Tracking Results: Make Your Content Marketing Make Sense 

Getting caught up in the creative process is a big part of your job as a content marketer. Finding exciting ways to tell your story and create a memorable brand identity is what drives you. However, understanding the impact of your work is just as important. 

Measuring your content marketing strategies gives you invaluable insight into the trends and behaviors of your target audience. You can use this knowledge to shape future campaigns, strengthen consumer engagement, and establish your business as an industry thought leader. 

Then there’s ROI, which makes some content marketers cringe. However, tracking key metrics is essential for pinpointing which channels drive the most revenue and areas where your efforts are falling short. 

If you’re ready to see how your content performs once it’s out in the world, keep reading. We’re breaking down some fundamentals. 

Your Goals Drive Everything  

In a marketing eutopia, you’d be free to chase every idea and create content based on personal desire and inspiration. In the real world, your content marketing strategies need measurable goals that align with your long-term objectives. 

Start by locking down these objectives. You may need to elevate your reputation as a thought leader, attract more leads, or define your brand identity in a crowded industry. It all depends on the C-suite’s vision for the future. 

Once you understand your goals, it’s time to define your key performance indicators (KPIs). These are the granular metrics that act as your barometer for success. They’re tied directly to your overall objectives. 

For example, if you’re trying to increase sales by a certain percentage, lead generation and conversion rates are two KPIs that help you gauge whether your work is paying off. If you’re focused on enhancing your brand’s reputation, you may want to consider social media engagement.  

What’s Up With Your Website?

If your website serves as a primary platform for your content, analyzing its performance gives you a good idea of what’s working and what’s not. Website metrics tell you what content gets the most engagement, how visitors interact with it, and whether SEO marketing campaigns are hitting the mark. They also help you spot hiccups in your buyer journey. 

Here are some key website metrics and what they tell you about your content: 

• Website traffic lets you know which blog articles, landing pages, videos, or FAQs get the most attention and how many people return to specific content.
• Average time on a page sheds light on how relevant, valuable, and engaging your content is for the site visitor. 
• Referring sources show whether you’re attracting the right audience or not, and if other campaigns like paid social media ads or PPC are working. 
• Bounce rates tell you if your content makes a good first impression and exposes issues with your site, such as poor page load times and mobile compatibility. 
• Scroll depth shows how long a piece of content holds the visitor’s attention. 
• Returning visitors is a great metric for determining whether or not your content is memorable and resonates with your target audience. 

Think about the goal of your website content before digging into key metrics. And remember, more traffic isn’t always a measure of success. It’s also about how visitors interact with your site and what content they digest. 

A Look at Lead Generation 

Driving sales is a primary goal of many (maybe all) of your content marketing campaigns. Well-executed content attracts your target audience, nurtures leads, and moves them through the sales funnel. 

This isn’t easy, but measuring lead generation and conversion rates can help you determine whether you’re barking up the right tree or need to pivot. 

There are several ways to do this. 

One of the easiest is with lead-capturing tactics. If you create landing pages, blog articles, or eBooks that encourage readers to take action via a submission form, your success is simple to gauge. Look at how many submissions a piece of content gets and if those leads convert. 

Email performance is another effective lead generation benchmark. Pay attention to the number of click-throughs to your site or submission form sign-ups an email produces. Adding downloadable content to your email campaigns will strengthen your brand identity while simultaneously nurturing leads and turning them into clients. 

Before measuring lead generation and conversions, determine which tools you need. Google Analytics works well if you’re interested in your website’s performance. But, you may need other marketing automation tools to measure email campaigns, paid ads, or social media content. 

Insight Into Brand Identity and Awareness  

Content has the power to shape a business’s brand identity and propel its reputation throughout the industry. As a creative marketer, you spend a lot of your time thinking of ways to reach and empower your audience. But how do you know if you’re making an impact?

Taking another look at your website metrics is a good start. An uptick in organic traffic is a good indicator of growing interest in your brand’s content or product offerings. Looking at search queries that brought visitors to your site provides more insight into the topics or products people associate with your brand. 

Conducting surveys is another way to uncover how familiar your target audience is with you. Incorporate brand awareness surveys into your content strategy to discover how recognizable you are and how your target audience feels about your content or offerings. 

Finally, social mentions and media coverage help you measure your content’s performance and show how much attention you’re getting. If you publish blog articles on your social media channels, track shares, engagement, and mentions to find out if your brand identity gets good recognition. You could also use media monitoring tools to determine if and when trusted industry publications cover your brand or publish your content. 

Your Social Media Impact 

When you weave social media campaigns into your content strategy, you enjoy immediate feedback. This feedback comes in several forms, and you can use them all to improve future content initiatives. 

Engagement is one of the most effective metrics. Shares, likes, saves, and comments are all great indicators of how valuable your content is to your target audience. This is also your opportunity to boost engagement with your brand by engaging in the conversations in comment threads. 

If you’re creating video content, social media is a great testing ground. Users love it, and it allows you to find out if your content resonates with your audience. A big advantage here is that you can measure how many views a video attracts along with how far into the video users get–a perfect indicator of what’s hot and what’s not in your video content. 

Another key social media metric is your conversion rates. Tracking sales, subscriptions, or content downloads shows the value of your content and informs future social media campaigns. Consider using Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters on your content to get accurate results.

Make Your Content Work for You 

If you’re not used to measuring the results of your content marketing campaigns, the process may seem intimidating. But with the right technology and firm grasp of the KPIs you need to examine, you’ll find your rhythm. Your new knowledge will change the way you think about content production so you can push your brand identity further.