As a content marketer, I know how important it is to tie efforts to results and performance goals. More specifically, I’m talking about measuring whether your content marketing is working or not. For blogs and social media, it can be hard to know what to track and understand if the content you’re posting is helping your company achieve its goals. Here are some examples of simple tricks to assist you in measuring the effectiveness so that your content marketing doesn’t have to be a guessing game:
1. Content Engagement
This is the easiest way to know whether your content is resonating with your audience. Simple actions including likes, comments, and more importantly, shares and saves.
Take an example of an Instagram post. How do you gauge how much your audience liked it or whether it resonated? Likes, comments, and followers can give you an idea and are a good starting point. These metrics are important but I think too many people get too caught up in these numbers. Likes and follower count are vanity metrics. People can buy thousands of followers or likes in a blink of an eye. This doesn’t mean anything if they aren’t targeted and don’t care about what you’re saying.
Someone liking your post doesn’t necessarily mean that they are interested or a qualified prospect. This builds to the point that popularity does not equal profitability.
It’s important to understand that you don’t need thousands of followers to make thousands of dollars.
Rather than looking at just likes and comments, shares and saves are a much more valuable metric. If your audience likes your content enough to share it with their friend then that, of course, means they find it valuable in some way. This engagement not only gives you more information but also tells social media platforms that people find your content helpful and this will help your ranking in the algorithm. Also, shares and saves move you a step closer to your goals since there are more chances that the content will be spread to a wider network (AKA your business will get in front of new eyes).
Side note: If you’d like to monitor engagement and interest in content on your website, heat maps are one of the best tools. You’ll be able to know what your audience is interested in based on their clicks, what they scroll past, and what they spend a little more time viewing.
2. Lead Quality
Believe me, not every piece of content posted will be a hit. Posting just to have something up there is just as bad as not posting at all. Quality defines the effectiveness of your content marketing and makes all the difference.
One important way to know whether your content sparks interest in someone who visited is to track their movement. Did they press the button to learn more, visit your website, or contact you? These small details carry a lot of weight because it shows they have enough interest to learn more. One thing to note is that if you have a high bounce rate on your website despite attracting lots of traffic, it means that you are attracting low-quality leads or the content on your website is missing the mark. High-quality leads will have a low or no bouncing rate because your site offers what they’re looking for.
3. Lead Generation
This is one measurement that you can bet gives details on content effectiveness. Anyone can be a lead by simply showing interest. However, in true lead generation, the focus is not just the attraction of potential clients but converting them. Examples of what to look for when it comes to your content marketing strategy include increased prospects form submissions, email sign-ups, and demos requested. As you post content, these numbers should gradually increase. If not, something’s not adding up. Let’s talk to see where we can improve.
4. Brand Awareness
This is one measure taken lightly despite how many positive effects it carries. Can you imagine taking a walk on a random street and you hear people talking about your brand? This is brand awareness – people knowing your brand exists. This is always important but especially for newer brands. You could have the best product or most amazing service, but how good is it if nobody knows it exists? Brand awareness can be demonstrated by web traffic, views, impression, reach, and seeing people talk about your brand through social listening.
5. Search Engine Optimization Success
SEO means improving a site for purposes of increasing visibility on search engines. Using SEO, you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing using two key performance indicators;
– Comparing your SEO rank before and after content marketing
– Analyzing the traffic generated to your website before and after content marketing
SEO should not be a guessing game. Too many business owners pay for SEO work to be done but have no idea what they’re getting for their investment or how they’re performing. The tool we use for all clients is powered by artificial intelligence and shows you exactly where you rank for each keyword and how you’ve improved over time.
Building content around what your audience is already looking for will help your business show at the top of their search results on Google. You can do this by using language that your ideal audience is using to search. Consumers are now using voice assistants like Siri and Alexa which changes search terms like “Do I really need content marketing? And “best marketing companies near me”. This is compared to what might be searched if you just type into Google “importance of content marketing” and “best marketing companies Tampa Florida.”
6. Sales
Once you’ve been consistent with your content marketing, just look at your hard data like the number of leads and sales. How many leads and sales did you get before starting to market your business through social media and blogs? How many do you get now? Pretty straight forward. It doesn’t always work this way because there are a lot of other factors to consider. But this DOES work if your content strategy is the ONLY thing that you’ve changed.
Keep in mind that content marketing by itself is organic which means it takes time to see results. Establishing yourself as a trusted expert takes time but trust the process and, believe me, it will pay off.
