The Hidden Costs of Content Marketing

Hey kids, want to shoot your leads right to the bottom of the funnel just like that? Tired of whiny sales people who don’t know how to close? And what about the mess and expense of those darn client events? Well put that behind you and mix up a big ol’ batch of content batter. But wait, there’s more. If you order today we’ll throw in the Infographic-a-matic for free. That’s right, for free. Why, that’s a $27 saving just for ordering your Easy Bake Content Machine today.

Just in case you are thinking the Slap Chop folks are moving in on your sweet B2B gig, this notion of the content machine isn’t new. Marketo, Hubspot and Eloqua have been making noises about them for years. The idea is pretty compelling. If we accept that content is key to marketing and sales, and we want to sell lots and lots of stuff then it follows that we need lots and lots of content, and a quick, cost-effective way to crank it out like Play-Doh through a star-shaped extruder. There is no shortage of people like me and companies like those willing to take your money in exchange for a bunch of words and some pretty pictures. Some of it will probably be pretty darn good, much of it will look like it was baked with a 40-watt bulb.

It’s also going to be pretty darn expensive. Way more expensive than you think. It turns out that Content is taking its status as King pretty seriously and quietly helping itself to some pretty stiff levies. These are the hidden costs of content most of us forget about, or never consider in the first place.

Creation
I’m sorry, but most of the home-grown content I read is complete shite. I know the Internet told you to just write a bunch of random stuff down and slap on some creative commons images and it would all be groovy. But mostly it’s just awful, and the bad news is, it costs more to have someone like me come and fix it than it would to get someone like me to write it properly in the first place. It’s just how it is. If you are going to do content yourself, make sure you have a little sock drawer full of money to have someone come and fix it.

Curation
This is the one that bites many of us, including yours truly, in the lily-white behind. How could managing a bunch of stupid white papers and infographics and blog thingies possibly take so much time? I’m a marketer, damn it, not a librarian. I don’t know how to do this and if I could outsource it I would. As far as I know, there are no Curators-of-Fortune out there who will organize and manage this stuff, so my company gets to pay me to muck about trying to make sense of the content I have flung into the universe. The lesson: human beings are expensive.

Squirrel Training
So you spend weeks making beautiful content, and you actually manage to figure out how to put it on all the right platforms, write the tags, ALT text and keywords that make it popular, and now some sales guy is looking at you vacantly like you just handed him a garlic press and a brick. “Are you kidding?”, you think. “You seriously don’t know what to do with this magnificent total cost of ownership calculator?” you think. “Are you an idiot?” you think.  “Do you not want to close any business in your lifetime? “ you think. You’re far too polite to say it, but you know the answers to the above questions are either yes or maybe. That means someone (let’s call them you) gets to take time out of their busy day to teach the sales team how to use the content. Also, the sales team is going to have to take time out of their busy days to be taught how to use the content. That is going to cost money because human beings (even Sales Squirrels) are expensive.

The Cost of Not Using It:
We know that sales doesn’t always use the pretty content we make for them. Can’t think why. So what does it cost when you create content that is supposed to drive sales and it doesn’t drive sales because nobody bothers to show it to customers and prospects? It’s like one of those damn trees falling over the forest. It costs however much you paid to produce it, plus the time you spent not convincing your Squirrels to use it, plus the time you spent uploading it to the Intranet, website, sales portal and LinkedIn page, plus the opportunity cost of not using it, plus the cost of asking why nobody used it, plus the lost sales that resulted from not using it. Phew. I think I need to sit down.

Infrastructure & Planning
So let’s pretend you were organized about the whole thing and created a special content microsite for your clients and a lovely sales resource Sharepoint site for your Squirrels, plus you paid someone’s cousin to do up an SEO strategy and optimize the living daylights out of the content. Now let’s pretend you didn’t quite get it right. Uh oh. Even if you did get it right, I’m willing to bet my brand new Captain Crunch pencil sharpener that you didn’t actually have a budget for all of that. So let’s pretend you mucked it up and nobody has actually seen or heard of your precious content because your website is out of support hours and your Slideshare account is lonelier than the HR department on a Friday and your Squirrels couldn’t find it on your intranet with a talking GPS . Oh, dear. Why that’s a great deal of money, now isn’t it?

Sharing
The best part about baking a yummy cake or decimating a hard-cooked egg has got to be in the selfless act of sharing it. Who could say no to egg salad? Content is just like that: it’s so much tastier when you share it! Why, there’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+ (yes, that’s still a thing), YouTube, SlideShare, blogs, online communities, websites and that guy you met on the plane who wants you to know his Candy Crush scores. Sharing is the best, isn’t it, because it’s free! Free like a butterfly; free like a guy from Microsoft who calls at 8am on Saturday; free like pregnant feral cat who just moved into your garage. Okay, so it’s not free, but it’s noble. Noble’s good, isn’t it? Well maybe, but noble costs money because noble involves human beings and human beings, say it with me, are expensive.

Let’s stop pretending that content is something that springs fully formed from our wish lists, and let’s start recognizing that it is a costly, complicated, labour- intensive tactic that mostly works, but only if we are willing to pay for it.

Related Posts:

The Revenge of the Content Monster
Just Because It’s Content Doesn’t Mean It’s Good

BizMarketer is Elizabeth Williams
You can reach me at escwilliams@gmail.com
or follow me on Twitter @bizmkter