{"id":2780,"date":"2022-08-18T16:56:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T20:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/?p=2780"},"modified":"2023-04-13T16:58:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T20:58:00","slug":"indirect-costs-of-content-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/blog\/indirect-costs-of-content-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Field Notes #007: Indirect Costs of Content Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Economics has guided a weird amount of my thinking on content marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideas like content economics<\/a> and the barbell strategy<\/a> are at the core of how we think about building winning programs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past, content marketing thought leaders (early leaders like HubSpot or Content Marketing Institute) preached the idea that you should \u201cjust create stuff.\u201d In a time when content wasn\u2019t as common, this was good advice because it was all\u00a0blue ocean.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, one must not only consider the direct costs of content marketing but also the indirect costs it incurs – and\u00a0there\u2019s no such thing as free lunch in content marketing.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direct costs are easy enough to calculate. They\u2019re the money you\u2019re spending on things like freelancers, agencies, and software. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about indirect costs? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These can include the time your employees are spending on content marketing activities and the opportunity cost of not doing other things. A piece of content can also be \u201ccostly\u201d if it is produced by someone with many years of experience (think: your founder or SMEs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Whitney Wolfe Herd said on Tim Ferriss\u2019 podcast, \u201cThe most expensive currency in the world is experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some content marketing also incurs risk. Think\u00a0Coinbase\u2019s polarizing manifesto, \u201cCoinbase is a mission-focused<\/a> company.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When building a growth model, I tend to solely include direct costs and direct results; this makes the model actually useful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But thinking about indirect costs as well as indirect results (things like leverage, partnership opportunities, authority building) should also be reflected in your planning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most early-stage content marketing programs, it\u2019s necessary to over-index on *something* \u201cexpensive\u201d about your content process – whether that being a specific format of content you invest in, the experience of those writing it, a risky or contrarian strategy that has the potential to backfire, or simply the direct costs you\u2019re willing to incur.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s sort of the \u201cante\u201d you need to pay to begin playing the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n