Content marketing is rocking the business world, with over a third of marketing budgets being devoted to this highly profitable form of marketing. It’s expected that by 2019, annual spending will reach $300 billion, doubling its growth in only four short years. Content marketing is estimated to produce three times as many sales leads as traditional marketing strategies, while costing only 62% as much. But it can be very difficult to measure the return on investment. Since content marketing is still relatively new, upper management is often reluctant to invest without an idea of what the ROI will be. Here are five ways to get measurable results to determine your content marketing ROI.
5 Ways to Get Measurable Results From Your Content Strategy
1. Identify multiple metrics
To measure your ROI on your content strategy, you need to start by figuring out what you’re measuring in the first place. Are you looking for views? Clicks? Conversions? What’s the overall goal you’re trying to reach with your content? By determining exactly what you want to measure in the first place, you can then determine what your ROI will be on that particular aspect of your outcomes.
2. Calculate conversion rate
I know, calculating something sounds like a lot of work. But when it comes to content ROI, it’s actually a lot easier than it looks, once you’ve determined what metrics you’re measuring. One popular one to present to upper management is your conversion rate, because that leads directly to profits. You can determine this by dividing the leads collected by the number of visits to your site, then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
Also, it really helps to keep an eye on how different pieces of content perform over time instead of just glancing at the numbers once. Sometimes, something you posted a month ago picks up steam much later, and that’s not uncommon in content marketing. Watching trends develop can actually reveal the kind of content your actual audience—those people who stick around—are returning for, rather than just who stumbles in once and bounces.
Another thing that people tend to overlook is the story behind a quick spike in conversions. Maybe you landed a mention on an unexpected blog or someone shared your piece to a targeted group—these are less about luck and more about patterns you can recreate. Take notes (actual ones, not just mental!) on what drives those jumps, because it’ll save you time and guesswork down the road if you notice the same triggers popping up in your analytics reports. Not glamorous, but it works.
3. Focus your efforts
You could try to appeal to every single person on the planet, but you’re not going to get the best ROI in that case. Instead, take a little time to figure out who your ideal customer is and create a buyer persona to focus your outreach on. After you know who you’re trying to reach, create content that will appeal to their needs.
4. Create quality, not quantity
We’ve all seen the numbers that scream that you need to be posting several times a day on every possible social media channel, updating your blog every day and rehashing some portion of your website every week. The problem is, if you throw out junk content to try to keep up with the numbers, you’ll actually lose business. If needs be, create less content of higher quality to get the right customers.
5. Break down your channels
Where is your company doing best online? If you don’t know, you should. Take a little time to break down your ROI by channel to determine where you should focus your efforts and budget. If you’re a B2B company, LinkedIn may do better for you than Facebook. If you provide home improvement supplies, Pinterest may be a better way to promote content.
By implementing these five easy strategies to measure content marketing ROI, you can quickly determine which strategies are working well and which ones need updating. But once you have those measurements in place, where do you get the content from creators who understand where your company is going? WriterAccess can match you up to the perfect writers for your project. Reach out today to get started.
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