It’s 2022, and if you’re looking to measure the success of your content marketing strategy then you have come to the right place. Businesses using content marketing for a few years now need to make sure that it’s still as effective as ever. Things have changed a lot these past years and you need to adapt your methods in order to stay ahead of the competition. In this blog post, we will discuss the best methods to measure content marketing success in 2022!
What Should Be The KPIs for Content Marketing?
Before we get into the different methods of measuring content marketing success, you must first define what your objectives and KPIs are so that you can align them with those goals. You should also identify which metrics will be used to evaluate each objective or KPI.
For example: If your goal is to increase brand awareness, then one metric could be the number of unique visitors to your website or social media pages over time. If you want more leads, then a metric could be how many people signed up for your newsletter this month vs last month.
If you’re looking for ways to increase sales and revenue, then one metric might include measuring conversions on product pages by comparing average order value to the number of customers who purchased that item.
To determine whether content marketing is working, you will need to measure how well these specific goals are being met through your strategy. This can be done with analytics tools like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics (Omniture). You might also have access to other internal data sources from previous campaigns and research studies conducted within your company.
Knowing The Brand’s Actual Purpose
To understand how to set the objectives and KPIs for your content marketing, you need to understand what your business does and why it exists. What are your core values? What is the higher purpose of your company?
Once you have a good understanding of this, you can start creating content that supports those values and resonates with your audience. This will help to create a connection with them and increase the chances that they will act on your call-to-action (CTA).
For example: Let’s say you own a clothing company that focuses on sustainable fashion. Your higher purpose might be to reduce wastefulness and promote sustainability. In this case, you would create content around topics like “How To Choose The Most Sustainable Clothing Options” or “The Benefits Of Buying Secondhand Clothing”.
Customer’s Share of Conversation – Increase It
The concept of increasing your share of conversation is simple – it just means that you want to be a part of more conversations online about your industry or niche. The more people are talking about your brand, the more likely they are to become customers.
This tool helps you understand how popular your brand is compared to other brands. It can help you figure out where you stand in the market. You can start conversations online, but it’s more powerful to join relevant discussions that are already happening. The goal is to lead people to your brand. That’s why content marketing is so important as it helps you increase your share of conversation.
What are the Content Marketing Success Metrics
Content marketing is about creating and publishing content for your audiences. It’s a great way to connect with people who are interested in what you have to say. To make sure that your content strategy works as intended, it’s important to track some metrics.
Here are eight of the best methods to measure content marketing success:
1. Traffic Metrics
One of the simplest and most common ways to measure content marketing success is to track website traffic. This includes measuring the number of unique visitors, pageviews, and dwell time on your site. You can also use this data to determine which types of content are most popular with your audience.
You can use tools like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics (Omniture) to track website traffic.
- Users – how many unique people visit your page.
- Pageviews – The total number of times a page on your website has been viewed.
- Unique pageviews – If someone looks at your page more than once, these visits are counted as one view. This is called a pageview.
By understanding which pages have the most traffic, you can optimise your content for these keywords and increase conversion rates.
The more targeted traffic comes to a page on your website, the higher the chance of them converting into paying customers. If they don’t convert right away, though, then at least they’ve been exposed to your brand, so they’ll be more likely to convert later.
2. Conversion Metrics
Conversion is the key goal of any content marketing strategy. This metric is all about determining how successful your content marketing is at getting people to take the desired action, such as subscribing to your email list or buying a product.
You can track conversions in a number of ways, including:
- Subscriber Conversion Rate – the percentage of website visitors who sign up for your email list. – Email open rate – the percentage of emails that were opened by recipients.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) – how many people click on a link to your website from an email or social media post. – Purchase conversion rates – The percentage of visitors who make a purchase after visiting your site for the first time and seeing content about what you have to offer.
- Lead Conversion Rate – the number of leads generated from content marketing efforts.
You can use a tool like Google Analytics to track conversions, as well as determine which types of content are most effective at getting people to take the desired action.
3. Engagement Metrics
Engagement metrics can tell you a lot about how well your content is doing. Some of the most common engagement metrics include:
- Social media page likes – The number of people who have liked or followed your social media pages like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. – Comments on blog posts or videos (including YouTube). – Number of shares on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
- Email open rate – The percentage of subscribers who opened your email message, which usually indicates that they read it. – Click-through rate (CTR) – How many people clicked on a link in an email or social media post to visit your website from those channels?
