How to measure the effectiveness of content marketing

H O W T O

T H E EF F EC T I V EN ESS O FC O N T EN T M A R K ET I N G

M EASURE

C O -A U T H O R ED B Y : B R Y A N Y O U N G A N D

F R A N K P O L LO C K

IN TRO DUCTIO N

Companies large and small are invest ing more t ime and

money every year on content market ing, but there's a lot more to building t rust and recognit ion through online content than just publishing as much as possible. One of the most common reasons why content market ing st rategies fai l to deliver the expected results is a lack of appropriate performance t racking. Less experienced marketers often make the m istake of focusing too much on vanity metrics such as the number of website visitors, even though these stat ist ics provide very li t t le insight into the effect iveness of their st rategy. By contrast , knowing which metrics to focus on will help marketers generate a wealth of act ionable informat ion that can be used to generate a higher ROI.

Digital Analyt ics allow you to use data to drive change, however, your data must be tai lored to your needs to do so. This means your business object ives will direct ly impact the metrics that you choose. Before we indulge in any metrics we will f irst take a quick look at the f ive common categories most digital st rategies fall into. Understanding these categories will help set your purpose when creat ing a measurement plan as a digital marketer.

THE EXECUTIVE SERIES| HOW TO MEASURE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONTENT MARKETING


Branding focuses on building great engagement, brand awareness and loyalty. When you consider some of the recent digital t rends of 2017 you are seeing brands use immersive video, interact ive content ie. assessments or calculators and personalizat ion tools that recommend content among other creat ive techniques.

The linear consumer funnel is becoming archaic as brands are now being forced to deliver relevant content that st i ll builds t rust at mult iple touchpoints within the consumer li fecycle. It is important to note this is also inclusive of how you handle posit ive and negat ive posts on forums, review sites and social media.

Lead generat ion focuses on collect ing potent ial leads and many market ing automat ion plat forms are assist ing in making this process more st reamlined and automated. Dif ferent market ing automat ion plat forms are going to give you a dif ferent dashboard of metrics to focus on. The key here is to understand that market ing automat ion should not be si loed to only include email. Every marketer will need a dif ferent set of metrics, the ones used will depend on the type of lead generat ion program that make sense for your company. Whether your business is B2B or B2C there are f ive high level metrics most will t rack which are:

- Number of MQLS (market ing qualif ied leads)

- Cost per MQL/ Cost per Conversion

- Cost per Sales Accepted Opportunity / Conversion

- First touch ROI (by program)

- Mult i-touch ROI (by program)

Ecommerce sites are primari ly focused on selling products or services. Majority of your metrics and at tent ion will be focused around conversion. If you are using Google Analyt ics or any other software, you will likely want to create custom conversion goals. The t rue power here lies in your abili ty to quickly and easily ident ify which conversions are t ied to which channel w ith link tagging.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a quant if iable measure used to evaluate the success of an organizat ion, employee, etc., in meet ing object ives for performance. Some example KPIs here are things like Revenue and average order value for new vs. returning customers.

In our Retent ion sect ion, we discuss boun ce rat e which is the number of visitors that navigate away after viewing only one page. For an eCommerce site a high bounce rate on a billing page indicates greater A/ B test ing efforts should be focused there.

BRA N DIN G LEA D GEN ERATIO N ECO M M ERCE


Online Informat ion or support sect ions are designed

to help customers f ind answers to frequent asked

quest ions on their own. Your support metrics

measure 3 main quality points; problem resolut ion,

the call process/ channel i tself and the customer

experience. The business object ive is to help the

customer f ind an answer to what they are looking

for. Response t ime, t ime to resolut ion and the

overall customer experience rat ing are examples of

custom metrics you may focus on. Support process

vary from business to business but st i ll provide

valuable insight to make changes to boost posit ive

word of mouth referrals. With the emergence of

social media it is crit ical to set metrics around

support to prevent or resolve negat ive comments.

O N LIN E IN FO RM ATIO N / SUPPO RT

The goal of content publishing is to drive

engagement and frequent visitat ion sim ilar to

branding. However, the main dif ference in content

publishing from branding is that some of the

material can very well be sales related. It may

include a datasheet for specs, comparison of

compet itor products or other items that would be

considered bot tom of the funnel in a linear funnel

model. These items may be proprietary to the

company so you wouldn?t expect them to be openly

shared in a public forum.

That isn?t to say that content publishing cannot

include blogs, podcast , webinars or other forms of

content that may not be gated. Within large

enterprises a content publisher is usually

dist inguished as a subject mat ter expert (SME) with

deep expert ise that produces material that is more

niche or technical. While this does t ie in to branding

as you are establishing yourself as an industry

thought leader you can expect the content to be

whitepapers, datasheets or industry t rend analysis

amongst other things.

CO N TEN T PUBLISH ER

CO N TEN T CO N SUM PTIO N M ETRICS


Although the number of un ique v i si t ors to one?s website should never be ignored, many marketers make the m istake of thinking that i t 's the most important web metric. We recommend a more holist ic approach that looks at unique visitors in context . Unique visitors should always be evaluated along with page v iew s, since the metric helps to show you which pages are get t ing the most at tent ion. And, page views are meaningless if you don't also consider the average t im e spen t on t he page, since this helps to show which content is the most popular. If you are sharing content via email, most tools, even Marketo, w ill emphasize t racking em ai l open rat es, but we are more in favor of em ai l cl i ck t h rough rat e (CTR) . Email opens can be a jaded stat ist ic because recording an 'open' can only happen if the reader's email client can display HTML with images, and that opt ion is turned on. So if you are sending text-only emails, there is no way to record open rates. Sim ilarly, people reading your HTML email w ithout images showing will not be recorded as opens. When it comes to other assets like whitepapers and ebooks, you should focus on dow n load rat es and f orm com plet i on s.

