You and your team worked hard ideating and collaborating to build a reliable Content Marketing Strategy that aligns with your brand’s goals. Then, you put your heads down and created the content you spent so much time planning. This is the point where many marketers get nervous. Is your content going to work?
Content can influence consumers’ perception of a brand, build trust with clients, and establish a business as a thought leader. But unless you know how your content is performing, you won’t know if you’re harnessing all these powers.
Analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) is a necessary part of content marketing. Some creatives think of data as a necessary evil. But looking at the right metrics shows you how your content is performing and gives you the insight to change what’s broken and elaborate on what you’re doing well.
Website Content Performance
When creating website content along with an SEO strategy, regularly analyzing your organic traffic is a must. This shows how visitors find your site and how they behave once they arrive.
If you use a Content Management System (CMS) for your website, it may have built-in tools that collect organic traffic metrics. If not, Google Analytics is a reliable resource for tracking your site’s performance in search engines and discovering which keywords bring in traffic.
In addition to SEO performance, you’ll need to look at user behavior metrics like average time spent on a page, bounce rate, page views, and number of clicks. This data informs whether the content you’ve created is valuable to visitors.
To measure the lead-gen effectiveness of a page, calculate the conversation rate with some simple math. Divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors to a page for a given period and multiply the result by 100.
Social Media Monitoring
Social media as a platform for content marketing has changed the way businesses engage with their audience. It’s also transformed the decision-making process for consumers looking for brands that align with their values and fulfill their needs.
Social media content takes many shapes, from user-generated content to brand stories to videos. The metrics you collect depend on the type of content you create and its intent.
Here are the top social media metrics and what they measure:
- Engagement: This includes the number of comments, shares, or likes a post gets. A high engagement rate shows that your audience finds value in your content.
- Click-through rate: Helpful for tracking leads, this metric shows how many people clicked a CTA link within a post.
- Impressions: This metric shows the total number of times a post was displayed and viewed, including multiple views.
- Reach: More focused than impressions, this metric shows the number of unique views a post gets and gives you an indication of your audience size.
- Audience growth: A primary goal for brands on social media is to gain followers. This metric shows how many new followers your channels get within a certain timeframe.
- Comment sentiment: The more comments a post gets, the better, right? Not always. Measuring comment sentiment gives you insight into how people feel about your content. If the reaction is negative, it’s time to rethink your approach.
There are plenty of social media monitoring tools out there. Decide which metrics apply to your strategy and choose a tracking tool that makes sense.
Email Marketing Impact
Measuring the performance of your email campaigns helps you fine-tune your strategy. The metrics you track depend on your goals, whether using email to drive sales, support the customer journey, or keep your clients informed.
Email metrics show how much impact your content has on recipients. This is helpful if you use a Copywriting Agency and want to know if their work is hitting the mark.
Consider the following metrics when tracking email performance:
- Open rates: Tracking how many people open your emails lets you A/B test subject lines and determine which topics your audience is interested in.
- Click rates: Knowing how many people clicked on links within your email helps gauge the performance of CTAs and content designed to drive traffic to your site.
- Conversions: If your goal is generating leads, tracking conversion rates shows how successful your content is at driving recipients to take a specific action.
- Bounce rates: It’s important to maintain a clean subscriber list, and bounce rates show which email addresses aren’t valid and should be removed.
- Device types: This metric shows what devices your audience uses to read your emails. Use this data to design and optimize your content for compatibility.
- Spam scores: Measuring how many emails get marked as spam provides insight into your content’s relevance. A high spam score can hurt deliverability; if this happens, rethink your content strategy.
Tracking email metrics for every campaign allows you to spot trends, test different approaches, and work toward higher engagement. Keep previous campaign metrics in mind to ensure your performance is always trending up.
Podcast Effectiveness
A newbie to the content marketing club, podcasting has already shown its effectiveness in establishing brand awareness and increasing audience engagement. It’s a great way to position your brand as a thought leader with industry-specific content and reputable guests.
Podcasting is a powerful tool when working in complex or niche markets. For example, Content Marketing in Compliance industries can be restrictive and time-consuming. A podcast helps you reach your audience quickly and make your brand more relatable.
Measuring a podcast’s success is a bit different than other forms of content. It can be a lot more straightforward.
Paying attention to your subscriber and download count is an easy way to determine if your listeners value your content. Tracking reviews and ratings is also a good indicator of success.
Drill down further by looking at consumption rates to find out how much of your podcast your audience listens to. This can highlight areas where listeners are losing interest.
Video Performance Metrics
Video continues to gain popularity as an innovative and easily digestible content medium. It’s also becoming an essential part of marketing strategies. Targeted video content puts a brand directly in front of its audience and has the power to influence, educate, and empower.
Videos also offer insight into user behavior and how well your content is received. This is your chance to better understand what your audience wants and drive business growth by providing relevant content.
After your videos have been out in the world for a bit, it’s important to analyze key metrics. This can get tricky, as each platform has different ways of measuring video performance. Make sure you understand what metrics are available and what they mean so you can effectively measure performance.
The top video metrics include:
- Views: This is the total number of times your video was watched, which informs content relevance and visibility.
- Play rate: This metric indicates how many times someone pressed the play button on your video, which shows the effectiveness of thumbnails and content titles.
- Completion rate: This metric shows how many people watch your videos from start to finish and is an indication of content value and relevance.
- Conversions: By learning how many people click on a CTA after watching a video, you can gauge how effective your content is at boosting viewer interest.
Video content is a competitive area. If you’re not getting the results you want, experiment with different platforms, video lengths, and topics.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Numbers
Some content marketers like to stay on the creative side of the tracks and leave the data to the digital folks. However, our highly competitive consumer marketplace requires a proactive approach to performance-based marketing. Getting up close and personal with metrics will help you accelerate brand growth and expand your content expertise.
0 thoughts on “Content Marketing Metrics: How to Measure Success”