8 Successful Tips In Setting Up A Content Marketing Budget

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.

It’s a great way to grow brand awareness, generate leads, and drive revenue. Content marketing can be a great investment, but you need to make sure you’re spending enough money to get a return on that investment.

A content marketing budget ensures that you have the resources you need to carry out your content marketing strategy, and that you are not straining yourself.

Content marketing efforts that are transparent foster a sense of insight and organization within your company.

A content marketing budget is a plan for how you will allocate your resources (time, money, and effort) to create and distribute content. Our content marketing budget template is a tool that can help you create a content marketing budget.

Content Marketing Budget

A content marketing budget spells out how much your company is spending on creating, publishing, and disseminating content. There are many costs associated with running a business, such as labor, equipment, design, and vendors.

Your content marketing budget should be based on your content marketing strategy. It is difficult to set goals if you do not know how much money you can invest in achieving them.

In general, content marketing is a cheaper way to attract customers than other marketing methods. This means that if you want to get more out of content marketing, you should invest more in it.

If you are just starting out with content marketing, it is advisable to start with a small budget. Once you have refined your strategy and know what is effective, you can increase your budget. If you can demonstrate success with a limited budget, it will be easier to argue for a larger budget in the future.

What do you think your budget will be composed of? Here are some of the most common costs associated with content marketing:

Content Marketing Costs

The amount of money you invest in content marketing will depend on what you hope to achieve and the kind of content you want to produce. For example, blog posts cost less to produce than video content marketing.

Your business’ nature will also affect how much you pay in taxes. The Content Marketing Institute says that 26% of a B2B marketer’s budget should be devoted to content marketing.

Marketers who focus on business-to-consumer sales dedicate a smaller percentage of their budgets to content marketing than those who focus on other types of marketing. Both sides say that they are increasing their content marketing budgets year-over-year.

CMI states that the most effective content marketing organizations invest approximately 40 percent of their marketing budget in content marketing initiatives.

Regardless of the size of your budget, here are areas that all organizations will have to invest in to start a content marketing program:

Labor

You need a team to create, edit, distribute, and promote content. Some organizations hire individuals who work independently to do this, while others use a content marketing agency. The most cost-effective long-term strategy is to hire in-house content marketers.

One writer is all you technically need to get started, but it’s beneficial to have a team that includes an editor, content marketing manager, link builder, social media strategist, and graphic designer.

How much does content marketing talent cost? Pro content marketers make an average salary of $79,000 per year, according to a recent survey.

Although content writers make less money than editors and content marketing managers, their salary is still around $53,000 according to Payscale. Link builders make even less money than content writers.

Remember to include taxes and benefits when calculating the cost of your full-time employees.

Freelancers are typically paid on a per-article basis. The typical price for an article is $100-$300, though it could be more expensive depending on the article’s length, format, and topic.

Equipment

The hardware costs are the costs of the equipment used to create the content. The software costs are the costs of the programs used to create the content. Here are some of the typical equipment expenses:

• Computer/laptop
• Computer monitor
• Keyboard/mouse/etc.
• Content management system (CMS)
• Social media management tool
• Email marketing tool
• Content intelligence platform
• Content calendar tool
• Design software

I The cost of additional equipment will vary depending on the type of content you wish to create. For video content, you’ll need the following:

• Video camera
• Lighting equipment
• Microphone
• Video editing software

If you want to host a podcast, here are some additional purchases you might need to make:

• Audio recording and editing software
• A podcast hosting account
• A boom

Your equipment expenses can vary greatly. This is why it is important to consider your content marketing strategy when you are creating your content marketing budget. This way, you know what’s financially possible.

Promotion/Distribution

You should set aside a portion of your budget to promoting your content, especially when you are just starting out.

The more you promote your content, the more likely your target audience will see it. Content marketing can help raise awareness for brands that are new and help prospects learn about your company. Here are a few ways to promote and distribute your content:

• Ads
• Promoted posts
• Sponsored content

You can also invest in influencer marketing. The cost of working with an influencer can be very different from one case to the next. Tweets are much cheaper than blog posts.

Cost Breakdown by Content Type

If you’re struggling to determine the budget for each piece of content, try allocating a budget for each type of content. After deciding how much content you want to create, adjust your budget to fit that amount.

Once again, this will vary greatly by content format.

According to Izea, a company that specializes in influencer marketing, the average cost of creating various types of content takes into account many different factors such as labor, equipment, and other associated costs. They are as follows:

• Motion graphics cost $156
• Infographics cost $185
• Listicles cost $214
• Articles cost $249
• Photography costs $349
• Topical videos cost $631
• White papers cost $959

This can be used as an approximate guide to see how much you might need to spend.

A Content Marketing Budget is Time-Based

Keep in mind that your budget is time-based. This means it will vary year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter, and month-over-month. To stay on budget, it is important to decide how much you want to spend every year, every quarter, and every month.

If you go over your budget for one quarter, you should adjust your budget for the next quarter. This will keep you from overspending. To do this, create one column in your budget template for how much you forecast to spend, and another for what you actually end up spending.

Tips in Setting Up a Content Marketing Budget

1. Take Inventory of What Content Marketing can Bring to the Table

If you want your content marketing to be successful, you need to create a budget that reflects the value it can bring to your company. Content marketing is three times as effective as outbound marketing at generating leads, even though it costs 62 percent less.

