How do I measure success in content marketing?
Not only is this a good question, it is a smart, essential one. Why is it so important? Because companies that track and measure their content marketing strategies are statistically more successful in terms of their stated goals than companies that do not. You can post blog after blog, article after article, and video after video…. But if you do not use key metrics to determine how effective they are and to arrive at underlying insights, then it can quickly become a case of wasted time, effort, and resources. No one has the luxury of just throwing these assets away.
After all, it’s difficult to get where you want to go if you do not know where you currently are.
How Do I Measure Success In Content Marketing?
You invested time, resources, and energy into a content marketing strategy – or maybe you were the one who championed the move and need to justify spend to the executive team. Regardless, you need to know that it is paying off and moving the needle when it comes to your key goals and objectives.
There it is. Right there. Your key goals and objectives.
What matters most to you? What are you trying to achieve through your content marketing initiatives? What do you want each blog, each article, each whitepaper, webinar, and infographic to do for you? That is where you start.
Let’s say that your goal is to build brand awareness. Content marketing is an exceptionally effective tool for this stage of the buyer’s journey as it helps you establish a strong and compelling online presence while building trust with consumers. You need to make sure that your content is working to increase your visibility. To do that, look at metrics like:
- Pageviews. This is a time when a page on your site is loaded or reloaded in a browser. This is an important measurement of the activity that your website sees. It can also tell you which content assets are performing best for you and which are not pulling their weight for whatever reason. Use this insight to determine what topics, formats, and mediums are most compelling to your target audience.
- Unique Visitors. We all have sites that we like to visit time and time again. But a unique visitor is someone who goes to your site at least once. They are only counted once in a certain period of time (e.g. one month). So even if they visited 100 times, they count as one unique visitor. This gives you a terrific indication of how much activity your site is getting and how wide your audience is.
- Mentions. Does your brand generate a lot of buzz? Do other sites and socials mention you? Social listening is key in measuring content marketing success.
- Followers. Look at your numbers: how many blog subscribers do you have? How many people have signed up for your newsletter? How many people follow you on social media? If you see increases, it is a sign that you are achieving your goal of boosting brand awareness.
What if you want to increase visibility in the search engine results pages. Worthy goal indeed! Websites that rank at or near the top receive the lion’s share of clicks, which you can leverage into conversions. Few venture beyond the first page of Google. If this is your aim, track:
- Organic Traffic. This will tell you how many people discover you through search engines. If it is lower than you would like, you may need to consider taking steps specific to search engine optimization (SEO), such as integrating targeted keywords.
- Keyword Rankings. As mentioned, most people stay on the first page of Google (especially if there are some great results that’ll help them). The vast majority do not proceed to page two, and even fewer go to three and beyond. When someone enters a query related to your target keyword, where do you rank?
- Backlinks. Backlinks are gold. When another site, especially a reputable, highly authoritative one, links back to your content, it indicates that your content is trustworthy and of value. A strong profile of quality backlinks means that search engines will boost your content and its visibility.
Engagement is your goal? You feel like you have good brand awareness but you want to really key in on your target audience and begin the process of converting them. Keep them interested and involved. Effective content will pull them further along the funnel. With this in mind, look at:
- Engagement Rate. When someone visits your site, how long do they stay? How often do they come back? An “engaged session,” according to Google, is one in which the consumer interacts for at least 10 seconds, views at least two pages, or triggers a conversion event (e.g. signs up for a free download).
- Time on Page. You don’t want to do all that work to increase visibility and have people bounce right off your site in a second or two. Time on page indicates how useful, engaging, entertaining, interesting, helpful, etc., your content is.
- Page/Scroll Depth. We’ve all done it: we want the answer to a question, we click onto a website, read the headline, and then head right back out. As businesses, we don’t want this! Page/scroll depth tells you how far they’ve scrolled before leaving your site – and how interesting and helpful they found the content.
- Likes, Comments, and Shares. Great content begs to be shared. When people find it so valuable that they click like, share it with others, mention it on social media, etc., it vastly expands your reach as a brand.
And… the bottom line. What if your goal is to increase revenue. Yet another worthy goal. Many consider content marketing an effective “top of the funnel” approach (e.g. building awareness, building trust, etc.) but the right content can seal the deal, as it were. Studies show that brands that really invest in content marketing see six times higher conversion rates than those that do not. So if you’re asking “How do I generate customers through blog posts, articles, and other content,” you’re on the right track.
Look at:
- Leads. If people give up their contact info in exchange for a download, sign up for a newsletter, fill in an inquiry form, etc., they are now a lead. Look at how many leads you generate via your content assets.
- Conversion Rate. Not everyone who consumes your content will become a customer. That’s to be expected. But you still need to track the percentage of visitors who take a specified action after interacting with your content. Obviously, the higher the better! Use this information to pinpoint areas where you can revamp, revise, and refine your content to drive this number up.
- Cost Per Customer. How much did you spend to convert these customers? Find out by taking the number of new customers and dividing it by your total spend on that content marketing initiative. How does this number sit with you?
How do I measure success in content marketing? You start at the beginning, by looking at your goals and objectives. Then you contact us. THAT Agency specializes in developing and maintaining compelling, engaging, and effective content marketing strategies that smash all your targets.
