How to Measure Content Marketing Success

Although traditional advertising channels and marketing collateral may still generate revenue for your company, it can be difficult to calculate your ROI, market reach or the success of your campaign. As such, you never really know the value of every dollar you spend on branding and marketing.

Digital marketing gives you a more accurate analysis of how much revenue you generate versus how much you allocate toward your content marketing strategy. A digital platform allows you to monitor the success of your content in the following areas:

· Website activity
· Audience engagement
· SEO outcome
· Conversion rate
· Lead generation
· Company revenue

You can also dissect your strategies to measure content marketing from various angles. Content marketing offers a no-stone-left-unturned approach to brand promotion. Let’s take a closer look at how to measure content marketing success in four fundamental areas.

1. User Activity

User activity is typically centered around your website. Think of your website as the hub or your marketing efforts with other platforms acting as ambassador sites. Other platforms may include email, a YouTube channel or social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. Other digital channels may include text messaging, search engines, digital ads/banners or apps.

All of these channels work together to drive traffic back to your website. Using advanced tools, you can track the user activity of all the channels within each piece of content. What metrics should you look for when evaluating your website traffic?

· Website page views and number of pages per session
· Average time on page
· Average number of pages viewed per visit
· Bounce rates
· The source of incoming website traffic
· New, returning and unique visitors

How often should you track user activity? Although it never hurts to adhere to a schedule, you may want to set up a system that allows you to track the content marketing success during a specific campaign. For instance, if you plan to launch an email campaign during the first quarter of the year, then monitor the correlation between each email, your website traffic and your revenue. Also, analyze the success of the entire campaign when it concludes. This will allow you to measure the success of your emails.

2. Audience Engagement

When you create content for your website, email or social media page, you naturally want to know how your audience will respond to it. Various metrics can act as a digital marketer that signifies if your marketing is effective. Different forms of measurable audience engagement may include:

· Likes, mentions or shares on social media posts or blog posts
· Incoming requests for marketing partnerships
· External links to your content from other sites
· Boost in traffic on websites and views on social media pages
· Email views and replies

Keep in mind that comments, likes and shares may be the gold standard for engagement metrics. However, time spent on a page, click-through rates, bounce rates, video views and other user activities can also help you gauge your target audience engagement.

3. SEO Results

When it comes to metrics for measuring SEO success, there are various key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can rely on to ensure that your content is optimized. They also create an early warning system that addresses what content you need to adjust if you are not seeing the desired results early on. Some examples of KPIs for SEO include:

Keyword Rankings

Google ranks websites based on keywords and how you apply them in your website content. If you are trying to rank for a certain item (product or service in a target market), then Google ranks your website for that item.

Organic Traffic

If a user types in a search term in Google, will your site pop up first? Organic traffic measures how many people find your website by naturally typing in a set of words or keywords. Keep in mind that ‘organic’ also implies that you are not using a paid ad to rank high.

Backlinks

If other people or websites are linking to your site, Google will rank your site higher. Backlinks indicate that other people are interested in sharing what is on your site. As a result, it boosts your site performance and increases your rankings over time.

Dwell Time

One of the reasons why quality content is so important is that dwell time can affect your Google rankings. A page performs better when a person stays on the page instead of ‘bouncing’ off of it. Dwell time can tell you how much time viewers are staying on your website. You can measure your content beyond just the page view.

4. Revenue

Probably the most effective (and rewarding) way to learn how to measure content marketing success is by tracking your company revenue. More specifically, you can monitor your revenue against a single marketing campaign.

For example, using the right lead generation tools, you can calculate the actual number of users or leads that interact with your content. This takes the guesswork out of lead generation and helps you develop a powerful lead strategy. You can also find out how many new leads you have based on the initial contact they made with your content.

In addition, you can monitor conversion rates, cost per acquisition (A.K.A., pay-per-click) and the amount of return on investment relative to how much you spent creating and distributing the content. You get a more accurate bottom line based on tangible data instead of projections and guesswork.

Content Marketing Solutions for Your Business

At Lucid, we provide clear and creative digital marketing that helps you expand your market reach while targeting the customers you want. We deliver measured results that reflect your brand and help you reach your goals. To find out more about our services, call us at 850-760-0478 or fill out the quick contact form below, and we will be in touch.