How to Make the Business Case for Content at Your Firm

Give leadership the plan between attention and revenue.

To make the business case for content, show leadership what the firm needs to become known for, how the work will reach prospective clients, and how you’ll assess its contribution to business outcomes. Views belong in that conversation, but they cannot carry it alone.

A partner asking “What did it bring in?” is asking a fair question. The marketer’s job is to explain what the program is supposed to change and provide evidence along the way.

Watch Making the Business Case for Content on Youtube.

Explain the gap between attention and hiring

A prospective client might encounter a firm’s video before they need advice, after a colleague recommends the firm, or while comparing potential advisors. Each encounter has a different job. Counting them together as views doesn’t tell you who watched or what happened next.

John Dawes’s 95:5 paper offers a useful explanation for reaching people before they’re ready to buy. Using an illustrative five-year purchase interval, it estimates that roughly 5% would be buying in a quarter. Dawes explicitly describes the ratio as a heuristic, rather than a precise rule.

That helps explain why an immediate inquiry is an incomplete test. It doesn’t tell you that 95% of your viewers are future clients. You still need to establish whether you’re reaching people relevant to the firm’s work.

Describe a plausible route to business

Consider an illustrative advisory firm answering questions founders ask before selling a business. A founder watches an explanation, later reads a related article, and eventually raises it in a meeting. The content has given that person a chance to understand the advisor’s judgment before speaking directly.

That is a plausible contribution to a sale, not proof that the video caused it. A referral, existing relationship, or other marketing may also have mattered. Ask prospects what they had seen before contacting the firm, record those answers, and keep relevant content interactions alongside opportunity information where available.

Then connect the records to qualified inquiries, meetings, proposals, signed clients, and revenue. Keep direct inquiries separate from opportunities where content appears to have helped. Don’t count the entire value of every opportunity that touched an article as revenue generated by that article.

Show the continuing value and the continuing work

A useful library can keep answering questions after the original production is paid for. A law firm explanation can support a referral conversation or help someone prepare for an initial meeting. Plan where those answers will be found and how the team will use them.

That continuing usefulness is a stronger budget argument than the number of files delivered. It also requires work. Topics need review, outdated material needs attention, and distribution needs an owner. Production costs won’t necessarily stay flat as the program grows.

Treat content as work with potential lasting value, with a budget for maintaining that value. Put preparation, production, approvals, distribution, and updates into the cost. Leadership can assess a complete proposal more fairly than a shoot price with the rest left to marketing.

Build the case on one slide

The video’s three-block structure keeps the discussion focused. Use it to make choices visible, rather than squeeze the whole dashboard onto one page.

Block one: the visibility gap

Show what prospective clients cannot currently learn about your firm. Perhaps the website lists practice areas but offers little explanation from the partners. Perhaps referrals have no useful piece to share when recommending you.

Use something observable. If a competitor is publishing helpful answers, show an example and explain what the audience can learn from it. Visibility alone doesn’t prove that competitor is winning clients.

Block two: the plan

State the audience, the questions you’ll address, the cadence, and the distribution channels. Add the cost and who owns delivery and review. Name the tradeoff you’re making.

For example: “A monthly partner interview will answer one recurring prospect question. We’ll publish the full answer, a written version, and selected excerpts. We’ll use a consistent recording setup so preparation and approvals fit the team’s capacity.”

Adapt the plan to available time. A promised weekly series with no reviewer or distribution owner is a scheduling problem waiting for a budget.

Block three: the review schedule

Use the quarter-by-quarter sequence as a proposed management framework. In the first quarter, check whether approved pieces were produced and distributed as planned. In the second, examine audience relevance and which material attracts useful attention. As opportunities develop, review prospect feedback and commercial outcomes.

Track those outcomes throughout. The sequence changes the emphasis of each review; it doesn’t switch business measurement off.

LinkedIn’s Signal to Noise article reports an older survey in which only 4% of respondents measured marketing beyond six months. It also discusses the longer timeframe needed to assess brand building. That supports patience in evaluation, not a promise that month seven will deliver clients.

Agree on a review period suited to your firm’s sales cycle, resources, and goals. Decide what would justify continuing, changing the plan, or stopping it.

What to do this week

Allow 30 minutes to draft the three blocks. Put one observable gap, one deliverable plan, and one agreed review schedule on the slide. Check the last ten clients for any recorded evidence that they knew the firm before contacting you. Treat missing information as unknown, rather than evidence that content did or didn’t matter.

Use The One-slide Case Worksheet to track your work: The One-slide Case Worksheet

Watch Making the Business Case for Content on Youtube for Seena’s walkthrough of the slide and the connection between visibility and future sales conversations.

Take leadership a proposal they can evaluate: what you’ll make, what it costs, what you’ll measure, and when you’ll make the next decision.