped clients across a range of industries around the globe. As a thought leader in the B2B marketing community, ONLY B2B specializes in demand generation, content syndication, database services and more.
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