Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is key to determining whether or not your investment is worth it.

It’s the same for content marketing. A lot of brands are now using content to help push their brand messaging. In the process, they’re growing their traffic, visibility, and trust.

Those who properly implement and measure their content marketing ROI are seeing 6x the conversions than those who don’t.

This is likely why you’ll find nearly 40% of B2B marketing budgets going to content marketing.

If you’re looking to use content to grow your business, then you need to know how to measure your campaigns. Here’s a quick list of some of the things you can measure. In order to ensure you’re getting a high ROI.

Your Content’s Reach

At the beginning of your content marketing campaign, you have to figure out who is consuming the content you are creating. This is the point when you’ll learn the most about the audience you’ll be catering to.

Of course, research should be done before you begin implementing your content strategy. However, once you release your content, you’ll have to keep an eye on all of your traffic.

You may be surprised to learn that the audience most interested in what you have to say is different than the one you expected. You’ll need to take this into account and gear your content toward this new market.

There’s a lot you’ll find out when you look at the reach of your content, such as how much traffic you generate, which content pieces they engage with the most, where they are in the world, their interests, and more.

When you measure your reach, you can also see if your efforts are working. For instance, if you’re looking to reach a specific audience, you can look at the data to see if you’re achieving this goal.

User Engagement

As we already mentioned, how your audience interacts with your content is essential. This is what will tell you how well your content is faring among those you reached.

There are various things you want to check when you’re determining the effectivity of your content. For instance, you want to review the number of page views, as well as how long they stayed there.

If you have a high bounce rate, this will negatively affect your search engine ranking. (A bounce is when someone comes to your site and leaves within a few seconds.)

This is also data you can use to identify content or traffic that’s irrelevant.

It’s a good idea to look at the metrics for content shares on social media, blog comments, and clicking patterns. Seeing how users interact with the rest of your site’s content is quite telling.

Look at their paths to see where they go after reading certain blogs or viewing specific pages.

Number of Leads Generated

Hopefully, you have a call to action at the end of each of your pages and blog posts. Otherwise, you risk having visitors leave before becoming leads.

There are various ways you can capture leads, such as by using an online form. This can pop up when users reach halfway down the page, or when they’re about to click away from your site (exit-intent popups).

This popup can ask for users’ email addresses in exchange for a coupon code or weekly email newsletter subscription packed with tips.

Another way to capture leads is to request users to contact you by phone, contact form, or chat. Whatever your call to action is, it must be measured accordingly.

Lead Conversion Rates

Your content marketing extends beyond your website. If you’re collecting emails, you should have segmented your content marketing campaigns to nurture them into customers.

You’ll need to measure how many of these leads convert. Some of the metrics you should review include preorders, orders, revenue, and profits.

From here, you can identify changes that need to be made. For example, you may want to experiment with the content in your emails, the subject lines, the offers, or your CTAs.

The Sentiment of Your Audience

People are consuming your content, but how do they feel about it? Gauging user sentiment will tell you the emotional connection your audience is having with your content.

Are they so ecstatic with your content that they’re willing to share it with everyone they know? Do they connect with the values and messages you’re pushing out to the point of advocating for your brand on social media?

Or, is the exact opposite happening? Are users neither publicly sharing your content nor emotionally connecting with your brand?

In this case, you’ll have to make some changes to your content strategy. Maybe look into whether you’re focusing on the right topics for your audience or taking the right approach to how it’s presented.

Everything you gather at this point will help you to improve your future campaigns.

Your Business Goals

At the end of the day, if you’re not reaching the goals you set out to achieve, then your campaign is failing. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you’re getting or how much public sentiment you garner. If it’s not translating into sales, subscribers, or whatever you’re aiming for, then you need to make some changes.

Always keep your business goals at the forefront of your mind when measuring the success of your content marketing campaigns.

Measuring Your Content Marketing Like a Pro

There’s no excuse for having a content marketing campaign that doesn’t deliver good results.

If you know your core business goals, then you can tailor your campaign to reach them.

Then, when it comes time to measure the results, you can quickly identify whether your content is helping or hurting your business.

On the other hand, if you’re not cut out for this work, you can always opt for the help of experts at a content marketing firm.

At Write For Me, we value your content marketing goals and help you achieve them. If you have any questions regarding your content marketing metrics, contacts us at [email protected] or leave a comment below.