Engagement metrics are important because they can help you determine which content is resonating with your audience the most. This information can help you fine-tune your content marketing strategy to better engage with your target market.
You can use a tool like BuzzSumo to track the number of social media shares for each piece of content.
Tools like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics (Omniture) can help you track email opens and CTR.
Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, or Instagram Insights can tell you how many people liked, commented on, or shared your posts.
4. SEO Performance Metrics
SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the process of optimising your website and content so that it appears higher in the search engine results pages (SERP) for relevant keywords and phrases.
Since content marketing is all about creating valuable content that will attract attention from your target market, it’s important to track how well your SEO efforts are performing.
SEO performance can be measured by the following metrics:
- Organic Traffic – The number of visitors who found your website from search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo! – Bounce Rate – How many people immediately left your site after arriving at it? This metric indicates that something might not be right with their experience on your pages.
- Pages per Visit – This metric tells you how many pages people visit on your site after arriving from a search engine.
- Average Time on Site – This metric measures the average amount of time that visitors spend on your website.
You can use a tool like Google Analytics to track your SEO performance, including data on organic traffic, bounce rate, pages per visit and average time on site.
You can also use a tool like Moz to track your SEO progress over time, as well as to measure how you compare to your competitors.
Content marketing is an important part of any online marketing strategy, and it’s essential to track the success of your efforts so that you can make adjustments as necessary. By measuring your content marketing with the right metrics, you’ll be able to determine how effective it is at attracting and engaging customers for your business.
5. Website Authority
Authority is all about how much people trust you and the content that you create.
You can measure authority by looking at the number of backlinks your site has from other websites to determine its credibility in search engines like Google or Bing, as well as how many social media shares it received on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
This metric is important because it helps you determine how well your content marketing strategy is working.
You can use a tool like BuzzSumo to track the number of social shares for each piece of content that you create, as well as which platforms are driving traffic back to your website.
Tools like Google Analytics can help you track the number of inbound links to your website.
The more backlinks and social media shares a piece of content have, the more authority it will have with search engines like Google or Bing as well as people visiting those sites organically (not paid).
You can also use tools such as Moz or Ahrefs to track the number of backlinks your website has as well as to measure how you compare to your competitors.
By tracking authority, you’ll be able to see which pieces of content are resonating with people the most and helping to build trust for your brand. Measuring authority can help you improve your content marketing strategy so that it becomes more effective in the future.
6. Scroll Depth
Scroll depth is the percentage of visitors who scroll down to view all or most of your content. This metric can give you a better understanding of how much of your content people are actually reading. The deeper the scroll, the more likely it is that someone is enjoying your content.
You can use scroll depth to measure how engaged people are with your content and whether they’re finding it valuable enough to stick around and read more.
You can use a tool like Hotjar to track how far down the page people are scrolling, as well as which sections of content are getting the most attention from readers.
If you want to increase engagement for your site, consider writing longer blog posts (or even using multiple pages) so that visitors have more reason to scroll down and spend time reading what’s on offer.
You could also include multimedia like images or videos at different points throughout the content because they tend to be more engaging than just text alone.
7. Analyze Your Exit Pages To Measure In Content Marketing
Exit pages are the last pages people look at on a website before they leave. Not all pages have the same exit rate because some, like contact pages, are naturally more interesting to people. But in general, blog posts should have lower exit rates because you want people to be so interested in the content that they keep reading more of your website. You can use a tool like Google Analytics to measure the number of people who leave your website on specific landing pages.
Exit rate is an important metric because it tells you which content isn’t working so well and needs improvement.
If there are certain pages on your site that have high bounce rates or exit percentages, consider making changes to those pages so that people are more likely to stick around and explore what else you have to offer.
You can also use this data to determine which pages are leading people to make a purchase or convert in some other way.
By analysing your exit pages, you’ll be able to see which content is causing people to leave your website without taking any desired action. This information can help you improve your content marketing strategy so that it’s more effective in the future.
8. Backlinks in Measuring The Performance of Content Marketing Success
A backlink, also known as an inbound link, is a hyperlink from one website to another. They’re important because they help Google and other search engines determine the rank of a website on their search results pages. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your website will rank.
Backlink analysis is an important part of content marketing success because it helps you see which websites are linking back to yours, which can give insight into why they’re doing so (i.e., because they like what you’ve written or found your content valuable).
