Announcing The Launch Of ‘The Content Formula’ Book

I am super-excited to announce the launch of my first book, The Content Formula, co-authored by my colleague Liz Bedor, and with a foreword from Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, and author of Epic Content Marketing and Content, Inc.

We created The Content Formula to answer the biggest question currently on marketers’ minds: what is the ROI of content marketing?

Why Does Marketing Need This Book?

Marketing is constantly evolving, which means marketers are always being challenged to show real business results. The only constant is the need for marketers to prove ROI. Liz and I are frequently asked about the best way to measure the ROI of content marketing, so we’ve spent a great deal of time testing our process and coming up with actual calculations anyone can use.

The goal of our work has always been to help marketers and business leaders define, calculate, and measure the positive impact content marketing has on a businesses of any size, in any geography. Now delivering that insight in our first book.

According to eConsultancy, unused and wasted content costs B2B marketers alone a whopping $50 billion a year.

Often times the content that marketers create is ignored, or never used because it’s created by the business, for the business, and simply doesn’t meet customer needs. I’m really passionate about marketing and Liz and I couldn’t be more excited to be able to provide our fellow marketers with a tool that will help them succeed on this wild marketing journey.

After searching the web, we couldn’t find any practical guides to helping marketers answer the ROI question that so often comes up with content marketing. So this book is our best effort to fill that need and provide a step-by-step guide for marketers.

What’s In The Content Formula?

The book draws on my experience building the business case and measuring real business results as VP of Content Marketing at SAP, as well as countless workshops facilitated by Liz and I with brands from all over the world.

The Content Formula is divided into three parts:

1. How to build the business case for content marketing
2. How to find the budget to establish a new content marketing program, and
3. How to measure content marketing success in business terms.

Content marketing has become table stakes for businesses today, and as it matures as a category, so too must its measurement. Senior marketing leaders are brought into the opportunity of content marketing to attract new customers versus trying to buy their attention through interruptive marketing strategies.

This shift, however, requires a change in corporate culture, organization structure, go-to-market process, and effective and accurate performance measurement.

With the formulas we’ve created, we’ve established a way for marketers to prove the exact return on investment they get from content marketing, highlighting its usefulness in any marketer’s toolbox.

Where Can I Find ‘The Content Formula’ Book?

The book was published by Marketing Insider Group and is available on Amazon for $20.99 in print, and for $9.99 on Kindle.

An audiobook version of the book will be released in early 2016. We also are working on a web app at that you can use to calculate your own Content Marketing ROI that will be available soon at TheContentForumula.com.

Why Did We Decide To Write This Book?

We decided to self-publish this book to get our approach out to the market as quickly as possible. We hear challenges about content marketing ROI every day. And we wanted to help as many businesses as we could navigate these challenges.

This was not the first book I wanted to write. But after co-hosting a webinar with Liz on Content Marketing ROI, we had a bunch of people tell us that we should turn our insights into a book. That webinar laid the foundation, but we spent countless hours of our personal time adding “meat to the bone.”

We also had some amazing encouragement from Joe Pulizzi and Rebecca Lieb who agreed to provide the foreword and jacket quote for the book.

Finally, we could not have done this without the help from our amazing designer Kristi Colvin and her team. Kristi was referred to me by Daniel Newman who has successfully self-published numerous books.

Tell Us About You And Your Co-Author Liz?

Liz Bedor: My career has always been very content and training focused. My first role was in sales enablement for Salesforce, managing customer references and documenting complex deal processes for sales trainings (how they navigated complex political landscapes, found an internal champions, etc). From there I transitioned into managing training programs for our sales teams. In that role I touched everything from developing the curriculum objectives, creating the trainings, writing quizzes to measure learning retention, localizing content for global markets and finally reporting on results.

Then wanting to get into a true marketing role, I transitioned into doing brand marketing for Salesforce University, which is the training and certification offering for customers. While I learned a ton in that role, I realized doing marketing for technical training and certification was not going to become my passion in life, so I sought out to find something that really resonated with me. That’s when I found content marketing and the brand strategy team at NewsCred.

Our team consults our clients on their content marketing strategies, taking everything into consideration from their competitive landscape to their budgets and business objectives to help them create, manage and measure successful content marketing programs. As a brand strategist, I’m really able to marry the experience I’ve had from my different roles into something I love to do.

Michael Brenner: I started in sales as well, for the Nielsen Company. I was selling and training some of the best marketers in the world on how to use consumer insights to drive their marketing programs. I moved into Marketing after that and helped them develop their first cloud-based software solution. But I’ve never been a “what color is our logo” kind of marketer. I’ve always believed marketing should focus on customer value and deliver quantifiable results.

I was then head of Marketing for two startups before becoming SAP’s first Head of Digital Marketing. And in the process of developing that capability, I found that customer-focused content drove more and better quality leads for sales. So I became their Global VP of Content Marketing and built a program focused on publishing customer-driven content to drive reach, engagement and conversion for the business.

I then became Head of Strategy for NewsCred. And now as CEO of Marketing Insider Group, my goal is to help as many businesses as I can – companies of all shapes and sizes – to gain reach, engagement and conversion with content marketing. This book is one of the many steps I’m taking to realize that dream.

Are you interested in engaging and converting new customer for your business? Contact me here and let’s talk about how we can help.