You’re probably overpaying for editing
Stop trying to save costs where you shouldn’t, and save costs where you’re probably overpaying
If you’re investing in content for marketing, listen up.
Content marketing is an expensive channel for acquisition. If you have a fully staffed content program, you can easily spend $300k+ a year on salaries and content.
Even companies without a director are spending easily $200k+ on their content program per year.
When they need or want to cut back, they usually try to cut budget from writing. Aka, they try to pay writers less.
But this is the wrong place to do it. Great writing is the hallmark of a content program.
There is a place though where most content programs are overpaying.
Editing.
Seriously.
In most content programs, editing is handled in one of two ways;
You’re not editing at all, which costs you conversions.
An expensive in-house content person or writer is editing, which means you’re overpaying.
A good content manager costs $75k per year. The goal of any hire is to get more value out of them than you pay them, to the range of 3-4x their salary minimum. So a $75k per year person should be adding $300k+ of value a year.
Their “hourly” rate, calculated at $75,000/2,000 (2,000 working hours in a year) is $37.50. So, they should be working on $100+ per hour tasks.
That’s strategy, promotion, hiring, etc.
Editing ranges from $30-$50 per hour on average, starting at proofreading and going up to developmental.
This means that even if they’re working on developmental editing, you’re overpaying.
To illustrate this for you. I put together a video that explains it all.
Have a watch:
https://editorninja.com/videos/a-better-way-to-optimize-your-content-marketing-budget/
Once you’ve watched that, let’s schedule a call to discuss your editing needs and see if we can help you find some margin in your content budget.