Unpacking the Data Behind Content Marketing

Content marketing is critical to achieving your business goals. According to Content Marketing Institute research, 60 percent of marketers report that content marketing generates demand/leads. 70 percent of marketers find that content marketing helps educate the audience. Another 60 percent say that it helps build loyalty with existing clients/customers.

Content marketing isn’t just about creating a quick blog or video but about creating measurable effects on your business. You should be able to track your content marketing ROI—and pivot when things aren’t going to plan. Here’s our breakdown of the data behind content marketing:

Content Marketing: The Data

Content marketing success comes in several ‘tangible’ factors, share experts at Digital Marketing Institute. These are factors you can actively measure to record the efficacy of your campaigns, including:

• Revenue: think the big stuff—sales, downloads, and subscriptions.
• Brand awareness: social media activity, page views, and the number of visitors. This metric tracks how many people know your brand and flags consumers with the highest buying potential.
• Retention: newsletter subscriptions, dwell time, and bounce rates are essential factors to consider when gauging customer retention.
• Engagement: likes and shares on social media are significant indicators of whether or not your customer base is interacting with the content you’ve created.
• Leads: this considers newsletter subscriptions, email forms, and conversion rates from the campaigns you’ve created.

Now, not all metrics are created equal. You’ll want to pay special attention to the following metrics when it comes to specifically tracking your content marketing ROI:

• Page visitors: your customer can’t purchase your product if they don’t know what it does or where to buy it. While a high number of page views means your campaign is on the right track, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your campaign is working, leading to our next metric.
• Bounce rate and dwell time: dive deep into your website’s analytics and search for golden insights among all the information. For example, you can see how visitors behave on your website and whether they’re navigating and purchasing or leaving right away. This data gives you crucial information about how long visitors spend on your landing pages and when they choose to bounce.

Content Marketing Data: When to Pivot and How

You need to give your campaigns time to grow to succeed. When your plan isn’t hitting your goals, it’s time to adjust to achieve your content marketing ROI. How should you pivot?

• Look at your website: now more than ever, search engines prioritize pages that cater to the customer (check out our recent article about Google’s page experience update). If your page visitors, bounce rate, and dwell time are all low, it’s time to rethink how your website is working. Ask yourself what your customers want when they visit your website, and how can you make it easier for them to get it? If you’re struggling with page visitors, it might be time to think about a targeted keyword or AdWords campaign, so be sure to consult the experts before diving in on your own.
• Interrogate the content you’re creating: when was the last time you asked yourself if your content is relevant? We’re serious. There’s a lot of great information out there, but you have to use unbiased discernment to create content that attracts clients. In many cases, a lack of engagement is an issue of poorly defined customer personas (take a look at our blog post for more info) and subsequent content. 

Content marketing is constantly changing. However, achieving real content marketing ROI is about tracking the right metrics and pivoting to appeal to your customer. If you’re interested in learning more about connecting content marking strategies to tangible metrics and ROI goals, reach out to our team of experts to jumpstart your next digital initiative.