Convincing your leadership team that you need content marketing and that there is significant value in the investment can be difficult. Anything that requires money being spent and budget reworked must have everyone on board. So how should you explain the value of content marketing to your leadership team?
Give Statistics
First and foremost, start by giving your leadership statistics. The chosen statistics need to show how optimizing content marketing is an effective strategy for retaining current customers, making new relationships, creating brand authority, overcoming consumer pain points, and so on. If the leadership team you are presenting to is not familiar with digital marketing, here are some stats that can help sell your point:
- Content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing and generates more than three times as many leads.
- Content marketing leaders experience 8 times more site traffic than those who are not leaders.
- Companies using content marketing drive nearly six times higher conversion rates than those who so not utilize content marketing.
Present a strategic plan
Discuss the advantages of content marketing by presenting a strategic plan. Start your effective strategic plan by addressing what goals the company wants to reach through marketing, and explain how doing content marketing will aid in reaching this goal. Within your strategic plan, make sure to explain how content marketing, mixed with additional digital strategies, gives your company more of an advantage than current (traditional) marketing efforts do. Find an area that your current sales team struggles with and address how content marketing will help you create more traffic and hence more leads. Using a current pain point and addressing how it can be downsized or eliminated with content marketing will have your leadership team excited. Another way to approach this is to show them data from a content marketing campaign and compare it to the data from a typical product-driven campaign. The data will show real proof of the effectiveness of content marketing.
Pitch content marketing as the vehicle for maximizing word of mouth referrals.
It is widely known that the word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool. According to Nielson, 84% of consumers either completely or somewhat trust recommendations from family, friends, and colleagues about products. Explaining the inevitable positive relationship between content marketing and word of mouth will resonate very well with your leadership team. You need to explain to your leadership team that the company has everything to gain by utilizing content marketing to make a good first impression on consumers. Most people will begin to do some research of their own before making a purchase decision. Getting a referral from a friend might turn someone towards your site, but it will take good content to keep them there. This means that your website will get looked at, maybe a few blog posts read, and maybe some social media accounts viewed – all great reasons to sell content marketing to your leadership.
Clearly addresses costs
At this point, you need to clearly address how the upfront cost will, in the end, make more money for the company. You may have heard the phrase ‘money is the motive.’ Yes, this is a lyric of a song, but it applies to leadership decisions that cause a change in the set budget as well. It’s true that success for most companies means being financially positive and that means making executive decisions based on finances. If you do not clearly address the financials up front, your conversation will end up stuck in the details.
Wrap it up
Having a good ending to a pitch is just as important as all the information within the pitch. Clearly restating the advantages of content marketing will remind your leadership team of everything great previously mentioned and will give you the last boost you need to walk out with a smile.
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