$500 vs $5,000 vs $50,000 content campaigns

Helloooo content connoisseurs.

It’s Perrin from Content Bites.

Content marketing can be a completely different beast at $500 than it is at $50,000. But what does that really look like in practice? Today, I’m going to walk you through how I’d set up a campaign at each level (because been around all those blocks my fair share).

• Appetizers: Links from LeadFeeder, Passionfroot, CMI, and more…

• Main Course: $500 vs $5,000 vs $50,000 content campaigns

Let’s dig in.

P.S. This is a beefy issue, but you should be able to skip around this issue pretty easily.

Appetizers: Content about content 🤯

• How ConvertKit Grew from $98k to $625k MRR by Doing 150 Webinars in 1 Year (link) ← relevant for some of the tactics below, so it’s a good one to skim

• 9 Actions You Can Take To Get Better Content Results Without Spending More (link)

• How Durable Leverages Creators to Stand out in the AI Gold-Rush (link)

• Content Repurposing Strategy: 180k to 1.2M Followers (link)

• When is the Best Time to Post on YouTube? We Analyzed 1 Million Videos to Find Out (link)

Main Course: $500 vs $5,000 vs $50,000 content campaigns

I’ve done all of these. 

I’ve run big ol’ wild content campaigns for clients for $50,000 (or more on a few occasions). 

I’ve run content campaigns – usually for my own businesses – in the neighborhood of $5,000-$10,000.

And back when the projects I started were paid for with sweat equity and tears (mostly tears lol), I ran content campaigns for basically nothing. In those days, $500 felt like a massive spend, and it sometimes even felt like a stupid risk. 

Lots of those campaigns failed, of course. Luckily, most of the flops were $500 flops. 

But many succeeded. I got a few $500 campaigns to work, which is how I learned content marketing. 

I iterated on $5,000 campaigns and eventually used them to build and sell my own businesses. 

And (if you’ll forgive some shameless bragging) I knocked a few $50,000+ campaigns completely out of the park – with the help of an amazing team, of course. 

So believe me, y’all: I have been doing this for 15 years, and I’ve done it with every conceivable budget. 

To get it out of the way: you absolutely can do content marketing on any budget. 

Obviously, it looks different at each stage. 

So today, I thought I’d break down what $500 content marketing campaigns look like compared to $5,000 and $50,000 campaigns.

Quick disclaimer: There are, of course, many, many ways to run content marketing campaigns. Actual campaigns depend on your business, skills, customers, resources, etc. These are just hypotheticals filled with some of my go-to tactics.

K. On to the good stuff.

$500 B2C content campaigns

A B2C content marketing campaign on a $500 budget is by far the most difficult on this list. You don’t have much budget. And whatever you sell likely has a lower price point than B2B businesses. That means that you likely need to generate lots and lots of eyeballs for not a lot of money. Here’s how I’d do it knowing what I know now. 

Breakdown: 

• Volume: 1 piece of amazing content

• Type: Short-form video or consumer guides

• Content spend: $0 

• Content platforms: major social platforms

• Distribution spend: $500 

• Distribution methods: Commenting, influencers, communities

• Team: 1 optional freelance content promoter

• Funnel focus: BOFU (scrappy sales)

Content:

I’d create the content myself. If you’re producing written content, write it yourself. If you’re relying on video, shoot and produce it yourself. 

Any content works, but I’d try short-form video first. Why? First, for lower-priced consumer goods, short-form video covers a huge amount of the sales process b/c you can just show the product and how/why to use it. Second, it’s the format with the most leverage: one short-form video can be promoted on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook. I’d try a low-budget version of Men With The Pot. 

If not video, then I’d go with a consumer guide. Think “Ultimate guide to sharpening your steak knives” if you sell a knife sharpener. Or “100 steak knives ranked” (with yours at the top or featured somewhere). This is text, and it’s tougher to generate reach on text-based content usually, but it’s also typically much higher quality traffic. On some of my content, I’ve seen as much as 40% click through to product pages. 

Create a single piece of content. Even if you’re going to repurpose it, and chop it up. Start with a single piece of content. With basically no money, you not only want to spend all your money distributing content, but also all your time.  

Distribution:

If I’d done video content, I’d hire influencers. I’d be looking for 10 micro-influencers with audiences of 5k+ followers to do “reaction” videos (or something similar) to my content for $50 each. If that didn’t stretch the budget enough, I’d throw in free products or cross promotions. 

