How to set and measure your content marketing goals

Marketing is difficult enough without having to set and measure the right goals and objectives. Although this may sound simple, it is often difficult to get your executives and larger team to agree.

It's not about validating your content marketing strategy to stakeholders, but getting your content marketing analysis right. This is the only way to improve the strategy and make it more useful for your business goals.

You may be making poor decisions without the right metrics. Only knowing where your content marketing is achieving your business goals and where it is not, will help you transform your content into a powerhouse that drives business growth. You know what your content can do.

Your metrics will tell the story about your content efforts. They will show where it works and how well it does, as well as why or not. Content marketing metrics are what will show the business growth impact of your strategy.

Only with the right metrics can you tell the difference between the potential and the content that is actually helping to get your organization closer towards its goals.

This means that you could be in serious trouble if you use the wrong metrics. Your content marketing reporting may be misleading your strategy by taking it in the wrong directions, spreading it too thinly, or stopping it from reaching its full potential as a growth tool.

How do most content marketers measure up?

You're not the only one having difficulty measuring the ROI of your content marketing. Only 39% believe that they are at most somewhat successful in tracking ROI. Only 8% of marketers believe they are extremely successful in tracking ROI.

According to the Content Marketing Institute

• B2B marketers only 43% admit to measuring content marketing ROI, despite 80% saying they use metrics and 65% saying they have established content marketing KPIs.
• 44% of respondents admit that they don't measure it.
• 13% aren't even sure!

There is still a lot to be done. This also shows that your ability to measure and track your content may be a key competitive advantage. It is clear that most content marketers don't have the right marketing metrics, despite all of the technology available.

About 46% of B2B marketers, or less than half, believe that their marketing metrics align with their content marketing goals. Marketers are often not tracking the correct metrics.

How can your analytics be aligned with your goals, and support a goal-focused content strategy?

It all starts with establishing your KPIs and then digging in to find the ones that are most important for your company. Many marketers rely on general marketing metrics, but fail to understand the most important for their business.

"It doesn't matter what MY most important content metric is, the real question is what metric, which key performance indicator, is most important for your business? There are no two objectives for marketers exactly the same. It is important to align with business goals and not all abstract things em>

-Rebecca Lieb is a strategic advisor who was previously a media analyst and digital advertising analyst at Altimeter Group.

It's also about using the right marketing analysis solutions to make your platforms work for yourself. You will need to create a marketing technology stack to track your buyer journey from the initial touch point until closing a sale.

Connecting your Content Marketing Metrics to Business Goals

A Strategy to Measure ROI should be the foundation of Content Marketing. What are the top business goals that align with that strategy?

• Are you focusing on attracting new customers in order to fuel future business growth? If so, your priorities could be lead generation or customer acquisition.
• Do you want to build trust and position your company as an industry leader? Your content marketing metrics could revolve around market education, social media engagement and website traffic.
• Your strategy may focus on customer retention or lead nurturing if your main goal is to increase sales.

Marketing teams often have multiple goals. However, it is crucial to identify which objectives are most important in order to create a content-driven marketing strategy.

Every business wants to increase sales, brand awareness, and leads. Your content marketing must have a clear priority. This is the foundation of your KPIs.

Once you have a clear understanding of your content marketing goals, it will be easier to determine which metrics are most important right now. Reach and conversion should be the top KPIs for every program. When your goal is to attract new clients, content consumption and lead metrics should be at the forefront of your analytics platforms.

KPIs for different categories will still be used as you need to know how effective your content at each stage of a buyer's journey. However, it is the priority metrics which show you if your main goals are being met.

This distinction is important when communicating with management and other stakeholders about the impact of your content. You can still prove that your content marketing is effective even if your goal is brand awareness. However, if your sales metrics are only modestly improving, it is possible to show that brand awareness is achieved. It met its objectives.