Backlink analysis can also give insights into which pages are ranking well for certain keywords and how much traffic that page is getting. This information can help guide future content creation efforts so that you’re targeting more of the right topics with high-quality content.
You should use backlink analysis as part of your content marketing strategy. It’s a valuable tool that can help you increase visibility on search engine result pages, which will ultimately lead to more traffic for your website.
8 Categories of Content Marketing Metrics and KPIs you Need to Know to Measure Your Content Marketing Success
1. Consumption Metrics In Content Marketing
This type of metric measures how much content users are consuming, whether it’s through social media, email, or other channels. It can also measure the number of downloads for a piece of content or the number of leads generated from a specific campaign.
Consumption metrics are important because they help you understand which types of content are most popular with your audience and which channels are the most effective for getting your content in front of them.
You can use this information to create more of the types of content that are being consumed the most and invest more time and resources into the channels that are bringing you the best results.
- Pageviews: Use this metric to see which pieces of your content are the most popular. Try to create more content like that in the future.
- Unique visitors: This metric will help you estimate the size of your audience and how many of them are repeat visitors.
- Average time on page: Is your content interesting? If people are reading it, then it is good. But if they are just scanning it, you need to make it more interesting.
- Behaviour flow: Looking at Google Analytics, behaviour flow will help you understand how a user moves through your website. The chart shows where a user lands on the site, moves through different pages and leaves. This can help you identify and improve the points where users leave your website.
2. Website Engagement Metrics In Content Marketing
Website engagement metrics measure how much engaged a user is with your content. It can include things like the number of comments left on a blog post, or the number of shares that were made from an article shared via social media.
Website engagement metrics are important because they help you understand how well people respond to your content and whether or not it’s resonating with them.
If you see that your website engagement metrics are low, it could mean that you need to produce more engaging content or change the tone of your content so that it’s more appealing to your audience.
- Inbound links: Having a lot of websites link to your website will help you have a high domain authority. This is a measure of how good your website is. You can use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz to find out how many links are pointing to a particular page on your website. You can then use this information to create more
- Session duration: Every person who visits your website is counted as one session. Session duration measures how long a person spends on your website, no matter how many pages they view.
- Page depth: This metric, also called “pages per session,” tells you how many pages a person will visit on average when they come to your website.
- Click-through rate (CTR): Each button or link on your website is clicked on by a certain number of people. This number is called the CTR – the ratio of clicks to views. The higher the CTR, the more engaged people are with your website.
3. Retention Metrics In Content Marketing
This type of metric measures how likely a user is to return to your website or continue consuming your content.
- Return rate: Return rate is how many of the people who visit your website are new visitors, and how many are returning visitors. You should have a different approach for each group, but it is important to have a good mix of both.
- Pages per visit: This metric tells you how many people are exploring your page before leaving. This shows you how interesting and valuable your content is, not just the piece that led them to your page.
- Bounce rate: Your website bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing the first page. This is not good because it means that people are not staying on your website for very long. You can improve this by finding the content with a higher bounce rate and improving it so that people will stay on your website longer.
4. Social Metrics In Content Marketing
Social media is becoming more important than ever. According to the Pew Research Center, 72% of American adults use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
These metrics are related to how your content performs on social media (e.g., likes, shares) so that you can see if people are taking interest in what you have to say or not.
- Shares: Shares are a great way to measure how well your content is performing on social media. It’s important to know who shared it and at what platform so you can better understand your audience.
- Likes: Likes are another way to measure how well your content is performing on social media. It’s important to know which posts are getting the most likes so you can continue producing content that is popular with your audience.
- Comments: Comments are a good way to see how people are responding to your content. If you see that people are leaving negative comments, it could mean that you need to change the tone of your content or improve it so that people will respond more positively.
- Follower growth: Follower growth is a good way to see how much your audience is growing. It’s important to monitor this metric so you can continue producing content that appeals to a larger group of people.
- Reach: Reach is a good way to see how many people are seeing your content. You can use this information to produce more content that will appeal to a wider audience and expand your reach.
5. Content Production Metrics In Content Marketing
Use Content production metrics to measure how much content you are producing and whether or not it is helping you achieve your goals.
- Quantity of content: Quantity of content is the number of pieces of content you produce in a given time period. This metric can help you see if you are producing enough content to reach your audience.
- Quality of content: Quality of content is the metric that shows how well each piece performs in terms of engagement, shares, and other social media metrics. This metric can help you see if you are producing content that is meeting your standards.
