Tracking Content

Marketing ROI

Content marketing is a discipline where art meets science, and reporting is a lot like telling a story about your success as a marketer. In order to make it accurate, it’s imperative that you develop a solid measurement strategy to identify which tactics are working and demonstrate bottom-line results for your brand. Here’s a short guide on how to prove your content marketing ROI.

Metric type Reach Act Convert Engage

Brand metrics - Unique visitors - New visitors- Brand/direct visits- Audience share (vs competitors)

- Lead volume- Percentage of product/service interactions- Pages per visit

- Sales volume- Lead volume - Follower or fan volumes

- Email list quality- Repeat transactions- Repeat visits- Exit surveys

Content performance metrics

- Share of audience- Key sites with your content visible in search- Follower or fan volumes- Share of search / search presence (findability)- Inbound links- Referring domains

- Page engagement rate (bounce, pages per visit, duration)- Shares by users(shareability)- PostRank score- Comments and site interactions

- Lead sign-up and conversion rate by engagement tool- Subscription to email or RSS

- Active customer % (site and email active)- Conversion to like or follower- % social interactions with content such as Facebook page comments- Repeat conversion rate- Email open and CTR

Commercial metrics

- Cost per click and cost per sale- Brand awareness

- Goal value per visit- Online lead contribution ($, % of total)- Cost per lead- Customer satisfaction

- Conversion rate to sale- Channel conversion rate- Online-originated sales, revenue and product- Avg order value or cost per sale

- Retained sales growth and volume- Revenue per visit- Revenue per channel and category- Lifetime value of customer / loyalty

Step 1: Track the right metrics

Remember that, at the end of the day, you need to report on results, not vanity metrics. Whether your goal is to generate sales, grow subscribers or simply increase brand exposure, the following chart should help you figure out which metrics matter for any of your tactics.

Inspired by an article by SmartInsights.com, we’ve categorized different variables by goal and funnel stage. Names of metrics might vary depending on the tactic and tool; however, the chart below should suggest the kind of data to be tracked.

Step 2: Calculate your ROI

Step 3: Tell your story

The metrics above can communicate different types of benefits for your brand. In the end, the KPIs you choose should show the impact of your efforts on the company’s bottom line. How do you figure out the exact ROI of your content? See the following:

a) Calculate the dollars invested in different channels.

b) Determine the exact results of your content marketing efforts. The tools you use to gather data

might vary depending on your tactics and KPIs.

c) Tie each of your objectives to a relevant metric resultand contrast it with your investment. The comparison of investment vs. ROI could look something like this:

Writers Designers Paid Ads Software

Marketing Investment Marketing Impact

Staff- Director of Content- In-house writers (2)- Graphic Designer- Marketing Automation Manager- Videographer- Community Manager

Content Distribution- PR- Ads

Software- Automation- Social Media- Design

Total Investment

$6,500$7,000$4,000

$4,100$3,500$3,500

$50$6,000

$2,000$100$300

$37,050

Targeted Reach- % Convert to Sales

# of New Sales

Average Revenue Per SaleIncremental RevenueAverage Gross Margin

Profit from Additional Sales

ReturnROI

$20,0001%

200

$250$50,00040%

$20,000

$17,05053%

The last step in figuring out your ROI is formatting your data so that it’s easily digestible by your staff, the executive team, or any other stakeholders. Depending on your goals, you should be answering questions that respond to your main objectives.

Sample questions by objective:

a) Increase visibility and memorability of brand identity - How much has you/your brand subscriber base increased?- Has the monthly traffic for you/your brand website grown?- How about growth in social media shares?

b) Increase total monthly revenue for you/your brand- Has the total number of monthly leads grown?- How about increase in average purchase value?- How much has the total monthly revenue grown?

“Content marketing has proven time and time again to be a valuable asset to any market-ing plan, and with proper strategy and implementation, proving the ROI to executives in the business can be accomplished. It may take some time, but once tracking is set up, you’re sure to see your investment pay off.”

Arnie Kuenn, President @ Vertical Measures

created by

1) http://www.smartinsights.com/content-management/content-marketing-strategy/ measuring-content-marketing-kpis/2) http://hub.uberflip.com/h/i/6608653-content-marketing-roi-what-doers-and-the-c-suite- need-to-know