Although many companies have embraced content marketing as a tactic to promote their products and services, many are still working to determine the best ways to measure success.
It is important to understand the metrics that help you measure the performance of your content marketing strategy. Without this understanding, your content marketing campaign is likely to flop.
In this post, we explore some of the key metrics you can use to monitor the performance of your content. By keeping an eye on these, you can ensure that your content strategy is working.
Table of Contents
Content marketing metrics to measure performance
WebSite Traffic Performance
The number of visitors to your website is an important indicator of how well your content performs. Many visitors are good news as long as the number of people who leave your website quickly (by clicking a link or button on a page) is not very high.
How do users get to your content? Do most users click your content through organic search results, or are they referring to your content from other sites like social media? Maybe they navigate to your blog from an email newsletter. Whatever it is, understand how people get to your content.
The tools used to measure website traffic include Google Analytics, Open Web Analytics, and Clicky.
The behavior of the User
Metrics that track user behavior on your sites, such as time spent on a page or bounce rate, are not useful. However, when used with other metrics (such as traffic performance), they can provide insight into reader engagement and content performance.
It is important to monitor the following metrics in Google Analytics: Time on Page, Bounce Rate, Pages/Session, and New/Returning Visitors.
Though organic search and time on the page aren’t your only metrics, you can still use them to tell you whether a blog post is resonating with users. For example, if a post brings in organic traffic and people spend a lot of time reading it, you know the topic is relevant to searchers.
Making your SEO efforts materialize
The second measurement of your content strategy’s performance is the return on investment you get from SEO.
When your website’s ranking has improved, it is likely the result of content optimization efforts. Investing in content optimization helps drive organic engagement. It brings your site to the first page of the search engine result page (SERPs).
Generating Leads
Content plays a crucial role in the buyer’s journey. It helps your audience make decisions and hence, convert as a lead. A good content marketing strategy helps your audience navigate the purchasing cycle. You can also determine the effectiveness of your content marketing by measuring user engagement and considering each piece’s ability to drive conversions.
Brand awareness and reputation management
Measuring the brand awareness quotient is a way of tracking the performance of your content marketing. If your content is interesting, relevant, and value-adding to your audience, you can expect to see an increase in brand image and, subsequently, the level of awareness around the brand.
If your target audience or circle is beginning to recognize your brand as an authority in your industry. You can be sure the content marketing efforts are working. It will eventually lead to an increase in business referrals, leads, and sales.
Repeating visitors
A high rate of repeat visitors (RRV) is a good indicator that your website provides content valuable to your visitors.
Social media sharing of your content
If a visitor to your website finds the posted content valuable, they may share the link on their social media accounts. It enhances your reputation and brings in leads.
Since potential customers spend time on social media. It is important to track your content marketing performance on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. To do this, you must continue to promote your content.
Number of impressions and click-through rate (CTR)
A good way to determine whether a keyword is worth optimizing is to track impressions and click-through-rate in Google Search Console. These numbers will let you know whether the keywords your content is ranking for actually result in people seeing or clicking on it.
The data won’t be a complete picture of performance, but it can tell you whether your content is doing well (high impressions and CTR). If low impressions, or low CTR, it should definitely be adjusted.
Sales and Conversion measures
It is crucial to monitor conversions for elements like email subscriptions, calls-to-action, and conversion of qualified leads.
You should also measure sign-ups for your email lists. Including those from blogs and businesses, and the percentage of users who complete your contact forms.
Ranking of Keywords
Keyword research is one of the best ways to determine priority keywords. Tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, and Moz are excellent resources for tracking keyword rankings over time.
Ranking improvements are an effective way to prove how your content program is performing. It is a great way to get stakeholders excited about the momentum and want to keep moving forward.
The Importance of Setting Goals for Your Content Marketing
You can look at metrics related to your latest blog post, new landing page, or recent email campaign. But it is important to have goals to measure performance against those metrics.
When creating a content marketing plan, it’s important to set reasonable expectations for yourself. If you had 1,000 organic visits to your blog in 2021, would you be able to reach 5,000 organic visits in 2022 without an increase in your budget? It may not happen this year, but it’s possible if you stick to your plan and work hard.
Focus on historical data when you want to set or evaluate goals. Talk with your executive team about those goals, so there are no surprises during the quarterly or annual reporting processes.
Most marketers are focused on goals such as brand awareness and building credibility. But you can also use content to generate leads, nurture subscribers, drive event attendance, and generate revenue.
Conclusion
The effectiveness of your content marketing efforts depends on their impact on your broader marketing strategy, which will be a key factor in determining how well leads and customers weigh your business.
Hence, it would be best if you implemented content measurement tools from the start of a brand’s content marketing efforts. It will determine what works for that particular brand.
The metrics mentioned above will help you measure, analyze, and attribute revenue to specific efforts in your content marketing strategy. For more detailed information, contact Ahbiv Digital Agency; we are here to help you.