- Timeliness of content: Timeliness of content is the metric that shows how often you are publishing new content. This metric can help you see if you are keeping up with the latest trends and if you need to produce more or less content.
- Targeted audience: The targeted audience is the metric that shows how well your content is performing for the audience you are trying to reach. This metric can help you see if your content is reaching its intended audience and if you need to change your strategy.
6. Email Metrics In Content Marketing
Use email metrics to measure how effective your email marketing campaign is.
- Open Rate: The open rate is the percentage of people who opened your email and can help you see how effective your subject line is and whether or not people are interested in your content.
- Click-Through Rate: is the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your email. This metric can help you see how effective your content is and whether or not people are interested in what you have to say.
- Unsubscribe Rate: The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of people who unsubscribed from your email list. This metric can help you see how effective your email content is and whether or not people are interested in what you have to say.
- Bounce Rate: The percentage of emails that were sent but did not reach the recipient’s inbox. This metric can help you see if your email server is having issues or if your email content is not reaching its intended audience.
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of people who made a purchase after receiving your email. This metric can help you see how effective your content is and whether or not people are interested in what you have to say.
- Conversion Value: The total amount of money that was spent as a result of receiving your email. This metric can help you see how effective your content is and whether or not people are interested in what you have to say.
- Email List Growth Rate: The email list growth rate is the percentage of new subscribers who added you to their email list. This metric can help you see if your content is appealing enough for people to want more of it or not.
7. Cost Metrics In Content Marketing
You must understand cost metrics to measure how much money you are spending on your content marketing campaign.
- Content creation cost: The content creation cost is the amount of money you are spending to produce content. This metric can help you see if you are producing enough content and whether or not it is worth the money you are spending.
- Content promotion cost: The content promotion cost is the amount of money you are spending to promote your content. This metric can help you see if your content is worth the money you are spending.
- Content distribution cost: The content distribution cost is the amount of money you are spending to distribute your content. This metric can help you see if your content is worth the money you are spending.
8. Sales Metrics In Content Marketing
You can use sales metrics to measure how effective your content marketing campaign is in terms of sales.
- Leads generated: The leads generated metric is the number of people who have expressed interest in your product or service. This metric can help you see if your content is appealing enough for people to want more of it or not.
- Leads converted: The leads converted metric is the number of people who have purchased your product or service. This metric can help you see if your content is effective in terms of sales.
- Revenue generated: The revenue generated metric is the amount of money you have earned as a result of your content marketing campaign. This metric can help you see whether or not it is worth the money you are spending.
- ROI: The ROI metric is the return on investment for your content marketing campaign. This metric can help you see if your content is worth the money you are spending and whether or not it is effective in terms of sales.
Measuring Content Marketing ROI
Now that you know which metrics to use, it is important to understand how to measure the ROI of your content marketing strategy. The best way to do this is by calculating your content marketing ROI. The formula for measuring the ROI of a content marketing campaign is:
ROI = (Revenue generated – Content Marketing Cost) / Content Marketing Cost.
For example, if your content marketing costs $100 and you generate $200 in revenue, your ROI would be 100%. This means that for every dollar you spend on content marketing, you are making $100 in return.
While calculating the ROI of your content marketing strategy is important, it is not the only thing you should be looking at. You should also be looking at how effective your content marketing strategy in terms of sales, leads generated and converted, as well as revenue generated.
By using the right metrics and understanding how to measure the ROI of your content marketing strategy, you can ensure that you are getting the most out of your content marketing campaign.
Conclusion
Content marketing is a great way to promote and grow your business. However, it can be challenging if you don’t know what you’re doing or if you don’t have a strategy. That’s why it is important to make sure that you have a content marketing strategy in place and that you are consistent with it. Therefore, it is imperative to know how to measure your content marketing success for better decision making.
If you don’t have a content marketing strategy, we can help you develop one. Not only we will help you create a better content strategy, but To achieve your goals, implement the strategies that will work best for you and track your progress.
About The Author
Rizwan is a Senior Marketing Associate at Abubble. One thing he loves about Digital Marketing is the instant results it delivers- starting from nothing to become a brand in no time. He has specialised knowledge in SEO Content Curation & Link Building which enabled him to help clients stand out even in heavily saturated business markets. In his spare time, Rizwan can usually be found doing e-gaming & entertaining through his quick wits - he’s great at everything!