If I’d done text-based consumer guides, I’d hire a content promoter to promote on B2C social platforms. This is where we spend our $500. Hire a single promoter to promote in all the scrappy ways: Reddit comments, YouTube comments, niche forums, Facebook groups, DMs, etc. I’d hire good overseas talent for 2 full-time weeks, and devote that completely to content promotion. I’d shoot for 3,500 eyeballs over 2 weeks, which works out to the equivalent of $0.15 CPC.

I’d ask VIP customers to share content to their networks. Not all customers, but if I had any customers who were big enough buyers that I knew them, it’d be worth an ask. I’d ask them to share the content + their personal experience. I’d incentivize with exclusive discount codes. Free, low traffic, high conversion

$500 B2B content campaigns

$500 likely goes a much, much longer way in a B2B campaign because you should make it back (plus quite a bit more) from a single sale. You can also afford to promote content 1:1. 

Breakdown: 

• Volume: 1 piece of amazing content

• Type: Case study

• Content spend: $0 spent on content creation

• Content platforms: Website page, print

• Distribution spend: $500

• Distribution methods: Snail mail, email, LinkedIn DMs, niche B2B communities

• Team: No team, just me

• Funnel focus: BOFU (scrappy sales)

Content:

I’d create the content myself here, too. We’re not banking yet. With low budgets, you’ll get way more return spending on promotion than you will on creation. And with a single piece of content, it has to be a banger. So I’d do it myself. 

I’d go with a case study. For my money, the most potent form of content for B2B audiences is case studies. They’re compelling. They build trust. They show off your expertise. And implicitly act as a referral. You just gotta make it good. Most case studies are boring as sh*t. So I’d try to build it into a story. 

Distribution:

I’d buy contact data from a sales database. With a $500 budget, we need to Get. This. Into. Decision makers’. Hands. To do that, we need their contact info. I’d spend $100 on 1 month of sales database (Listkit, Apollo, UpLead, etc.). I’d scrape emails for like 5,000 people in my target market. I’d scrape 50-100 physical address for the very best prospects.

I’d physically send 50-100 case studies to prospects w/ a hand-written note. I wrote about this tactic in the issue called “Content Promotion with a 90%+ Open Rate.”  I’d spend $400 on printing and postage to send my case study + a handwritten note to my 50 best prospects. I’d follow up via email. 

I’d email my case study to as many other prospects as I could. At least 20/day. I’d do it manually & personalized; no software b/c it’s dangerous sending that much email from a single email account (you can burn the account) via software. 

I’d DM content on LinkedIn. I’d DM any relevant connection & I’d spend my 20 daily connections & DM anyone who connects. Shouldn’t be too much of a turn-off: it’s not a pitch; it’s a useful case study. 

I’d share in LinkedIn & Facebook groups. I would NOT just drop links. I’d write value-add posts and offer my case study as an additional resource. 

$5,000 B2C content campaigns

If we have $5,000 to run a B2C content campaign, we can start to (1) pay great people to produce content, (2) produce more content, and (3) go a little more ham with the promotion. 

It’s still not enough of a budget to run strong organic campaigns. We still gotta lean heavily on promotion. 

Breakdown: 

• Volume: 1-5 pieces of content with lots of repurposing

• Type: Short-form video, consumer reports, problem/solution content

• Content spend: $1,000-$2,000 

• Content platforms: Major social platforms, communities

• Distribution spend: $3,000-$4000

• Distribution methods: Content partner, paid social, commenting, influencers

• Team: 2-5 freelancers (creators and promoters)

• Funnel focus: BOFU w/ some TOFU & MOFU

Content: 

I’d mix and match video & text-based content. Unless we know there’s a specific format that works disproportionately well for us, we should start experimenting with content formats and channels at this stage. But we likely still need to index on short-form video and consumer guides. I’d get a content partner to contribute to the content (see below).

I’d add TOFU content. With more money, we don’t have to fight so hard for sales, which means we don’t have to focus exclusively on driving people directly to the bottom of our funnel. We can get people into the top of the funnel with problem-solution content. This = more reach.

I would NOT try to build organic audiences. Budget’s too small. It’s generally always good to start building organic audiences as soon as possible, but building profitable organic audiences takes a lot of content and a long time. $5,000 is still not enough to do that. 

