The Secret Formula for Measuring Content Marketing Efforts

What’s the best metric to use to measure your content marketing efforts? That’s the question that every content marketer wants to know the answer to. And while we’re all on the hunt for that one number that will transform our marketing game, the difficult truth is that there doesn’t seem to be one. Because in reality, it depends on what your goal is — and even when you have a clear goal, you still need to understand your metrics on a number of levels. 

But there is a simple way to measure content marketing that is far more effective than just relying on one metric.

So what is it? Well, first off, when it comes to metrics, there are basically two types of content marketers: the editorial people and the conversion folks.

You probably recognize yourself in one of these two. But just to be clear, you’re probably the editorial type if you come from the media world or you are all about Google Analytics. If you’re one of these folks, you mainly care about page views — which, let’s face it, only really matters if you’re selling display ads on your page — and shares on social media.

If you’re an editorial-focused marketer who has taken your analytics deeper, you might also look at engaged time, average finish and return visitors. This gives you a more in-depth look at your interaction. But you’re missing the complete picture.

Or, you might be a conversion person. In this case, you’re conversion-obsessed and don’t care as much about metrics that look at audience-building. You spend your time measuring how effectively you’re driving people into your funnel, but you don’t spend much time gauging the content that comes before that. Here again, you’re only seeing half the picture.

Favor one side or the other and you’re at a disadvantage. To get the complete picture and to leverage your content marketing to its full potential, you’ll want to bring both audience and conversion metrics together. Here’s why.

Say you’re a B2B business and you’ve created a new lead. You start tracking the percentage of people who come into contact with your content and then go on to become your customers. By only focusing on this metric, you’re leaving out everything that happens before your potential customers take the step of identifying themselves.

Of course, not everyone sees your lead on their first contact with your company. Some might check out your content for months before expressing any interest in becoming your customer. Others might take a look at your content and come back a couple of times before giving their info. And still, others might only visit your site once and never even become a lead. Without measuring page views and other engagement metrics, you won’t see how well your content is doing in order to prime people to end up as your lead in the first place.

On the other hand, if you’ve set your goal to be brand awareness, you still need to track conversion metrics. Because even if you’re a brick and mortar, you still need to know how well your content is driving social follows and newsletter sign-ups. After all, that’s probably what gets them in the door.

So what’s the secret formula? Savvy content marketers know that it is looking at both of these metrics in tandem. With a clear view of both your audience and conversion metrics, you’ll know how your content is doing before and after people enter your funnel, and you’ll be able to keep improving all of your content in the future. 

Need help creating and measuring content that both engages and converts? Reach out to our team here at Mediaplanet.