5 Steps to Measure Content Marketing Success
There is an old rule in management science:“If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It.”
Content marketing is a nightmare for many reasons. One of them is difficulties with determining ROI (return on investment). Without measuring the performance of your content, you cannot say for sure whether or not you are successful and your marketing efforts are working well. And how can you improve something if you don’t know if it’s bad?
Here are my 5 steps which will help you to measure the success of your content marketing.
1. Traffic Measurement
When you begin to carry out a new marketing campaign, the amount of network traffic is very limited. At this stage, you should focus on getting as much as possible on the volume of network traffic, and once you have accumulated a certain number of people calling to your site, you can begin tracking the levels of loyalty and conversion.
The most important metrics in this step are:
A. Unique Visitors and Visits
According to a research done by Adobe, unique visitors and visits are one of the most important strategic metrics. Their number shows exactly how your marketing moves are working and how well you have established your strategy.
B. Number of views
This metric shows how many pages in general people are visiting your site. These findings may be important but also can be misleading. Website design, traffic source, and even the specifics of your business can have a big impact on the number of page views. Take these measurements, but do not take any important decisions based on these.
C. Backlinks
Quality SEO-optimization is a by-product of any successful marketing campaign, and to get a good one, you need a large number of backlinks. Tracking the number of websites linking to your site, allows you to measure content effectiveness. Do you want to have high-quality backlinks or maybe sell a space on your blog? Check out Backlinks!
D. Traffic Source
Be sure to track from where new visitors are coming to your site. Are they finding you only through a search engine? Maybe they are all coming from one source? Who sent them to you? Once you have identified your main sources, you can promote your content, focusing on specific groups. Google has already created the perfect tool for that: Google Analytics.
2. Measurement of Absorption in Your Content
A. Bounce Rate
Once you have a good traffic, it’s time to regularly interact with your visitors and turn them into loyal readers. Bounce Rate is defined as the percentage of visitors to a particular website who leave the site after viewing only a single page.
If the failure rate is reduced, that means readers are more and more immersed in your content. Do not expect the bounce rate to decrease in a night. This is a very slow process of analysis and distribution of content.
However, the most important aspect is still the content itself. Well-written content with internal linking can keep your readers engage for long hours. If you are struggling with this part, try professional services of content creation like Top Aussie Review. They will help you out.
B. The time spent on the site
If users spend a lot of time on your website, this means that you have content that is interesting to them.
In addition, you can dig deeper and find out on which specific pages visitors spend most of the time. If your users are spending a lot of time on a particular page type, make more of similar content.
C. Number of shares
Make sure your contents are shareable. This can be infographics, images, GIFs, pictures, long or short messages or anything else. Just publish some information that people will enjoy and spread among their friends.
D. Number of comments
People comment on articles only if they find them particularly useful and interesting. Measurement of incoming comments is a great way to keep track of loyalty.
3. Measurement of Conversion
Now that you have regular readers who are interested in the content of your site, it’s time to turn them into potential clients and customers.
These are metrics that will help:
A. Opt-in
When users fill out your form opt-in and do not remove the check mark from the field “Yes, please send me your email newsletter!” That’s a great success as it means they want to have up to date information from your site. In the future, they are your prospective customers.
If you are creating relevant traffic and have a high level of attracting visitors to your site, your opt-in coefficient should be close to 30%.
4. Subscribers
The secret of transforming your little blog into a successful content powerhouse are “Subscribers”. Track the number of your subscribers and build a list of loyal readers for your content. This is probably the most effective way to measure the success.
Simple concept, if your subscriber list is shrinking, take this as a pretty clear indicator that your quality, depth, or value aren’t what they used to be.
5. Email Newsletter Metrics
Let’s face the fact that email marketing still has the highest ROI of any form of marketing. Keeping your customers up-to-date with the email newsletters is the most effective way to keep them on your side.
Follow all of these tips and your content marketing strategy will flourish your business.