You can also build a strong brand advocate base with the content strategy. Watch out for sales numbers! It is easier to reassure stakeholders if the primary objectives and related metrics are clearly defined. With the confidence of the C-suite, you can then move on to your next content marketing priorities.

KPIs for Choosing Content

There are many ways to break down content marketing metrics:

• Consumption
• Retention
• Sharing
• Engagement
• Leads
• Sales

Consumption Metrics

Consumption metrics include the number of people who consume your content and the frequency and depth with which they consume it. They also indicate the channels they use to reach your content. If your primary goals include building brand awareness and nurturing leads, these metrics will be a major part of your content marketing reporting.

• Website metrics – page views, unique visitors, average time on page
• Email metrics – click-throughs and open rate
• Gated content – How many times a form has been filled out correctly before a PDF or other digital asset is downloaded.
• Social media – Link click-throughs
• Feeds – number of views and clicks

Retention Metrics

This is an area of content marketing analytics that you shouldn't overlook. The cost of acquiring new customers is seven times more than it is to retain one. And your existing customers will spend on average 31 percent more than new customers. You can lose ground even if you're focusing on sales, lead generation or other common priorities.

[TAG5]

You can use customer retention KPIs to get an idea of the success of your content in keeping your audience motivated and engaged.

• Website metrics – Bounce Rate, percentage of returning users, number of pages per visitor
• Email metrics – The number of subscribers opting out
• Social media – How many followers you have across all your social media channels
• Feeds – How your subscriber numbers change

Engagement and Sharing Metrics

This will give you an idea of how relevant and useful your content is. Because your content is valuable to them, and because they think it will be of value to others, people will share it. Your main social media metrics are like shares and likes.

Engaging content will attract your audience because it is entertaining, provocative or fun. Engagement is a great indicator of your brand's popularity. When establishing your organization's thought-leadership status, both sharing and engagement metrics should be on your list. Good engagement metrics include page depth, session duration, social comments, and blog posts.

Your content's KPIs for sharing and engagement analysis will vary depending on your brand and specific marketing channels.

Comments per post is the metric that I am most interested in. This tells me how engaged my audience are. It doesn't matter how many visitors you have. If you don't create an engaged audience, it won't be possible to convert them into customers em>

-Neil Patel is the founder of Quick Sprout, and cofounder of Crazy Egg and Hello Bar.

Brands that are focused on in-person events may be more interested in event metrics such as registration numbers during and after the event.

You may consider including reader feedback in blog-intensive content marketing. This could include fanmail, social outreach outs and positive chatter.

Lead Marketing Metrics

Traditionally, lead generation is a top goal for B2B content marketers. This is the heart and soul of the buying process. It's also the place where lead nurturing is combined with it.

[TAG6]

The number of leads generated and the number of people who interact with a piece of content are called lead metrics. The funnel conversion rate is a measure of which parts of your content are most successful. It's important to consider conversion rates per channel and time to conversion when you focus on lead generation.

Marketers must rely on leads as a metric. Because leads are money ."

-Kipp Bdhar, HubSpot's inbound marketing strategist

Sales Marketing Metrics

The final step in all your marketing efforts is sales. These metrics measure how content affects the bottom line of your sales funnel. These numbers are crucial if your top content marketing goal is to increase sales.

• The total dollar amount of potential pipeline opportunities and the revenue that is influenced by one or two pieces of content
• You can use a first-touch model to aggregate the total amount of sales made through each piece of content.
• Revenues generated

[TAG7]

The Reach-Engagement-Conversion-Retention Framework for Content Goals

Before you dive into your digital marketing strategy planning, it is important to identify your content marketing goals. This can be delved into in great detail, but most businesses will only need to focus on four key business goals.

1. Reach
2. Engagement
3. Conversion
4. Retention

These are the main goals to be aware of when planning your content marketing. You should also consider how your activities will help you reach more specific goals in each area.

Reach

Reach is the expansion of your potential audience who are aware of your brand, products and services.

You can reach new customers through content marketing.

