Are you looking to stand out from the crowd and reach your target audience in a way that few others are?
Do you want to engage your audience in a way that’s likely to drive action, such as finding out more or maybe booking an evaluation or trial? But how much does an effective content marketing strategy really cost?
Do you need to write one article a month and post three times on social media, or 12 articles and 20 social media posts?
In this article, we’ll address all these questions, so you’ll understand your options when it comes to content marketing and have a rough idea of what different strategies will cost.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a strategy for attracting and retaining customers by creating and sharing valuable content. This content can take the form of blog posts, articles, infographics, videos, or anything else that your target audience finds helpful and informative.
This content is usually hosted on your website, although it could also be on your YouTube channel, allowing your audience to find it through online search engines.
It may answer the questions your customers regularly ask your sales teams (improving your sales team’s efficiency and conversion rate), or it could provide detailed information on your service or product to address your audience’s issues, concerns, and fears around buying your product.
Content marketing is a fantastic long-term strategy and is probably one of the most exciting areas of marketing (along with AI) as it allows companies to stand out from the crowd, regardless of their size (a David vs. Goliath opportunity).
But why is this? Because content marketing is an area that has yet to be fully implemented in 95% of MedTech companies (if not more).
How often do I need to release content to become the voice of trust in my space?
This is simple: the more content you release each week, the faster you’ll become the voice of trust in your space. However, it must be the right content.
Content needs to answer the questions your audience is asking about your product or service, as these are the questions they are searching for on Google to help them complete their buyer’s journey. Anything else, and you risk wasting your efforts.
As a guide, if you release three articles a week (and three videos once you are established), it will take you 12-18 months to become the voice of trust in your space. This seems like a lot, which may be one of the reasons that this hasn’t been effectively implemented in most MedTech companies to date.
You can, of course, write fewer articles per week, but the time it will take to become the voice of trust in your space will increase proportionally.
How much will it cost to deliver an effective content marketing strategy?
This is the big question and brings up another issue of how, and even if, you can effectively deliver such a significant content marketing plan with an agency partner.
The short answer is no. There are two reasons for this:
- Your team (sales and marketing) has the specialist knowledge needed to write all the articles. Your agency partner will never be able to match this as they are not with your customers every day.
- It would be prohibitively expensive.
Bringing your content team in-house
If you’re serious about becoming the voice of trust in your space, the only way forward is to bring content marketing in-house. This may seem like a big investment, but just think of the impact if you could increase your website visits by 20-fold and conversion rates by the same. This ‘marketing spend’ is now just a cost of business growth.
So, what should your new content marketing team look like?
Your first hire should be a content marketing manager/copywriter. Their job will be to interview SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) in your company (normally the sales team/senior leadership team), write three articles a week, and manage all your content being released. A full-time job for sure!
A great person for this job is a journalism graduate as they will have all the skills needed. This includes being able to interview experts to extract pertinent information and write copy to deadline in an unbiased way (key if you want to become the voice of trust in your space).
Typical salary for a journalism graduate in the UK (excluding PAYE & NIC taxes) – £24,000 – £28,000.
The next hire should be an in-house videographer, as everyone digests information differently, meaning each new article should also be released in video format.
This will not only accommodate your audience who prefer to watch or listen to video (maybe on the move) but also take advantage of YouTube (Google’s video platform) and the viewers this can provide.
Video is undoubtedly an important medium for the future, so having an in-house videographer will set you in good stead to rise above your competition.
A great person for this job is a videographer who has 2-5 years of industry experience (filming and editing). They must fit in well with your team as they will be responsible for bringing your articles to life, amongst other videos (bio videos, product videos, thought leadership, etc.), so personality is key if your team is going to buy in and support your video production.
Typical salary for a videographer with 2-5 years’ experience (excluding PAYE & NIC taxes) – £30,000 – £40,000.
These are the two core positions you will need to bring content in-house, assuming you already have a marketing structure in place that these roles will report into. As your team becomes more established, you may need to expand your team to deal with additional content needs, but this team will be a great start.
How do I achieve world-class results when implementing an in-house content marketing team?
There’s a lot that goes into implementing a world-class in-house content marketing team to drive a continuous stream of highly qualified leads.
Monthly team coaching – £3,500 per month (12 – 18 months)
This will likely consist of a quarterly planning session and biweekly coaching calls for key members of your team to ensure they not only have a content plan that the organisation buys into but that it is implemented correctly, so you become the voice of trust in your industry in the shortest possible time.
In an effective content marketing strategy, every stage of the marketing funnel needs to be addressed, so your coach will ensure your team does each at the right time to deliver the best results.
Content coaching – £1,750 per month (12 – 18 months)
If you have a younger content manager/copywriter or one who would like more support in how to write content that will attract and convert your audience and keep your team engaged, this could be a great option. This will normally include biweekly or weekly coaching calls, depending on what’s needed, where your coach will teach your content manager/copywriter new skills and review the materials that are about to be released, to ensure all your efforts are well spent.
Video coaching – £1,750 per month (12 – 18 months)
Once your videographer is on staff, it’s important you put them to work straight away! But what video content should you start with? Video coaching is there to solve all these issues and work with your videographer on the types of content to be created, the structure of the videos, and how they look.
As with the other coaching programmes, this will be weekly or biweekly depending on what’s required, and each session will help the videographer develop through learning new skills and reviewing material to be released.
Sales coaching – £2,500 per month (12 – 18 months)
Regardless of the number of leads your marketing efforts generate; this will all be for nothing if your sales team are not performing at their peak to optimise their conversions.
But what does content marketing have to do with sales coaching? More than you would think. Effective content can not only deliver more qualified leads, increasing your conversion rate and saving your team time to close more sales, but also reduce the length of the sales cycle.
During sales team coaching, your team will be taught how to work with content through a series of training sessions and role-play until the marketing and sales teams are working as one to generate and convert leads.
This will usually take place biweekly, allowing time between sessions to implement what was learned in the previous session.
HubSpot coaching – £1,250 per month (12 – 18 months)
To measure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy, you have to be able to measure how successful your content is and how much revenue each article has generate
The cost of an effective inbound marketing strategy is significant, so it’s important you can justify that cost to senior management to continue to get the funding. This is where HubSpot comes in.
If your team is unfamiliar with HubSpot, then you may feel HubSpot coaching is important so your team can effectively implement it. Similar to the other coaching options, this is also normally a biweekly programme to allow learnings to be implemented between sessions.
Can I use an agency to start with before I get an in-house team?
Not all companies are ready to jump straight into an in-house team as there certainly is a risk associated with this. What if it doesn’t work?
You can certainly start with an agency before moving to an in-house team, but you will need to be selective about what you do so your costs don’t spiral. To become a thought leader in your space within 18 months, you’ll need to write a minimum of three high-quality articles a week, which will likely cost £10-15K per month. Saying that, this can be done over a longer period bringing down your monthly budget, but you will get so much more by bringing your team in-house.