The Value of Content: A Framework for Your CFO
According to Forbes Advisor, 69% of companies are spending over 10% of their marketing budget on content marketing. Given the importance of content, businesses need to get smarter at reviewing and assessing the value of content and the effectiveness of their content spend.
Much comes down to the strength of the relationship between the CMO, CFO, and CEO in this regard. Businesses that have open and robust conversations at the executive level around the value of content and the role marketing content plays within the enterprise will create a strong foundation for future success.
Building a clear framework for executive review is a key element of effective marketing planning.
Embracing Cost Consciousness
Recent data from Gartner shows that marketing spend, as a proportion of company revenue, decreased from 9.1% in 2023 to 7.7% in 2024. It’s an open question what impact generative AI may have had on this trend. However, a Technavio study showed that the content marketing industry is growing, and will be worth a net $600 billion sometime this year. And no wonder: a 2023 Semrush survey of 1700 marketers said that 97% of companies found that content marketing generated positive results, up from 91% in 2022.
What this reveals is a business environment that values content, but which is also becoming more cost conscious. Accordingly, savvy CMOs will wish to get ahead of difficult budget conversations. Ensuring that senior executives are aligned around the company's broad marketing plan gives your content spending goals the best chance at buy-in.
“Savvy CMOs will wish to get ahead of difficult budget conversations by ensuring that their senior executive team is aligned around the company’s broad marketing plan and priorities, including their commitments to content creation and promotion.”
Three Steps For Smart Planning
Quality content is a gift that keeps on giving. Through repeated refreshes, a well-crafted guide or landing page can become a trusted resource that draws customers to the company over time.
But while the value of content is clear, the trick is to make sure that value is budgeted for. To ensure this, CMOs need to develop marketing plans that are not only rigorous in scope, but which are clear enough to prompt feedback from the rest of the business. A siloed marketing team and marketing plan are a recipe for frustration in spite of the best intentions.
This means that CMOs must clearly communicate their goals and intentions, while ensuring transparency surrounding costs and KPIs. Here are three elements to bear in mind when devising a marketing plan that places content at its heart:
1. VISION: Have a strategic marketing vision that aligns with your consumer base.
The lessons you learn from your market research and by listening to your customers can directly influence and shape your organization's commercial goals. After all, since the marketing team is one of the first points of contact with the consumer base, it is perfectly positioned to spot certain trends, opportunities, and pitfalls.
A marketing-led organization is one that leads from the front and is always willing to adjust and refine in response to the needs and wants of the marketplace. Although CFOs are typically resistant to a marketing-led approach and CEOs can easily fall foul of the same product-first mindset, do not be deterred.
The best way a CMO can get a CFO and CEO onboard in this area is to establish an honest, two-way conversation between herself and the rest of the senior executive team. As part of this, a CMO needs to risk taking a different and sometimes unpopular position that goes against the prevailing wisdom at her company. Thankfully, the CMO’s unique insights into consumer needs give her the knowledge necessary to make the case.
2. GOALS - Tie specific, measurable objectives to your marketing plan.
Select measurable objectives, each of which aligns intuitively with a macro-business goal. Spell out the strategic intention behind each objective — not only what are you doing, but why — and list the proposed actions intended to move the company toward the goal. Ensure each action has an assigned stakeholder who is responsible for that piece of the plan.
Keep careful track of key performance indicators. Whether it’s sales, clicks, or search rankings, it is important to have concrete data to back up your claims on marketing trends.
3. COSTS - Do not assume that budget from one financial year should automatically roll over to the next.
Approach each year as if it were year one, and review every expenditure - adtech, staffing, content creation, martech, media spend, event expenditure, print cost, agency fees, subscriptions, and so on - as though it were a fresh commitment. Always drive for efficiency. Five thousand dollars well spent is invariably more valuable than ten thousand dollars spent reflexively.
Be prepared to renegotiate vendor contracts if the underlying value add of the contracted service does not stack up fully within your marketing plan. Maybe you are using the tool differently or in a more limited way than when you first signed on. Perhaps the platform has failed to deliver its full potential.
“Too often budget presentations are an exercise in not rocking the boat, getting what you asked for before heading back to your functional area and hoping to fly under the radar until the next budget conversation comes around.”
Staying Open To Input
Communicate all of this work to your CFO and CEO, and solicit feedback and input. Do not expect to have all the right answers, and listen carefully to what they have to say.
Too often budget presentations are an exercise in not rocking the boat, getting what you asked for, and heading back to your functional area with hopes to fly under the radar until the next budget conversation comes around. Instead, senior executives, together with the vice presidents and directors that report into them, should be looking at costs in an inquiring, focused way all the time. You can only spend the dollar once, so it makes sense to spend it well.
The rigor and seriousness with which you undertake this review work is essential to preparing the ground for a content-first marketing plan.