Content marketing is not about reaching a larger audience. It should also include reaching a targeted audience that is interested in your content .

Segmenting your audience will increase the likelihood of them engaging or converting. It will also help you get your content in front more eyes.

Segmented email campaigns, for example, perform more than 14% better than non-segmented ones.

[TAG8]

Source: https://www.marketingcharts.com/cross-media-and-traditional/content-marketing-108453

How do you measure reach? To measure the size of your audience, there are many metrics that you can use. These metrics include:

• Visitors to the website or new visitors
• Page views
• Followers on social media are losing relevance every day.
• Visitors who search for unbranded terms

Unbranded search traffic relative the competition is my preference as it provides the most reach. Branded search simply means that you are talking to people you already know.

Unbranded searches are the best way to reach people. This is a great way to evaluate your SEO and content marketing strategies. It eliminates searchers who are looking for your brand or products.

Share your content to maximize its reach, including via social media channels and your email list.

Repurposed content can be used in multiple formats. A blog post can be made into an ebook, a video or a podcast. This allows you to reach a wider audience who may not have previously seen your content in another format.

It's nice to have many followers on social media (or maybe engagement is better), but it's also important to combine this information with other metrics to ensure they don't become "vanity metrics".

If the new visitors to your website aren’t brand new, or aren’t interfacing with your content or purchasing anything from you, it doesn’t matter how much they are.

Engagement

Engagement is the key to success. Reaching people is just the beginning. The next step is to ensure they are engaged with your content. If your content is relevant to their needs, this will happen.

If you want to attract high levels of engagement, your content must not only be relevant but also informative and high quality.

There are many metrics that can be used to measure engagement. The most relevant will depend on the content and your goals.

If you are merely providing information, don't expect your time on the page to be long. This is not necessarily a bad thing. A list post that provides quick information doesn't necessarily mean it's not engaging in comparison to other list posts.

You would hope, however, that the time it takes to watch an entertaining video is longer.

You can track some potential engagement metrics:

• Pages per visit
• Average time per visit
• Rate of bounce
• Email subscribers
• Traffic comes from organic social media shares (not shares and likes)

[TAG9]

Source: https://blogstar.co.uk/measure-user-engagement-online/

To maximize the traffic you have, you can optimize content by making small adjustments to improve engagement.

This is a quick and easy process that can attract more inbound links. For example, researchers have shown that adding video to text could increase the number of inbound links by up to 300%.

Email subscribers are my favorite measurement. It shows that readers are not just engaged. It also shows readers who are willing to take action and invite you to their overcrowded email inboxes.

Conversion

Content marketing campaigns must aim to convert. Although some pieces of content might have the goal of increasing brand awareness and trusting your audience, the ultimate goal should be to make your content work for you. It should inspire at least one member of your audience to take action.

While every piece of content might not lead to a sales goal (and shouldn't), you should still keep that goal in mind as you write your content. Consider how your content can help the reader move through the sales funnel and to the next step in their buying decision.

Other than direct sales, there are some common conversion metrics you should consider:

• Subscribe to our newsletter (though it's not a lead, but it's a small "conversion")
• Clicks to landing pages and other content
• Clicks on CTAs
• Register to gain access to gated content
• For inquiries, please use a contact form, phone number or email

It is crucial to measure conversion metrics in order to calculate your content marketing ROI. This is the only way you can determine if your content strategy is effective.

This is an example from the infographic I created while at SAP to track the dimensions of reach and engagement as well as conversion.

Our testing was designed to increase reach, conversion and engagement without compromising engagement.

You could, for example, put a form at the end of each article but nobody would read it. It is possible to remove any obstacles or links from anything, and increase reach and engagement. However, conversion would plummet to zero.

Effective content marketing requires balance. This balanced scorecard can be used to test site elements and improve the user experience.

Retention

Ahh, the last frontier of marketing goals. Marketing retention is often overlooked. We know that it is the most efficient way to increase ROI. A number of companies that cared have shown increased referral rates when they focused on retention. Customers who engaged with the content have been shown to increase LTV and spend rates.

