Content marketing is one of the best strategies to position a brand in the medium and long term. Content can take many forms. For example, you might focus on blog posts or design a calendar with audiovisual content for social media.
Typically, content marketing combines several actions, and logically, some will work better than others. This is why it’s so important to know and use metrics to understand what content your audience is expecting.
The Importance of Metrics in Content Marketing
Marketing metrics are the most tedious and complicated part of any strategy. But they are essential. Fortunately, many tools help us measure the effectiveness of the content we publish.
But don’t worry, it’s not necessary to measure everything. To help you navigate the world of analytics, here are some practical tips to measure your content marketing results.
First, you should choose the metrics that are relevant to the goals you’ve set in your marketing strategy.
Second, keep in mind that positioning content on the Internet is no easy task, so consistency and strategy are essential to achieving good results.
Third, it’s recommended to measure the effectiveness of content at each stage of the sales funnel. What do we mean by this?
At the beginning of the funnel, more users will interact with your content, but they will be less qualified. Towards the end, users will be more prepared to become customers. So, even though there may be fewer interactions, it doesn’t mean the strategy isn’t working.
Now let’s look at the essential content marketing metrics.
Essential Content Marketing Metrics
Although analytics is a broad discipline, let’s look at the main metrics you should handle.
- Traffic
How many people are visiting your website? Has it increased in the last analyzed period? Has it decreased? Measuring traffic is crucial to know if your content is attractive to users and if you’re promoting it effectively.You should measure the number of unique visitors and repeat visits over a given period. If your unique visitors are growing, it’s a sign that you’re creating quality content and promoting it well. Receiving many repeat visits may mean you’re building a loyal audience.
- Traffic Sources
Where are your visitors coming from? From social media? From Google searches?Knowing where visitors come from with tools like Google Analytics helps you decide where to invest more resources.
The main traffic sources are four:
- a) Direct Traffic: These are people who type your website’s name directly. If direct traffic is high, your brand recognition is strong. If it’s low, the content may not be attractive enough, or you may need to work more on your brand visibility.
- b) Organic Traffic: This comes from users’ search results on Google and other engines. If the percentage is high, your SEO tactics are working well.
- c) Social Traffic: This comes from your activity on social networks. If you spread your content on platforms where your target audience is active, it will have greater viral potential. Many followers will share your posts, and your reach will increase. It’s important to have a presence on the networks relevant to your business.
- d) Referral Traffic: This is the most important and also the hardest to achieve. Referral traffic happens when a website links to yours. Search engines like Google highly value pages with lots of referral traffic and rank them higher. However, we recommend avoiding unethical practices like buying links, as Google can penalize you.
- CTR (Click-Through Rate)
One of the goals of any marketing strategy is to capture leads and eventually convert them into customers. The most common way to turn a visitor into a lead is to use calls-to-action (CTAs) in your posts. The effectiveness of CTAs is measured by the CTR.CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on the CTA by the number of impressions. The result is then multiplied by 100, giving you the percentage of visitors who clicked on your CTA.
- Conversion Rates
Conversion rate is a key metric because it tells us whether we’re achieving our sales or lead generation goals. Therefore, you need to measure two conversion rates:- a) Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate: Getting leads is the first step before making a sale. Therefore, increasing the conversion rate from visitors to leads is vital in your content marketing strategy. Every time a visitor leaves their contact details in a subscription form or on a landing page, you’ve captured a lead. An acceptable percentage is usually between 1% and 3% of visitors.
- b) Lead to Customer Conversion Rate: Once you’ve acquired leads, the next step is to convert them into customers. Out of all the leads you get, between 2% and 10% may become customers. To achieve this, one of the most effective techniques is offering personalized and specialized content to guide them step by step toward a sale.
If the conversion rate is high, your actions are working well. If not, you should consider whether the strategy is the right one or if another part of the funnel is failing.
These are the main content marketing metrics you should be familiar with. Although they’re not the only ones, it’s not necessary to measure everything from the start.
Does measuring the effectiveness of your content marketing seem tedious to you? Tell us in the comments what you measure and why. We look forward to your opinions.