RETEN TIO N M ETRICS


Attract ing t raff ic is one thing, but i t 's retent ion that really counts. Retent ion is the next big step towards a visitor becoming a paying customer. Higher retent ion rates show that your content is not just at t ract ing visitors, but is also helping to build last ing relat ionships with them. As such, you should t rack key metrics such as ret urn rat es, boun ce rat es and pages v iew ed per v i si t . High bounce rates, for example, indicate a serious problem with your website or i ts content . One of the most common causes for bounce rate issues are bait -and-switch headlines that build expectat ions, but only end up disappoint ing people when they arrive at your site. Building a customer journey for each individual product or service requires more upfront t ime and labor but i t pays greater dividends on the backend when it comes to test ing, diagnosis and performance measurement. Cross-sell or upsell ef forts shouldn?t be considered unt i l a thank you page is reached. Even then they should be displayed on a side column and not the at tent ion grabber of the page.

In the case of email market ing, you'll also want to t rack un subscr ibe rat es and opt out s, although do be aware that email unsubscribe rates tend to be notoriously inaccurate. With regards to social media, your f ol l ow er coun t is the main retent ion metric to t rack.


Social media ?shares? and ?likes? do indicate a degree of

engagement but they're not as def init ive as t rue engagement with

your content . It doesn't take much thought or effort to click the

'like' but ton on Facebook or the 'follow' but ton on Twit ter. Real

engagement metrics, such as com m en t s post ed , t ot al t im e

spen t on your w ebsi t e and the n um ber of pages v i si t ed per

session are much bet ter yardst icks for visitor retent ion and

interact ion with your website.

EN GAGEM EN T M ETRICS

Social media has become the undisputed leader of digital

market ing, so knowing what people are saying about your brand

and your content on social networks is essent ial for success.

Successful brands are often able to leave much of their market ing

tact ics on autopilot , since great content helps to build an

enthusiast ic follower base which effect ively advert ises the

company as loyal brand ambassadors. Social proof is valuable

currency on the web. Consequent ly, key metrics, such as social

m edia shares, f ol l ow ers and l i k es help to show that people are

enjoying your content enough to show it of f to their f r iends. Email

marketers should carefully monitor the f orw ard rat e because it

indicates the usefulness and relevance of your email newslet ters,

especially for B2C brands.

SH A RIN G M ETRICS

SA LES M ETRICS


Finally, we come to the most important metrics of all, and those are the ones that direct ly point to how your content is increasing revenue. First , you'll want to consider lead metrics, such as the n um ber of l eads gen erat ed and the cost per l ead . To determ ine your cost per lead you?ll need to clearly def ine success and have access to revenue data. The success port ion will t ie into how you will handle at t ribut ion for content interact ion. The revenue data port ion will require buy in from Sales team members to input the informat ion within your CRM. From an expense stand point we suggest that you go as deep as your f inancial data allows within a responsible t ime. If you can easily calculate advert ising cost , agency or labor fees or other expenses within your budget then include them. Otherwise, most start w ith just budget to advert ise and then grow from their as skill and f inancial data allows. You?ll need to break your advert ising budget down to the individual program level.

How you def ine a lead depends on the goals of your market ing st rategy and agreement from sales, but i t w ill probably include quite a broad range of potent ial customers ranging from email newslet ter subscribers to anyone who's taken the t ime to open an account on your website. You can use your CRM software to help t rack the most promising leads and, even more important ly, ident ify the highest-convert ing pieces of content throughout the sales funnel. Last ly, you'll want to t rack the t ot al n um ber of sales and your con version rat e as a percentage of your total visitors and leads.

CO N CLUSIO N

One of the greatest benef its of digital market ing is that i t generates the aforement ioned data automat ically. The wealth of data generated by online act ivit ies has become so enormous that i t 's even earned a buzzword of i ts own ? Data Driven Market ing. Eventually, however, all this data becomes so plent iful that i t?s dif f icult to make sense of i t all. For this reason, every marketer needs to have the right tools at his or her disposal to both automat ically t rack metrics and analyze them for t ruly effect ive decision-making. Google Analyt ics provides a good start ing point but , as your business grows, you'll almost certainly need of a more sophist icated solut ion as part of your market ing stack.


- It?s crucial you stay goal-focused. A lot of informat ion is going to be

available, so don?t get overwhelmed or bogged down and lose sight of

what you?re t rying to accomplish with your content

- Digital Analyt ics allow you to use data to drive change, however, your

data must be tai lored to your needs to do so.

- Retent ion is the next big step towards a visitor becoming a paying

customer.

KEY TA KEAW AYS:

T H E EX EC U T I V E SER I ES

Bryan [email protected]

Frank [email protected]

Aut hors

http://twitter.com/bryanmyoung

https://twitter.com/frank_pollock?lang=en

https://plus.google.com/+BryanYoungmarketo

https://plus.google.com/+FrankPollock

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanyoung1

https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankpollock

Marketing

How to measure the effectiveness of content marketing