How to measure the results of your Content Marketing?

There is a paradox in Digital CommunicationTHE Social networks and the Content marketing : the one from measurement of results. Indeed, the emergence of the Web has raised stars in the eyes of all marketers across the globe; we finally had a medium where everything can be counted! Better yet, we could follow the consumer’s journey, learn about his habits to offer him tailor-made offers, etc. But then why is there so much confusion among web experts when it comes to justifying their actions?

The question that arises most often is the one in the title of this article: how to measure the actions carried out in web marketing. Whether it’s Community Management, Content Marketing or anything else, eyes are turned to the sacrosanct ROI (return on investment), and rightly so. How can we defend actions if we can’t measure them?

Adapt your strategy to each stage of the purchase funnel

Producing content is not enough to generate engagement. At most it will provide comments and shares on social networks. However, if you want to encourage conversions, you will need to offer calls to action (CTAs) within your content. These should provide added value to your reader and align with your purchasing journey.

If you are writing an article for your new visitors, don’t try to sell them something, it might be a little early. Instead, invite them to sign up for your newsletter or download interesting content (white paper or some tool). Tailor your calls to action to the stage your reader is in.

Count or measure?

Be careful, it’s not the same thing! If I can count the number of visitors to my site, am I able to measure the effect of a WebMarketing action? What percentage of additional sales did our action generate? What effect did it have on the company’s image? We can count many things, measuring them is another.

«Measuring the effectiveness of Marketing is therefore equivalent to evaluating its effects, that is to say evaluating the expected results and the achievement of the set objectives. Whatever the objectives of digital marketing are – developing awareness, image, consideration, purchase, loyalty or commitment – measuring consists of updating a measurement, a metric, a key performance indicator or Key performance indicator (KPI) which can allow you to evaluate the expected effect of each of the set objectives. »
“Measuring the effectiveness of digital marketing” From Laurent Flores

How to measure content marketing?

Content Marketing is not a ready to wear of Webmarketing, it is not a method to be applied that guarantees success. It is a marketing action that must arise from a strategy. So of course, I know that I often repeat myself on this point but too often we clumsily adapt unsuitable KPIs to the end of a marketing action, trying to make them say… what is convenient for us.

Defining a strategy with specific objectives and KPIs at the start of the project is absolutely essential to determining measurable success. There is no magic wand, there are no simple techniques to implement that can guarantee mass conversions and sales, despite what some marketing gurus say. There are no results without effort.

There are no 36 ways to measure content marketing. There is only one: measure the results your Content Marketing is designed for. The objectives will vary depending on your project, your core business and your company. Furthermore, these goals are likely to evolve over time.

If Content Marketing can play a role in every phase of the purchasing journey (which we will see below), it plays a fundamental role in two distinct areas:

1. It brings traffic and visibility, generates links and engagement on social networks
2. Lead conversions and sales

Overall, we could measure content marketing returns this way:

Top of the Funnel: Brand Awareness

1. Keyword traffic (SEO)

2. Increase in communities on social networks

3. Number of visits

Center of the Funnel: Engagement

4. Registration Bulletin

5. Campaign traffic (email marketing)

6. Shares on social networks

7. Analyze your article trackbacks (links and SEO)

8. Time on site/Number of pages

Bottom of the funnel: Conversions

9. Conversion rate

10. Name of the leads

11. Sales

Determine your goals and KPIs

To obtain satisfactory results, you will therefore have to write down your strategy, resulting from your objectives to be achieved, and return to it regularly. What do you want to achieve:

• Increase the visibility and awareness of your brand,
• Attract more traffic to your site
• Generate more leads
• Convert more prospects into customers
• Build loyalty,…

Each of these objectives requires a different approach and measures, with specific objectives, appropriate means and channels, as well as an appropriate message.

Some simple steps to follow

The basis of a Effective Content Marketing it’s always about creating content that Internet users will want to share, with a strong identity. It all depends on the viralization of your content, identity and values that you will send back and that will make you want to connect with your company or not.

Web statistics

In most cases, the Content Marketing is designed on the company website, so the backbone of content measurement will revolve around web statistics (Google Analytics or otherwise).

Behaviors with Google Analytics often vary from one extreme to the other. On the one hand there are those who focus on two or three values: number of visitors, number of pages viewed and bounce rate for example. And there are the others, those who search, who dig, who try to discover THE statistic that will make the difference. You can start with these few values:

• Time spent on site
• Bounce rate
• Reference sites
• Number of visits
• Number of new visitors
• Reader’s journey (entry and exit pages)
• The different sources of visits (what distribution between your SEO / Social / Linking / Mail efforts and what produces the best results)

Social media statistics

Each social network will offer you all kinds of metrics to measure engagement, reach, and some other esoteric metrics. THE Social networks are one of the largest sources of data in the world. If we add that to this social networks and SEO create close linksyou cannot ignore the information that social media provides you and that allows you to know how much your content is appreciated.

By combining data from social networks and Google Analyticsyou will be able to carefully analyze how Internet users interact with your content. They share it on their accounts, they like it, they read it, how much time they spend on your pages, they come back, etc.

Qualitative data

What are your readers saying about your content? Are there comments flowing into your blog or is there radio silence? We all want to turn our website into a active community and lively with discussions. Take the time to respond to commentsto liven up the debate, punctuate your articles with questions in which you invite your readers to express their opinion.

Attach particular importance to the feedback you receive. If the comments are positive, thank the authors, if they are negative, thank them too and take note of the improvements to be made. Finally, if you don’t have any comments, look at what’s happening on other blogs, what are you missing to engage your readers? Maybe it would be enough to ask him? Then, analyze your blog comments, Facebook comments, Twitter conversations, etc. What do people think of you, your business and the content you produce? Remember, provoking emotion is the best way to create vitality in your content.

The advantage of a comment compared to a like or a share on social media is that the person has necessarily read your article. In fact, Internet users often share and like links they haven’t even read.

Lead generation

Obviously, if content marketing brings value to your customers, the goal is also to attract qualified leads who could one day become your customers. If you’re not focusing on SEO and designing landing pages, eBooks, and white papers, it’s time to get started.

Even in this case the measures are effective. You will be able to count the number of downloads and the data collected. When it comes to landing pages, you can also test different versions of your pages to see which works best. If you use WordPress, there are many plugins to ensure the success of your campaigns.

Subscribe

Having a blog is the first step, but what makes it really powerful is when you start to build a base of loyal readers who are attached to your content. This way you ensure that your readers don’t forget you and turn them into members of your community.

There are many ways to do this. You can simply invite them to subscribe to your blog or a newsletter system like Mailchimp. Monitor the number of registrations regularly. Is it constantly evolving? Are you losing subscribers?

Finally, despite its death having been predicted for several years, email marketing still boasts one of the highest conversion rates. Take the time to build your campaigns, connect with your readers, offer them quality or interesting offers. Think about “conversion” with every word you write. Think about what works for you! An interesting promotion, an article proposal that catches your attention, an article that answers one of your questions? So crunch the numbers:

• Number of times your email has been read
• Number of clicks on links in your email
• Which link was clicked the most?
• Name of the conversions

If your content is interesting and tailor-made for your potential customers, you should quickly see the first fruits of your labor. Measuring them will bring you several advantages:

• on the one hand, you will know your successes. Without measurement, we miss actions that work well and are unable to repeat the feat.
• on the other hand, it is a tremendous source of encouragement ! We often lose the motivation or energy to produce content. Without measurement, we find ourselves creating with no real goal to achieve.
• Finally you will no longer be exhausted with recipes that don’t work. If what you’re doing isn’t producing results, change the way you do things and get back to working on your strategy.