Promotion: 

I’d recruit a content partner. I’d recruit a content partner who would be featured in the content, would contribute to the content, and would then help promote the content to THEIR audience. Why would that do that? Because you can now tell them you’ll be spending money to promote the content yourself. It costs them nothing & they get $4,000 of free advertising. I’d ask 10 people with 20k-50k followers. Someone would bite.

I’d pay to promote on social. I’d then pay to promote on whatever socials I could. I’d go for maximum reach here. The real value is going to come from our content partner (they have all the trust b/c they have their own audience). So I’d be trying to hold up my end of the bargain with max reach. As of the time of this writing, that probably means TikTok. 

I’d still do all the stuff from my $500 campaign. Promote in groups, communities, comments, etc. I might try to find a dozens or so micro-influencers on the cheap. This is still valuable, and it could likely cover the cost of the campaign on its own.  

$5,000 B2B content campaigns

Warning: it might be just a little crazy to still put all your eggs in one basket if you’re working with a $5,000 budget, and I wouldn’t recommend it for a B2C campaign, but I think it works here – mostly because the content type we’re investing in at this stage is so conducive to partnerships. 

Breakdown: 

• Volume: 1 piece of content

• Type: Webinar, co-created if possible

• Content spend: $1,000

• Content platforms: Webinar platforms, our own site

• Distribution spend: $4,000

• Distribution methods: Partnerships, sponsored newsletters, B2B influencers

• Team: Slide designer

• Funnel focus: BOFU w/ some TOFU & MOFU

Content: 

I’d do a webinar. If you have money, webinars are like a case study on steroids. The downside is that they take time, energy, and money to put on. But we’ve got $5,000 burning a hole in our pocket baby! 

The only content talent I’d pay for is a slide designer. I’m an okay designer. I’m a hobbyist. But I’m not a pro. And webinars need to look pro. We do that with design. I’d do the content and hand the slides off to a designer to make them look amazing.

Promotion: 

I’d recruit a webinar partner. Super important. Partners here are even more impactful than in B2C campaigns. Webinars are extremely good at actually selling things. They’re easy to promote to whatever audience your content partner might have. They’re easy to build CTAs and discounts into. They’re just crazy powerful when done right. So we want to find a partner who can do it with us & promote it to their audience. OUR end of the bargain is the same as above: we’ll pay to get people registered. 

I’d promote the webinar in newsletters. Newsletters are great at building amazing, high-quality audiences (that’s why I started one). They’re also not super expensive to advertise in. In B2B spaces, you can advertise in newsletters for about $100 CPMs. For $2,000, we could get in front of about 20,000 targeted people. We might expect 100 webinar registrations from that. Super good. I’d use databases like Reletter to find them.

I’d pay B2B influencers. B2B influencing is, in my opinion, super under-priced right now. I cannot give you names, but someone close to me hired a B2B influencer who had a following of 277,000 people on LinkedIn to promote his service and generated around 30 qualified leads. HIs average LTV is like $50,000. The math can be crazy. So I’d spend like $2,000 here for sure. You can use databases like Passionfroot to find them. 

I would NOT do the stuff from the $500 campaign. It all works, but it’s too time intensive; we’d need to focus on broader reach here. 

$50,000 B2C content campaigns

Major benefit of this kind of bankroll is that we can (1) pay the long game, and (2) comfortably build our organic audiences while we still spend money on promotion. 

The campaigns at this level look VERY different. So buckle up. 

Breakdown: 

• Volume: 50-100 pieces of content

• Type: Blog posts, short-form video, long-form video

• Content spend: $10,000-$40,000

• Content platforms: Website, major social platforms, groups, communities

• Distribution spend: $10,000-$40,000

• Distribution methods: Organic search, organic social, paid search, paid social, influencers, content partners

• Team: 5-10 freelancers: writers, video creators, editors (video and text), partnership specialists, content promoters

• Funnel focus: Compete funnel (TOFU/MOFU/BOFU)

Content: 

I’d (FINALLY) invest in organic growth and spend almost all my money here (with a catch). This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think content marketing on organic channels is so slow and such a long-term play, that I generally wouldn’t do it until I had money to spend and had other stuff working. 

Then, I’d go hard. I’d be trying to publish 30-50 pieces of content on every organic channel a month. I’d do this with SEO (blog posts), and every other kind of social content across all platforms. I’d hire creators as needed – still freelance.

