Compare and contrast. The effectiveness of a direct response ad campaign is relatively easy to measure. Put simply, if you achieve an above average click-through rate from the ad to the home or landing page, feeding through to a healthy number of conversions, then you’re clearly doing something right.
On the face of it, content marketing seems a very different and much more complex beast. Yes, in the longer term, a content management strategy probably serves the same purpose as direct response campaign – it is a tool to generate more leads and ultimately increase sales.
But it does that not by presenting the potential customer with an instant call-to-action in the shape of a display ad or link but by providing useful, interesting and engaging content in the service of driving profitable behaviour.
And it’s potentially a slow burn. That first company blog won’t necessarily result in a flood of sales inquiries but as its readership grows, what it certainly should do is build a relationship between the business and the customer.
It may be a relationship built on product reviews, comments about the industry or useful advice. Whatever the approach, if done well and successfully, it increases the chances of a reader or viewer becoming a customer.
The question is, of course, how do you know if your content marketing strategy is working. Sales may rise over time but how can you tell the resources, energy and time spent producing white papers, product reviews, blogs and video podcasts has contributed to the improved performance. Actually it’s not so difficult…
Beyond the headline metrics
The first question to ask is whether your content is not only reaching potential customers but also engaging them.
And it’s important to look beyond the headline metrics. Let’s say a given blog posted on a website attracts just over 1,000 unique visitors over a thirty day period and that exceeds your pre-defined expectations.
That’s clearly a good thing but the success of that particular piece of content can’t simply be measured by the number of unique views, you also have to factor in the degree to which it is engaging your target audience. Are they clicking though from a search engine or home page where the blog is flagged only to bounce off within seconds? Or are they spending time with the material.
A high bounce rate suggests you’re doing a great job publicising the content but ultimately not delivering what viewers want or expect. On the other hand, good dwell time figures indicate that the content is genuinely engaging the audience. The same is true if you find users returning to the blog either during the same session or on a later date.
So, the key metrics, then are unique views and dwell time and page views. By analysing the relationship between unique and page views, you can get an idea of how many people are returning.
Positive sentiment
A word of caution. High number page view numbers don’t automatically correlate with ‘positive’ engagement. Let’s say a particular series of blogs is intended to establish a business as a “thought leader” within an industry. Readers may home in on the subject matter, spend time reading it but ultimately disagree or take issue with the content.
So it’s hugely important to measure the sentiment. Are the comments positive or negative? Is the blog seen as authoritative or weak on facts? And if it’s distributed by social media, is it being liked or shared.
Social media
It’s important to remember that likes or shares on social media are in themselves an imperfect measure of the success of a particular piece of content. They certainly provide an indicator of sentiment but ultimately you still have to study those key views and dwell time metrics, along with comments.
Measuring content marketing ROI
High audience reach, coupled with evidence of genuine engagement, feeding through to improved performance in the slightly longer term, will indicate if your content marketing strategy is having an impact.
However, there are less anecdotal ways to measure ROI, for instance, by measuring the response to calls to action on a blog or the clickthrough rate from links embedded in the content. Customer surveys also provide a means to assess the success of a strategy.
Know Your Customer
It is however, crucial to remember that content marketing is also an effective market research tool. By measuring not only reach and engagement but also where your customers are, who they are and what they are interested in, you can hone your marketing and your products. For instance, you can track potential customers by geography. Equally, measuring the performance of individual pieces of content and mapping that against subject matter gives you a perspective on what customers are really interested in.
The tools to measure content marketing success are widely available. The key is to focus on the important metrics.
