Content Marketing: Where Should Your ROI Be?
How do you know if your content marketing efforts are worth the time and money you are investing? Learn more here…
The most famous adage of the marketing world is as follows: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” This conundrum changed dramatically when digital marketing rose to prominence, as our ability to measure the efficacy of our efforts improved greatly with the arrival of analytics.
Content is King
Indeed, in the digital marketing universe, content marketing—or the use of online material such as blogs, videos and articles to stimulate interest in a brand or idea, rather than explicit ads—has become a popular way to increase the efficacy of a company’s marketing and advertising. Consumers are fatigued with conventional marketing that is heavy on sales and overly promotional. Content marketing has come to stop that gap and reach online consumers in a more nuanced and subtle way.
“Does it Work?”
Many companies invest a lot of money into content marketing. They often invite prominent influence or writers to create content for them, or invest their talent and resources into it. But the question that dogs all marketing remains: does it actually work? And what are the best ways to measure if content marketing is doing a better job of engaging your demographic and converting your potential customers than conventional marketing techniques?
This ambiguity around measurement seems to be a pervasive problem in the content marketing world. Many businesses go to great lengths to leverage content marketing without putting an equal amount of effort into seeing if it’s working.
As one Forbes contributor put it: “Lots of businesses get into content marketing because it is the ‘in’ thing to do online. You can ask those businesses what their goals are, and you will get answers like exposure, social shares, links, leads and sales. But when you ask those same businesses how they measure their content marketing to find out if they are achieving those goals, you will get a less straightforward answer. Some may not even have a basic analytics tool in place.”
So how should you be measuring the efficacy of your content marketing to avoid falling into the “I don’t know which half” trope? Here are some ways:
Engagement Metrics
This is the simplest form of measurement: how many people are clicking on your content and where are they coming from? This past question is key, as if you’re getting a high click through rate on Twitter but none at all from your email newsletters, you may need to look into what’s working in one spot but not in another.
Getting a baseline measure on engagement for your content marketing is an essential starting point, so don’t bother executing a content marketing campaign if you’re going to skip it.
You can also ask consumers, put out surveys, talk to people directly and ask their opinions regarding your content. Find out what people need. Look at what other searches are driving. Then create a variety of content to fulfill specific needs.
Social Share Metrics
Not every measure of success results in a sale. If someone is willingly sharing your content on social media, then that is raising the profile of your brand and serving as an unpaid endorsement of you. On the other hand, if no one is sharing your content despite high page views, it’s probably not engaging with them in an authentic way or delivering what you promised. Pay attention to who and how many people are sharing your content and you could end up finding your brand’s most valued ambassadors.
Conversions
Conversions—or getting your website visitor to turn into a customer—require content plus a call to action, or CTA. You can post the most witty and engaging blog post, but if you don’t give your reader an action to demonstrate their interest, such as “sign up to our newsletter” or “purchase our service”, then you are wasting your efforts. Measuring how many people “convert” by acting on your CTA is a key metric for success.