Many companies use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy. Also, budgets are growing and many more businesses plan to leverage digital marketing to grow their business.
Whether you are leveraging content marketing or planning to, one important question is how to measure your content marketing efforts?
While an increase in sales tells you a lot about a great campaign, there are many intangible ways content marketing can help your business. Content marketing metrics help you understand whether your efforts are paying off or not.
In this article, we have shared some of the essential metrics that will help you see just what content marketing is worth for your business. All you need to is keep checking these metrics on a regular basis.
1. Sales
Sales is probably the first metrics that can help you understand if your content marketing is successful or not. Have your sales increased now that people are visiting your blog or learning more about your products through Instagram content?
Just as good marketing drives sales, content marketing should also drive more sales for your business. However, if those sales numbers are not what you projected, you will have to look at other metrics that prove content marketing ROI.
2. Content marketing metrics for your website
There’s no denying that marketing drives brand awareness by increasing your audience. On the other hand, content marketing is particularly good as it helps you reach more people. For instance, if you want to get more attention on social, you can simply include a funny tweet or a video to engage people.
That said, a blog is crucial to any content marketing strategy. Other forms of content such as videos and infographics also help engage your audience to a great extent.
In general, content can help your audience. You can share handy tips on how to use your products or maybe expert advice on how to deal with certain business challenges. If a user finds your information relevant during a search, he may come back again.
These are some great ways to drive engagement on both social media as well as your website. Users may watch, comment, or share your videos and blogs.
With the right analytic tools, you can measure all aspects of your audience’s behavior including traffic, pageviews per user, and even the time a user spends on a page.
So, if you see a surge in traffic after you post a blog, you can be sure that it is because of the great content in it.
3. Audience interaction
Engagement is an important metric. While an attractive website may get you, visitors, a good marketing campaign should enable them to take action such as sign up for your newsletter or share your articles on social media.
You can consider comments, likes, and shares as measures of interaction as well. You may also keep a tab on subscriptions and downloads of eBooks or white papers.
Another aspect to keep eye is-page views per person. Finally, measure click-through rates on call-to-action like the number of people clicking on “shop now” or “contact us” button.
4. Dwell time and bounce rate
Dwell time- the time taken by someone to look at your page before clicking back to Google.
Bounce rate- It’s the number of people who visit your page only to leave immediately.
It is important that you delve a little deeper into both these metrics and understand why people are leaving your website soon. If one of your pages has a high bounce rate, it means something needs your attention. Your page design is probably not appealing or your page is ranking for wrong keywords on Google.
5. SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing work together. If you want to rank for a certain keyword, you will have to make sure your content is relevant to that term.
Your content strategy must be based on the right keywords. It will be helpful for your SEO as well. Also, make sure to publish fresh content on a regular basis. Google and other search engines reward informative content. You will see your SERPs improve if you keep producing good content.
SEO rankings will let you discern if your content strategy matches your audience's expectations. Again, there are chances where one post may rank higher and generate great traffic while another post may not perform so well.
Keep an eye on your greatest hits and understand the pattern. Are users reading certain types of posts? Is a particular topic attracting people?
Having proper numbers will help you figure out what’s working and what’s not. You can use the data to tweak your content strategy. That way you can share with your audience more of the type of content they would want to see.
6. Lead quality
Lead quality is another important metrics to look at when it comes to measuring content marketing success. You will see an increase in your lead quality when you start content marketing.
It’s true that content marketing can boost leads and many businesses are incorporating it in their marketing strategy. It also helps you find good quality leads.
7. Exposure and Authority
While a good marketing strategy offers several benefits, it will still be difficult to measure brand awareness or authority. Content marketing can make it happen. To know if your marketing efforts are translating into increased authority or improved brand awareness, you must keep track of your mentions and links. The more users share and link your content, the more brand awareness and authority you will have.
Brand awareness is a measure that lets you know if people have heard of your brand or know what your business is about. If your content is being shared across platforms and driving a ton of traffic, you’re extending your reach. This way more people will know about your brand.
If you are suddenly receiving requests to write guests posts or give an interview, it means you are being recognized as experts in the industry. In other words, you have built your authority. Such an authority can help build trust with your customers as well as your peers.
8. Know if you are being mentioned
You should always ask your audience about you using a customer satisfaction survey.
This is may sometimes be known as a net promoter score. It tells you the number of people who would recommend you after visiting your website or reading a blog post.
Reviews and referrals help keep track of how you’re doing. Comment on your blog is seen as a kind of review while a shared article is a sort of referral. Simply put, your customers are promoting your content.
You can ask users what they like or don’t like about your content. What would they like to see more of? What type of content do users generally come seeking your site?
Takeaway
By following the right content marketing metrics, you can get insights into your campaign success. However, you need to understand your audience’s requirements as well. This combined with metrics will help you create a better content marketing strategy.