Ways to monetise content marketing

Picture this: you run marketing for a B2B brand, there’s only a small budget and you’ve decided the best way forward is to push it at content marketing.

You create a blog offering features, sector insight, data etc. Of course, in your sphere, it’s a big hit. There’s lots of traffic, you build the brand, potential customers flock in and you get wonderful business.

Then you take a call from the sales rep for the leading magazine in your sector. They say: buy an online display ad, we get X amount of traffic, people will know who you are. And you say: hang on, but we get more traffic than that ourselves.

What do you do?

There comes a time when many companies find themselves facing this question. Especially the ones with small budgets. Well, they think, we might be able to make some money out of this.

Monetising content marketing

It’s a reasonable supposition. If you suddenly find yourself producing a publication that is better than the industry bible, then why not charge for it?

That raises yet more questions. For example, you can add in a Google Adwords module and display ads? Then you find the next day your competitor has put a banner on your site. The alternative is to keep things clear and sell ads directly. But that will require a media pack at least and some outsourcing to a sales company.

Then there are always subscriptions and data. But will such activities get in the way of the brand?

Shouldn’t sales generated through your content be enough?

Conclusion

There is a school of thought that content marketing should come from sales. But quality is the only way forward in a crowded market. And for those brands that build their content marketing into actual publications, there may come a time when they want to charge for it.

Monetisation of content marketing may be inevitable. Indeed, some firms have already managed to achieve it. But when your turn comes there will still be a number of questions to ask.

Ways to monetise content marketing is part of Content24, the blog for London content marketing agency FirstWord.