This is where almost all of my content creation budget would be spent. Why? Because if you’re spending money to produce tons of content for organic channels, you basically have a massive testing ground, and you can pull the best content for other kinds of promotion.

Promotion: 

I’d test tons of content on organic platforms, pick the best stuff, and actively promote it. I’d use the large-scale content operation that’s feeding the organic channels to hunt for content with the best engagement. Then, I’d put the weight of our content promotion efforts behind that content. 

I’d invest in paid social and paid search. As organic audiences start to grow, you’ll have proven content to put ad dollars behind. You’ll also be accumulating massive retargeting audiences. You can use these for absolutely nuclear paid search and paid social campaigns.

I’d go after heavy-hitting partners & influencers. Same stuff as we ran in our $5,000 campaign, but with this kind of bankroll, we can start to rope in bigger influencers, and we can start to get in the room with MUCH bigger businesses who might want to partner with us. We can start asking, “Who has all our customers, and we can use our budget to open those doors. As our budgets increase from here, we should try to buy our way into bigger and bigger audiences.

$50,000 B2B content campaigns

Call me bonkers, but scaled B2B content campaigns have always been the most fun for me. You don’t need lots of eyeballs to generate boatloads of revenue. There are also channels we can spend on that are stupidly underpriced. Combined, it can make content campaigns in this range absolutely deadly. 

Breakdown: 

• Volume: 50-100 pieces of content

• Type: Webinars, case studies, blog posts

• Content spend: $20,000-$30,000

• Content platforms: Webinar platforms, website, social platforms

• Distribution spend: $20,000-$30,000

• Distribution methods: Organic search, organic social, paid search, paid social, newsletters, podcasts, influencers

• Team: 5-10 freelancers: writers, editors, deck builders, partnership specialists, content promoters

• Funnel focus: Compete funnel (TOFU/MOFU/BOFU)

Content: 

I’d invest in organic channels here, too. This is where SEO can really shine. You can publish 50 great articles in a hyper-specific vertical one time and end up with 10k-100k monthly visits for extremely long periods of time that you never have to pay for again. You can also build organic social followings; best platforms for B2B organic social are LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. 

I’d fire up paid social and paid search. This works here for all the reasons it works in a $50,000 B2C campaign. We’d have tested more content, and we’d have built a big ol’ retargeting audience. Platforms to test are Google Ads, Bing Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Meta Ads.

I’d do more webinars. Webinars are still amazing, and a LOT of the promotion stuff that unlocks at this investment level can be leveraged into really wild partnerships if you do it in a webinar. Webinars are still great. 

Promotion: 

I’d buy tons of promotion in B2B newsletters. Tons out there, and $10,000 (for example) goes an astoundingly long way when advertising in B2B newsletters. Newsletter readers also usually love content, so whatever we’re producing – but especially case studies and webinars – are great for these folks. 

I’d buy tons of promotions with B2B influencers. Again, massively underpriced. With this much black powder, we can work our way into big influencer accounts, which lets us…

…find bigger content partners. If you roll up into a Zoom meeting and say, “I’d like to do a webinar together. To promote the webinar, I’m partnering with influencers with a combined following of 2M finance professionals. All you have to do is present with me and promote it to your audience”... what do you think people would say? In other words, we can leverage our other promotion efforts to land some truly big fish here. 

Ultra-condensed summary of what I’d do at every level:

• $500 B2C content campaigns: 1 piece of content; short-form video; all spend on promotion; scrappy, active promotion on social platforms

• $500 B2B content campaigns: 1 piece of content; case study; all spend on promotion; 1:1 promotion via FedEx & email

• $5,000 B2C content campaigns: 2-5 pieces of content; most of the spend still on promotion; content partners & influencers

• $5,000 B2B content campaigns: 1 webinar; most of the spend still on promotion; content partner, newsletters, B2B influencers

• $50,000 B2C content campaigns: 50-100 pieces of content; split spend; mix of content; investment in organic channels, paid traffic, and much bigger influencers.

$50,000 B2B content campaigns: 50-100 pieces of content; split spend; mix of content; webinars, investment in organic channels, paid traffic; much bigger newsletters & influencers

That’s the issue, friends. If you missed last week’s issue, you can read it here.

Go forth & conquer.

—Perrin