How do you measure this? Compare your email subscribers to your customer list. Analyze any differences between these two cohorts.

The metrics have increased by 300-400% in every instance that we have done it.

• Customer Lifetime Value
• Retention Rate
• Revenue per Customer

While you're calculating your content marketing ROI, remember to consider retention.

Setting Up Your Marketing Technology Stack

How can you harness the insights of your chosen metrics? You can organize your marketing technology tools to ensure you have all the data you need to measure the success of your content marketing strategy without getting lost in the sea of numbers.

The way you build your marketing technology stack depends on your company's needs, the content you use, and of course which marketing metrics align with your organizational goals.

You may use different platforms to create different content for your martech stack structure.

• Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that tracks website usage, retention, and engagement metrics.

• Email marketing platforms such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor can be used to track all of your metrics like click-through and open rates, subscribers, and opt-outs.

• FeedBurner will give you an objective view of your marketing feeds.

• Social media tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer offer various consumption, sharing and engagement metrics in a variety of combinations.

• You can track your content's lead metrics with a marketing automation platform such as HubSpot and HubSpot. This will allow you to set up dynamic processes to measure your campaigns.

• Salesforce CRM can be used for in-depth sales analytics.

• Infusionsoft and Salesforce’s Pardot are all hybrid marketing automation platforms and CRM platforms that allow organizations to manage their sales and marketing reporting from one central location.

What number of marketing tools is sufficient to provide solid content marketing analysis? How large your business is, how dynamic you are with content marketing and how much money you have will all impact the number of platforms that you use.

Many of today's digital solutions overlap. MailChimp, for instance, may be known for its email marketing services, but it is also one the most effective marketing automation platforms for small- to medium-sized companies.

However, multi-layered marketing technology stacks make it easier to concentrate on one type of metric or touchpoint. Your team might be able gain greater insight and compartmentalize data around critical stages.

What other marketing tools are being used? 51% of companies use at least 21 digital marketing tools.

Communication is key to ensuring that your marketing technology stack works efficiently. Communication is key to ensuring that your marketing technology stack works efficiently. Data should be shared with customers, sales and other departments as well as internally within the marketing team. Regular, brief meetings are a good way to share data and make sure everyone understands what the numbers mean.

A smarter approach to measuring content

Smartly approaching your content marketing metrics can help you keep your eyes on the desired outcomes. This is the key to a successful strategy.

It is easy to get distracted by the need to keep up with the latest content trends. This is especially true when these are so popular and talked about like augmented reality, VR and 360-degree video. These trends may not be helpful in achieving your goals.

It is tempting to fall into the trap of routine. Many marketers stay with the same content schedule for years because it works well. This safe approach can limit your campaigns and stop your content growing and evolving with the world around you – both in terms addressing consumer expectations and changing best practices in content marketing.

You can use analytics to identify opportunities, test, and refine your strategy using data from how your content is impacting marketing metrics.

This allows you to tailor your content marketing strategy to meet organizational goals. This will allow you to make your content more valuable for your organization.

Isn't this the ultimate goal?

If you have trouble scaling back, it is a good idea to make sure your analytics efforts are tracking the right numbers. You won't be able to understand 29 to 30 different content marketing metrics with different KPIs tied to different touch points and objectives. There will be a lot of marketing reporting that isn't clear.

You should start with a few metrics. These include the core metrics that your marketing team uses, as well as those that are focused on your top content goals. This will allow you to use your metrics for better content improvement. Once you have mastered a few metrics, you can expand.

You can immediately see the impact of a piece or type of content on your bottom line and can then refine your content strategy. Smarter metrics mean smarter content marketing decisions and better outcomes.

Start Measuring your Content Marketing Goals

Companies like yours can have effective content marketing programs that produce results. We also conduct workshops to help your team understand what is important and how to do the job.

Are you curious about how we could work together? Get in touch with us today!