Content is the fuel that powers the entire marketing engine. It is how organisations of all shapes and sizes engage, communicate and connect with their audiences worldwide. It builds brand awareness and spreads your messages to the masses.
Videos. Social media. Blog posts. Emails. Brochures. Posters. Web banners. The forms of content modern marketers can harness are broader than ever before, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t think content is king.
With an ever-growing number of mediums and platforms for content, the possibilities for marketers are infinite. Budgets, however, are not. Content production often takes a sizeable slice of any marketing team’s annual budget – leaving little room for other activities. And, despite the amount that is already spent, there is always more that can be done…
The importance and necessity of content cannot be overstated, but more than likely it poses a significant strain on your budget. We want to iterate some points about why content is crucial, the pain points it presents towards your budget, and how you can streamline production to maximise your budget’s true potential.
6 reasons why content production is crucial
To cover every benefit that content marketing offers to an organisation would take an article all by itself (and then some!). But, here are some of the top-line reasons why it is critical for marketers in the current landscape.
1. Lead generation
A brand’s content is a powerful technique for reaching out to prospective customers, helping them engage them with articles, videos, imagery and more in the build towards an eventual sale.
2. Brand awareness
Content across all platforms can project a brand’s values, identity, offering and more, consistently raising its awareness across a global audience.
3. Digital presence
In an increasingly competitive field for customers’ attention, content helps establish a strong digital footprint, increasing the possibilities of online consumers finding a brand’s website and platforms.
4. Customer demand
Modern consumers crave content on a daily basis, especially online. Content allows you to respond with the information your target audience wants, ensuring they associate you with the knowledge they gather.
5. Strengthens relationships
It takes time to build customer loyalty. The more you can supply people with useful, valuable content, the more likely that this will bolster their affinity with your brand.
6. Builds authority
In addition, the more value people gain from the content you supply, the more they will associate you as an authority in your market, enhancing your overall reputation.
Why is content production so expensive?
So, now it can be left in no doubt how crucial content is for today’s brands, this brings us to the crux of this article – the cost of content production. Of course, this will vary depending on an organisation’s size and reach, but it typically takes up a substantial chunk of their overall marketing budget.
There are many factors that contribute to this significant expense:
- The ever-increasing content avenues for marketers to tackle – social media, video, emails, print, etc.
- The need to meet growing audience expectations, both internal and external
- The evolution of new techniques and platforms with which to present content
- The challenges recruiting talented designers, copywriters, editors and others at the forefront of content production
- The importance of optimising content for various mediums, especially mobile
- The need to translate and adapt content for audiences around the world
While there is no hard-and-fast rule for the cost of content, you will have to consider aspects like:
- The cost of the technology and tools required to facilitate content production
- The amount of content that must be created for a particular campaign or channel
- The hours it takes for your team to produce content
- The financial cost of the hours, namely employee wages and overheads
- The type of content being produced – a blog post or static image will probably be less costly to produce than a video or brochure
This can rapidly eat away at your marketing budget – and that is before incorporating the time and resources spent on the strategy and ideation of content, the project management surrounding each stage of the production process, how content will be distributed to the audience, and analysing its performance in the following weeks and months.
In short, the reason why content production is so expensive is that so many steps and moving parts go into creating, verifying and publishing any piece of content. It is much more involved than many outside of the marketing world give it credit for, and that comes at a substantial cost.
An example: the costs of video production
Video is the most-used content format, with 59% of marketers that perform content marketing using video. But consider the stages that may be involved in video production – all of which come at a price.
Depending on the scale of production, it can account for numerous hours of employee time and considerable resources.
The challenge sustaining mass content production
The heavy processes behind most forms of content production can often make performing this on a mass scale very challenging. With budgets and available time limited, something’s got to give, whether it’s the amount of content you produce, the number of resources you can devote to each element, or the overall quality of the output. Something inevitably suffers.
Many marketing teams seek to remedy this problem by outsourcing content creation work to freelancers or agencies. While this alleviates the time and cost problem associated with conducting this work in-house, this approach has its own limitations in respect to enabling mass content production:
- Freelancers and agencies will have other priorities to focus on beyond your brand, meaning work may arrive to their schedule, not necessarily yours
- The more your organisation relies on these third parties, the more costly their services will be
- Being outside of your company, the content they create may not reflect the nuances and identify of your brand, leading to numerous edits and rewrites
This leaves marketing teams with a conundrum. They recognise that content is vital to their overall marketing efforts, and will want to produce as much as possible to meet their audience’s needs.
However, they cannot break the bounds of their budget, without compromising the quality of their output, or forcing employees to work unreasonable hours to meet this demand.
BAM – the ultimate budget stretcher
If you are one of the many trapped in this uncomfortable state, BAM by Papirfly™ is empowering brands across the globe to stretch their budgets further than ever before, while producing more content than they could have possibly envisaged. All in-house. With no specialist support.
BAM enables teams to be more agile and cost-effective with their content production. Intelligent, pre-set templates lock down brand consistency and provide users with a simple, straightforward environment where they can produce high-quality assets in a matter of minutes.
All variables are kept within a predefined format, allowing those with little-to-no design knowledge or experience to create, edit and update assets with no risk of tarnishing your brand identity. This spreads across digital and print formats – social media posts, HTML emails, posters, digital signage, videos – all this and more can be exported in the correct size and style in a fraction of the time it would take to do from scratch.
Through this easy-to-use platform that allows no margin for error in branding and quality, any organisation can immediately scale up their content production exponentially – all while simultaneously saving costs that can be dedicated to other projects or marketing areas.
Plus, this isn’t the only way BAM makes life simpler and more empowering to marketing teams:
- A safe and secure DAM platform allows teams to easily share resources with coworkers around the world, rather than waste time sending over large files
- Entire version histories and audit trails are recorded, while approval workflows ensure that content can be checked, amended and approved promptly
- Multi-language and localisation capabilities mean content can be rapidly translated for specific international audiences
Over 1 million users worldwide are harnessing the power of BAM. If it sounds too good to be true, download our dedicated pitch deck to explore the far-reaching benefits of our software, and give you all the information you need to secure buy-in throughout your company.
As content demands continue to grow at a greater rate than most marketing budgets, take a step today to transform your production power forever. Get in touch with our team to learn more about BAM, or get to grips with it yourself by booking a free demo.