Contentmarketing has exploded in popularity as a way to reach potential customers directly with the help of their favorite content channels. The challenge is that there are many different metrics you can use to measure the success of your content marketing program. It’s important to measure your content marketing so that you know if it’s working for you and where you need to make adjustments. To succeed, every content strategy must be grounded in a clear set of objectives: What are we trying to achieve? Why? And how will we know when we get there? Great content marketers understand not only what they want to achieve but also why that matters and how they’ll measure their success.
What to Measure in Your Content Marketing Strategy
There are many different types of metrics you can use to measure the success of your content marketing strategy, depending on your business objectives. Let’s look at some of the most common ones you should be tracking as part of your content marketing strategy. – Reach – How many people are coming into contact with your content? If you’re publishing to a wide audience, this is a critical metric to track. The more people that are exposed to your content, the better your chances of generating leads and sales. – Engagement – How many people are engaging with your content? Engagement is a great way to track how your content resonates with your target audience. The more people that like, share, or comment on your content, the more successful it is. – Brand awareness and reputation – How many people are exposed to your content? This is a critical metric for measuring brand awareness and reputation. You want your content to be seen by as many people as possible. The more people that come into contact with your content, the better your brand reputation will be.
Lead Generation
In content marketing, lead generation is the process of converting visitors into leads (or sales!) by encouraging them to engage with your content. This can be done in a number of ways, from offering free guides and e-books to asking for the reader’s email address in exchange for a valuable asset like a checklist or guide. The most important thing to remember here is that you should be focused on creating high-quality, relevant content that solves your readers’ problems. The more engaging your content is, the more likely people are to take action on it. This is why tracking leads is one of the best ways to measure the success of your content marketing strategy. If people are signing up for your content via a lead magnet, they are interested in what you have to say. This means they are likely to engage with your content in the future. The more leads you have, the more potential customers you have to sell to.
Brand Awareness and Reputation
One of the most important parts of content marketing is increasing brand awareness and reputation. Your content strategy should include publishing content on your owned channels as well as publishing natively on third-party channels like LinkedIn, Medium, and Facebook. You should also be participating in the discussions taking place on third-party channels related to your industry. This is important for building a positive reputation for your brand. The more people that engage with your content, the more likely they are to talk positively about your brand. This is especially important for B2B companies as they want to be associated with thought leadership in their industry and be seen as an authority in their space.
Bottom line: Don’t just track one thing
As you can see, there are many different metrics you can use to track the success of your content marketing strategy. The most important thing to remember is that you shouldn’t just track one metric. You should track a wide variety of metrics to get the full picture of how successful your content marketing strategy is. Only by looking at the big picture can you truly understand how to improve your content marketing efforts.
Try These Metrics If You’re Measuring Content Marketing Success
– Investment – How much cash is your content marketing program bringing in? This is a critical metric for many companies and something that is often overlooked. Depending on your business, you may want to just track ROI via revenue or you might also want to track how much cash your content marketing program is bringing in via other means like lead generation. – Conversion rates – How many of your readers are taking the action you want them to take? Like lead generation, conversion rates are a great metric for understanding how successful your content marketing strategy is. If you have set out to generate leads with your content, then you should track conversion rates to see how many readers are signing up for your content.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that your content marketing strategy is successful. You won’t see success by tracking one metric or only focusing on one type of content. You need to make sure that you’re tracking a wide variety of metrics and focusing on creating great content across all channels.
