Are you really posting valuable content?

Content marketers want to learn which write-ups catch users’ engagement, push competitors down the sales funnel or convince potential leads to become customers, making it crucial to measure the ROI of the write-ups you post.

We wish to figure out to what extent a blog contributes to the revenue of the company. Are we really supporting the bottom line? Understanding what pushes the magic to happen enables content marketers and the content marketing agency to enhance their skills and be extra efficient with the blogging budgets.

You think it's easy enough, right? Well, that's not, truly.

Figuring Out The ROI Of Blog Isn't Straightforward

It would be amazing to connect individual users' behavior directly to the revenue they make for a business. All content marketing companies in the industry would rejoice! 

While there are ways to close the loop with the offline conversion tracking method, unfortunately, granular level comprehensive data sets are not always feasible.

User privacy, analytics limitations, and fuzzy data sets suggest you can't consistently track which behaviors led to a particular customer transaction as precisely as you like, even if you've enforced a first-party data approach.

Service-based businesses, namely plumbers, electricians, contractors, interior designers, to name a few— have it even more challenging. Measuring the ROI of a blog relies much additionally on your revenue tracking platform beyond Google Analytics. These businesses generally have a more prolonged sales process, and Google avoids collecting that information. It's tough to match the data between the revenue tracking platform and Google Analytics for the reason that you can't quickly go back and combine both.

However, this does not suggest content marketing agency must pitch their blog budgets down the drain with no expectancy of noticing a measurable return.

Calculating Write-Ups ROI

Let’s face it: blog/ content ROI isn’t always figured out by direct, attributable revenue yield. Numerous marketers rely on shares, time on page, bounce rate, engagements on social and different top-funnel metrics to decide whether or not their write-ups are resonating.

You don’t always like to get bogged down on the economic significance, and there are numerous other factors that blogs can bring, including traffic, engagement, awareness, conversions.

However, the fact remains: at some moment, a client, a boss, or someone who can right away influence your career, will ask you that tricky question — what are we gaining for all those write-ups we wrote?

Yes, you would like to pay heed to your blog's growth. Attribution modeling can assist you in understanding which individual posts drive conversions; that's usually not enough data to establish if those conversions are really directing to customer spend.

If you're into offering digital marketing for small businesses, you need a more in-depth method of measuring how to calculate the revenue and ROI for a blog.

Before we start the calculation, know this.

Some Blog ROI Notes To Be Mindful Of

Even the best digital marketing agency can’t read minds (eventually). They just examine data, and Google Analytics looks at users in sessions. By default, the platform attributes conversions to the track that received the last click before the conversion. This usually overlooks a blog's prominence earlier and even during the sales funnel.

There’s no perfect way for figuring out blog ROI. However, we can acquire a general sense of the revenue creation efficiency of a blog by creating an estimate. 

That alone can supply valuable data to content marketers to enhance their efforts.

The Blog ROI Calculation

Depending on what a company proffers, how Google Analytics is set up, and the sales strategy, a few of these may require to be shifted to suit your business’s exact situation. 

However, everyone will need these figures and elements before they start:

• An average transaction value
• The goals you have in Google Analytics
• The % of people who converted and who became customers
• The blog writer's yearly/ hourly salary or agency fees for whoever handles the blog
• How long the content writer spends working on and writing the blog
• SEO and paid media expenditure

It's okay to split revenue per goal to acquire the most accurate revenue estimate achievable. Using the overall revenue may provide some conversions more/ less credit than they merit.

Step 1: Establish Goal Conversion Values

Not everyone who converts turns into a customer. To calculate the ROI for your blog, you're required to know the average worth of a single conversion on your site. 

Sense: if someone converts, what is the business anticipated to make?

Being in the digital marketing business for quite a long now, we calculate this value by multiplying the average transaction payment and the % of people that converted who evolved as customers.

Goal Value= Average Transaction amount X % of people who converted who became customers 

This value is utilized in the following equation part, but as an afterthought, you can plug it into Google Analytics to make calculating blog ROI more effortless.

For more details regarding estimating goal conversion values and goals in general for Google Analytics, review the help page of Google about goals.

Step 2: Figure Out The Average Estimated Revenue Of The Blog Per Goal

Know the conversion values for the goals calculated? Good. Now, calculate your blog's average revenue makes.

This revenue denotes the dollar amount for goals achieved on blog pages AND when a blog page was the conversion path's part that ended in goal realization. 

To do this:

We take the number of goal completions from the blog URL. The number of goal completions is located in Google Analytics under the heading Behavior → Landing Pages → Advanced Filter: landing page including "blog" with the time frame selected for the time you're watching out and multiply that figure with the goal conversion value.

Then, add the number of assisted conversions from your blog URL and multiply that by the conversion value.

Estimated Monthly Blog Revenue Per Goal= (Number of specific goal conversions from blog URL X Goal Value) + (Number of specified assisted goal conversions X Goal Value)

Complete this procedure for all goals.

Step 3: Estimate The Average Revenue Of The Blog

For an established content marketing agency, this part is effortless! Count all blog conversion revenue numbers to ascertain the average measured revenue the blog enabled to create during your selected time frame. This is a straightforward yet essential step to calculating blog ROI.

Step 4: Identify The Right Investment

(This is not a perfect formula for ascertaining the actual investment; instead, it’s a simple estimate that gets you close to what that digital investment would be. Want to undertake more calculations and work in the company’s overhead and different nitty-gritty facts? Proceed for it. Otherwise, use this one. If a digital marketing agency manages your blog, recognize the fee charged by them as the investment figure for the blog.)

To ascertain the blog investment, begin with figuring out the blog writer’s hourly charges. Divide the writer’s salary by their work hours in a year.

Once you get that number, multiply the hourly pay by the number of hours spent by the top digital marketing agency working (writing, maintaining, expanding, and optimizing for SEO) on the blog.

Add that number to the monthly hosting fees of the blogs and any money paid to promote the blog post on different social media handles. You'll get the estimated investment in the blog for the particular month.

Investment= (Hours spent writing and running your blog per month X Cost per hour) + Monthly fees + Boosted paid spend

Step 5: Calculate Blog ROI

You now hold the estimated revenue as well as the investment of the blog.

All that’s left now is to ascertain the ROI percentage.

For this, follow the basic ROI formula: revenue less investment, divided by investment.

Estimated ROI= (Estimated blog revenue - Investment)/ Investment

A Few Things T Be Mindful Of Before Getting Unduly Excited Or Disappointed:

• This number is conditional upon single sessions for the specified time frame. As a consequence, numbers may overlap.
• You may count a few conversions or traffic twice. Hence, your investment estimation may be off. 
• Regard this formula “impressionistic.” You’ll have a pretty sound notion of the value you’re furnishing (or if you’re losing out on revenue), but it’s not, as a matter of course, accurate down to the closest percent.

The Takeaways!

So, with this formula, you can now estimate your blog’s revenue and blog ROI on your own. Moreover, a digital marketing company might also come into the frame here. This information (formula) is advantageous when we internalize it and act on it.

When you have a content marketing agency by your side, picking up on trends between blog content & goal completions can assist in tailoring editorial strategies as you advance. But, don't forget, there's much to do than merely pursuing data trends if you desire to enhance and maximize ROI for a blog.