It’s no secret that content marketing is a growing field. According to the Content Marketing Institute, B2B marketers are planning to spend 37% more on content in 2015 than they did in 2014.
CMI predicts that 86% of B2B companies will produce more content this year, and up to 57% believe that their organization’s ability to generate high-quality content will be “very important” in achieving marketing success.
By 2017, the concept of ‘content marketing’ will become entirely redundant because EVERY type of company will be using it…leading you to wonder what it’ll even mean anymore. – Joe Pulizzi
With so many companies offers hire a ghostwriter now embracing content marketing, it’s important to keep track of whether or not your efforts are paying off. That’s where metrics come in.
Content marketing is all about measuring and analyzing how effectively you’re hitting your target audience with your messaging and ideas. You want to know if people are reading what you write, visiting your site, sharing your content on social media, taking action on it…and ultimately becoming customers. There are a lot of different metrics out there that are useful for assessing the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy, but these six are especially vital:
Site Traffic
Organic traffic is the total number of unique visitors who visit your site after clicking on a search engine result. Organic traffic is free, but it takes time to generate, so you want to make sure your company’s website shows up high in the search results for popular keywords. That will increase organic traffic over time. Paid traffic refers to the number of unique visitors who visited your website directly or were referred by another website that pays for content promotion via advertisements.
The people who follow your business’ social media pages are interested in what you have to say about certain topics, which means they’re more likely to read and engage with future content you post…and then eventually become customers. You can increase your followers and fans by posting compelling content that’s relevant to whatever audience you’re targeting, and promoting it on the social media pages they actively use.
Email Subscribers
Sending out opt-in offers via email drives traffic to your site and builds relationships with interested potential customers. It’s important to carefully consider what kind of lead magnet or incentive you’ll offer in exchange for an email address so as not to scare off prospects who give away their information freely. Also, make sure you set up a strong mailing list subscriber strategy before launch so as to build customer trust from Day One. This means having a simple double opt-in form that clearly states what recipients will receive in return for signing up .
Social media is an excellent way to spread your content far and wide across the Internet. You want as many people as possible reading, sharing, and talking about it. Also, when somebody shares your content with their followers on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, those users will most likely spend more time engaging with it than they would otherwise…which means you’re getting additional free exposure that can lead to traffic and conversions.
Lead Generation/Conversions
What’s the true goal of your business? Generate leads? Sell stuff? Get customers involved in an ongoing dialogue where they provide feedback on what you’re doing right/wrong…and then buy more things from ( or subscribe to) you? If your content is valuable, it will drive more leads and conversions.
Measuring the ROI of Paid Traffic Campaigns
Organic traffic is free, but it takes time to generate. Conversely, paid advertising via social media or pay-per-click (PPC) on Google can deliver targeted traffic fairly quickly. But how do you determine if your campaign was worth the money spent? There are some basic metrics that help shed light on potential profitability. When doing any kind of PPC ad , look at the clickthrough rate (CTR) for an idea of how relevant your keyword choices are . You should also track what’s known as conversion rate , which tells you how many prospects who saw your ads actually clicked through and began the buying process. Lastly, look at your return on investment (ROI) to see how much money you made in relation to how much it cost you.
