The statistics tell us that content marketing works. But, how can you know for sure? From proving that a blog post was worth the time it took your team to write, edit, and publish, to knowing if your website is worth its weight in gold, there are several factors that you must measure. In fact, knowing how to measure the ROI of your content strategy can help you to not only determine if your efforts have a financial benefit, but it can also help you to create stronger marketing campaigns.
Do you want to know how to measure the ROI of content strategy?
Measuring the ROI of your content strategy will require you to analyze four unique Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
1. Content Is King, Distribution Is Queen, and Leads Are the Future
You’ve heard it before (in fact it’s been written about many times), but I’ll tell you one more time because it’s so important: While content is king and distribution is queen, the entity that ensures a future is leads. Without leads, you won’t be able to successfully grow your business. In fact, assessing the number and quality of your leads is the first step towards measuring the ROI of your content strategy efforts. In this vein, qualified leads can be defined as those audience members who are:
- Actively interacting with your blog or social media posts;
- Visiting resource, product, or service pages on your website;
- Signing up for email subscription lists or newsletters; and
- Contacting your sales teams to learn more about your company’s products or services.
With the above factors in mind, it’s important to note that high-quality leads will generate an increased level of onsite engagement.
2. Onsite Engagement
No matter your marketing goals, one component of your content strategy should be to attract and engage with existing and potential customers. Every single piece of content that you publish should be designed to engage with your intended audience. From social media posts to website pages, it’s not enough to simply get people to view your content, instead you need to encourage them to interact with it.
In order to determine if your content strategy is producing onsite engagement, you should measure and analyze the following components.
- The number of people visiting your website (including individual pages) on a monthly basis. You should compare the latter figure to the number of unique site visitors so that you can better understand what percentage of your website traffic is made up of repeat users.
- Where does your traffic come from? Are emails, blog posts, social media posts, or search engine results driving the majority of your site traffic?
- Does your content have a low bounce rate? For example, if people land on your blog post and then leave after a few seconds, you know that the content has a low engagement rate.
By measuring your onsite engagement levels, you can more accurately determine how people are interacting with your content and if it is creating qualified leads.
3. Social Media Metrics
Social media is a huge part of our lives. Unfortunately, far too many marketers become obsessed with “achieving social media success” without actually defining what “social media success” means for their business. To help you define social media success, especially as it relates to the ROI of your content strategy, you will need to measure and analyze a few key engagement KPIs.
- Link Clicks
- Likes
- Shares
- Comments
- Brand Mentions
- Profile Visits
- Active Followers
Once you have analyzed the above KPIs, you should cross-check to see if any of them generated sales. After all, without any new sales, it’s a moot point to even ask the question, “How to measure the ROI of content strategy?” Instead, if your social media content strategy isn’t directly leading to sales, then you should be asking yourself, “Why am I spending the time or money on social media?”
4. Sales … The Bread and Butter of Content Strategy Efforts
At the end of the day, the ROI of your content strategy will inevitably depend on the number of sales that it generates. Through the right content strategy you can attract individuals (and other companies) who can then be nurtured into qualified leads and eventually become loyal customers. If you can’t trace your customers back to published pieces of content, then your content strategy does not have a high ROI.
The Bottom Line: Measuring Your Content Strategy ROI Is a Necessity
Whether you have an established business or are just starting out, it is imperative that you accurately measure your content strategy ROI. Through the above four KPIs, you can more accurately determine if your content strategy is directly contributing to the health, growth, and inevitable success of your business. Don’t delay — as the year comes to an end, be sure to measure your content strategy ROI, so that you can implement any necessary changes and enjoy an even more successful 2019.
Laura P has written 4,000+ articles, blog posts, product reviews, press releases, and website content for a multitude of clients. In the past 7 years, she has developed written, marketing, video, and web content for clients in the real estate, information technology, restaurant, auto, retail, equine sales, oil and gas, and public relations industries. Laura is highly proficient in SEO optimization, particularly in real estate and retail industries. She ghost wrote IT white papers, government contract task orders, RFIs, and RFPs that resulted in millions of dollars won. She has 7-years of experience working with and interviewing olympic athletes, small-business owners, CEOs, SMEs, and entrepreneurs on complex topics. As a professional writer, Laura strives to create content that is both meaningful and relatable to her readers.