This method is superior to others as it results in six times more conversions. This text is saying that content marketing should receive more of the marketing budget than advertising.

2. Estimate the Funds You’ll Need to Level Up Your Technology and Skills

If you want your company to communicate its message more effectively, invest in content marketing workshops, courses, and subscriptions to industry journals.

The cutting-edge technology available today has the ability to help you reach more of your target customers by analyzing data and providing targeted messaging. This improved message will be amplified even more.

It is important to allocate money in your content marketing budget for things that will improve your strategy and make it more successful.

3. Make Sure You Make the Most of the Budget You Have

In order to increase your budget each year, you need to demonstrate that you have utilized your current budget as effectively as possible.

On average, 70 percent of content created by B2B marketers is never used. If you want to improve your content strategy, you need to conduct a thorough audit.

Creating higher-quality content should be your focus so that you can reuse it later. Track the effectiveness of content. If your content isn’t doing well, get rid of it. Even if it’s not the way it’s always been done,

4. Review the Nationwide Statistics for Content Marketing Budgets

Although the average marketing budget for B2B companies in America is only 22-26%, the most successful companies allocate nearly 40% to it.

If you own a business by yourself, you can increase the percentage yourself. If you work for a large company, you will need to make a strong case to the people who control the budget that investing in content marketing is a good idea.

Looking at these statistics is your first step.

5. Look at Your Competitors’ Content Marketing Spend

The primary focus should be on gaining the 40 percent that the most successful businesses receive. To find out how much your competitors have likely spent on their content marketing, look at how much money they are making.

You can get a general idea of a company’s budget by looking at the cost of their content and comparing it to the average cost of content.

According to the 2018 State of the Creator Economy report, American businesses pay, on average:

• $330 for a video
• $115 for a list and advice article
• $147 for a photograph
• $190 for a motion graphic
• $127 for a listicle
• $311 for a white paper
• $183 for an industry insight feature
• $144 for an infographic
• $168 for a trend piece

This means that if you are not already surpassing the content output of your competitors, you will need to allocate more money in your budget to do so.

If you’re short on money, try coming up with clever ways to reuse your content. For example, you could turn an article into a white paper, or use an existing article as the starting point for a video script.

If you have a lot of content, you could use it as the basis for podcasts, webinars, or informative talks. This would be a great way to share your knowledge with others and help them learn more about your topic.

6. Consider Your Company’s Size and Your Industry

It’s often more cost efficient for large companies to hire a content marketing agency with a team of specialists, each with their own expertise in their niche, than to hire an in-house content marketing team.

Small to medium sized businesses typically need to outsource the majority of their marketing, unless they have an employee who is good at producing videos, articles, and graphics.

Investing in a website blog can be a fruitful endeavor for startups, as Neil Patel explains. Something as simple as cutting back on Starbucks expenses can help to cover the costs of maintaining a blog on your site.

If you want to be successful in a highly competitive industry, you will probably have to spend more money on content marketing. This will help you get the advantage you need to be the best in your field.

If your company doesn’t have much money but has plenty of good ideas, try putting some of those ideas into practice, work a bit harder, and produce high-quality content yourself.

7. Don’t Forget to Add in Content Promotional Costs

If you include using an automated email service to send newsletters or other content to subscribers in your base content marketing budget, you will be sure to stay on top of your content marketing.

Additionally, calculate how much you will need to spend on ads that promote your content on social media platforms like blogs, white papers, and videos.

is a common online advertising pricing model where advertisers pay for each thousand impressions of their advert. with the CPM pricing model, advertisers are charged a certain amount for each 1000 impressions of their ad.

When choosing how to promote your content online, you need to decide if your goal is mainly to make people aware of your brand, or if you want to direct traffic to your content.

A CPM model for your promotional ads might be preferable if you are a startup or introducing a new product or service. In other words, the more people that see your ad, the more people will become aware of your product or service.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

You will generally have more success when you promote content using the cost-per-click (CPC) model to calculate your projected costs. The goal of content marketing is to get your audience to read, watch, or listen to your content. Therefore, the cost-per-click (CPC) model is usually a better option than other models.

In 2019, the average CPM on various media is as follows:

• Google: $2.80
• Twitter: $5.76
• LinkedIn: $6.05
• Instagram: $6.70
• Facebook: $9.06

The CPC costs for the most popular platforms are as follows:

• Google: $0.75
• Twitter: $0.53
• LinkedIn: $5.61
• Instagram: $1.28
• Facebook: $0.51

8. Analyze Your Past Budgets for Cost and Effectiveness

Looking back at your budget from the past few years can help you understand what was effective and what was not, unless you’re a startup.

Mark Schmukler advises that you use Google Analytics, social media analytics, as well as your email and automated marketing systems to see which platforms and content types produced the most leads and revenue.

Boost Your Best Performers

For the upcoming year, allocate a greater portion of the budget to the types of content and promotions that were most successful. Cut out—or cut back on– the poorest-performing types.

Be flexible:

Don’t be afraid to spend a little extra money on marketing when new strategies come up that could be more effective than what you’re doing now.

For example, when mobile platforms first emerged as major players, only those companies who had the budget to invest more money into mobile content marketing could take full advantage of the new technology.

If you want to get the most out of your content marketing budget, you should follow these tips. This will allow you to have a data-based, flexible, and effective strategy.