This article originates from Aviv’s talk at the virtual Revenue Marketing Summit in June 2023. 

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Content marketing in a startup environment offers both exhilarating opportunities and formidable challenges, especially when it comes to demonstrating its ROI to your CFO. 

I'm Aviv Canaani, VP of Marketing and Sales at Datarails, and I've experienced the rollercoaster of evolving marketing strategies from the ground up. Through periods of unlimited budgets to stringent fiscal scrutiny, my journey has been about adapting and innovating under varying degrees of pressure and expectations. 

In this article, I'll share insights from my firsthand experience on maximizing the ROI of content marketing, detailing strategies that have succeeded, common pitfalls to avoid, and how to effectively communicate the value of these initiatives to those who hold the purse strings, like CFOs.

The changing landscape of marketing budgets

ROI is a timely topic, especially if you've ever had to work with your CFO to secure a budget for initiatives that seem a bit intangible, like content marketing. 

2015 to 2021 was a golden era for marketers like myself. I recall the early days in my role, where one CEO I worked with gave me the green light to "go wild" with spending. "You have an unlimited budget," he said, "let's grow, and if you run out of money, we'll just raise more." It was an exhilarating time for us as CMOs, though I can't say how CFOs felt about this.

However, the landscape began to shift in 2022. CFOs increasingly started to scrutinize our activities in marketing, particularly in areas like content and brand marketing. From their perspective, it appeared we were merely burning through cash without clear results. 

As a CMO, I started facing pointed questions about what exactly we were achieving with our budgets.

By 2023, there was a shared realization that while growth remained a priority, it needed to be approached more strategically. Perhaps you've had similar discussions in your organization – where on one hand, there's a desire to expand, but on the other, there's a pressing need for a well-articulated plan that explains how these investments will drive company growth.

In my role, I've spent considerable time trying to understand the CFO's perspective. I'm eager to share insights on why CFOs might push to cut content marketing budgets and what strategies have proven effective. Additionally, I'll discuss the mathematics behind calculating the ROI of content marketing, shedding light on how we can make informed, impactful decisions.