A content marketing strategy is only successful if it’s being tracked! So, what are the best content marketing metrics and how do you measure them?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, only 63% of survey respondents say their company’s marketing and sales teams have shared goals and objectives.
Content Marketing, if executed well, has the power to facilitate relationship building with your MQLs, create a sense of community, position your company as an authority figure within your industry and discover emerging issues in marketing management. Making sure objectives and KPIs are consistently aligned across the company is an effective way to push your metrics and strategy to the next level.
What key marketing metrics should we use to track success? In this post, we cover metrics for websites, blogs, and newsletters. Make sure you check out part two for key metrics you should use for social media, videos, and podcasts.
Metrics Per Marketing Channel
Every marketer worth their salt should be tracking the success of their digital content marketing campaigns over time. Otherwise, how can you be sure content marketing is bringing you the traction you need to meet your business goals?
There are so many tools available that it can be quite overwhelming to determine where and how to start. As you’ve heard before – less is more, and keeping track of your measurement should be a piece of cake! The key marketing metrics you pick to measure the success of your content marketing should be personalized according to your marketing activities, your digital channel selection, your key performance indicators (KPIs) and target goals.
No matter the set of metrics you end up selecting, keep in mind that it’s easier to choose them at the very beginning of a project to yield a more comprehensive and relevant analysis. We’ve listed a few powerful but key marketing metrics you can use to help you get started and measure the success of each one of your marketing efforts.
Metrics for Newsletters
Are you sending a newsletter on a regular basis to your customers? If yes, it might be time to create a new spreadsheet and track the following key metrics over time to ensure the content you’re releasing is relevant and adds value for your audience.
You will be able to find those metrics on the dashboard of the e-mail marketing software you’re using (such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, Active Campaign, Benchmark Email, etc). Not sure what each metric means? Below are frequently used metrics for newsletters and what you need to know about them.
Opening rate
The number of subscribers who opened your newsletter within their email inbox. A catchy title, a trustworthy email address and the authorization of the recipient to get your newsletter (opt-in) are key if you want to increase your opening rate.
Click through rate
So now that the recipient has opened your newsletter, you will want to know how they interact with it.
Are they clicking on the call-to-actions (CTAs) as you would have hoped for?
Track the click-through rate and see if you can identify the type of content and/or topic your audience likes to read best
Once it’s clear, give to your subscribers more of what they prefer, and they’ll stick around!
Conversion rate
You may have included a CTA in your newsletter such as “learn more here” or “shop now”. Track how many people have clicked on these CTAs and improve on it. Catchy and short CTAs work best, especially if you’re serving high-quality content.
Number of subscribers
Keep track of your newsletter’s list growth. Not only will it motivate you to keep up the good work but it’s also going to be a clear indicator of your reach.
When your list reaches a critical size, you might want to analyze the data a bit further and split your audience by geographic location, interest, age, and customize your newsletter.
But no matter what, do not succumb to the temptation of buying an email list!
For FirstMate, a family-owned manufacturer of dog and cat foods, Pace Creative tracked and strategized their monthly newsletters as a part of their customer retention strategy.
Metrics for Website and Blogposts
One of the most common pieces of content marketing are blogposts. Keep an eye on your key marketing analytics, such as Google Analytics, to observe how your audience is interacting with your website and posts.
Did one of your blogposts hit the jackpot with tons of views and comments?
Try to analyze the content of the post and what resonated with the audience to make it so successful! Apply your findings to future blog posts.
An overview on what your Google Analytics metrics mean:
Page views
This simple metric tells you how many times your page has been viewed.
Unique visitors
A bit more refined than the page view metric, the number of unique visitors will provide you with a more accurate picture of the real number of people visiting your website.
Demographics
If you would like to know more about your website visitors and polish the content you’re publishing, analyzing the demographic is a good way to start. It will tell you more about the age, gender, interests, geographic location, language, devices and more about your audience. Knowing all these things will help you tap into your target market’s mind and might be able to predict their actions.
Average time per page
The longer people stay on your webpage, the better! What “dwell time” (or time spent on the same spot) is considered a good duration would vary based on the popularity of your topic, the length of the content and so on. Dwell times under 30 seconds are considered bad for any website and dwell times over two minutes are excellent. To help people stay on your website longer, make sure to structure your blogpost for an easy reading experience, using proper headings and optimal paragraph lengths of no more than 200 words, and images.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate is when website visitors will just “bounce” away after landing on the homepage without interacting any further. Make sure your homepage is attractive and polished, and that the content you provide is high-quality, making your visitors want to stay on your website.
Comments
Screen through the number of comments that you’ve received for a blogpost and check if they are positive or negative. Each comment should, of course, be answered to keep the discussion going.
With metrics in place for the manufacturing company Spalding’s website, they are able to get MQLs and convert the right online leads. This is the proof that online content marketing combined with an organic SEO strategy works magic for a growth marketing agency!
Now you can confidently set your KPIs, measure the success and track the results of your content marketing strategy for blogposts, websites, and newsletters. Make sure to check out our second post on key marketing metrics for videos, social media and podcasts.
Get your free content marketing audit template and we would be more than happy to help you with your content marketing strategy and maximize the ROI on your content creation efforts. To learn more about how we can help you, make sure to get in touch with us!
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