Measuring Success: Using the Right Content Marketing Metrics
How you measure your success can play a dramatic role in the value of the information you obtain. When it comes to content marketing metrics, it’s important to use the right methods so you can evaluate your return on investment. Knowing how to measure marketing ROI metrics will ensure you are aware of all the relevant data to determine whether your content marketing plan is paying off.
Consumption
The most basic form of digital marketing metrics is how many people are visiting your website. The traffic generated by your website does play a role in the success of your business, but it isn’t the only factor you need to consider. This information can often be obtained through typical analytic tools, such as Google Analytics, and often indicates how many visitors came to your website, how many pages they viewed and how long they spent.
Sharing
Today’s Internet marketing is all about getting people to share your content to extend your reach without expending more effort. Measuring your marketing ROI metrics should include determining how often your readers are sharing your content with their circles of family and friends. However, digital marketing metrics is about more than just looking at the number of times your counter says a piece has been shared; it’s important to choose metrics tools that dig a little deeper.
Instead of simply looking at the number of shares, it’s also essential to consider where those shares are coming from. For instance, if you have a high number of shares through Facebook and few or none on other platforms, it’s likely a better option to focus your efforts on Facebook versus other social sharing websites. This can help you more accurately focus your marketing efforts to effectively reach the people who are interested in the information you provide.
Lead Generation
Another major component to your marketing is lead generation. Much of the content you offer is designed to draw prospective customers to your website and encourage them to do business with you. There are many ways you can obtain actual leads. Some businesses prefer creating landing pages with forms, while others place contact pages directly on their website for this purpose. Your content marketing company can help you make the best decision for your business.
After you determine the best way to generate leads for your business, you will need content marketing metrics to help you determine how successful these efforts are. There are many useful tools that allow you to track how many people are filling out forms and where that traffic is coming from. You can even track when people first click on a link or watch a video so you can differentiate repeat traffic from those who are viewing your site for the first time.
Sales
The final piece to the marketing ROI metrics puzzle is your sales. While any sales are good news for your business, it can be useful to your overall marketing plan to differentiate between the ways people purchase from you. How many of your sales can be attributed to repeat customers who are loyal to your business? How many of them buy just once and never again? You can even track how long people waited until after reading certain content pieces before making the decision to buy. All of this information can be invaluable in determining which of your marketing efforts are working and which ones should be altered or abandoned altogether.
Knowing how to measure marketing ROI is essential if you want your business to be successful online. Many companies make the mistake of investing a lot of money in their digital marketing and fail to follow up with the proper metrics to make sure it’s working the way it was intended. Without knowing what your digital marketing metrics are and what they mean to your business, you may be missing out on a large portion of your target audience or potential sales.
If you’re looking for someone to help with your content marketing metrics, contact us. We can help you determine whether your marketing efforts are providing the traffic you need to succeed.
