Seven ways to measure the impact of content and prove ROI
We recently discussed how to create content that engages target customers and boosts your SEO rankings. But how do you make sure that your content feeds into your company goals?
While it’s great to create engaging posts and produce new content regularly, it’s important not to lose sight of why you’re doing it. You may be hitting your marketing targets, but how sufficiently do they support your wider company goals?
Rather than falling into a rut of producing new content as a tick-box exercise, it’s important to keep an eye on the bigger picture and empower your marketing team. Reminding your business of how your team is making a difference can reignite their passion, and can also encourage more investment.
Why is measuring the impact of content so difficult?
It’s the age-old debate between sales and marketing teams: was it the sales call that closed the deal, or was it the many marketing touchpoints beforehand that should be merited?
In reality, it’s a mixture of both. Content can help raise brand awareness and nurture people through the marketing funnel. Then, when the sales team reaches out or receives a quality lead, they can close the deal. So, in order to successfully gain more customers, sales and marketing teams need to work cohesively.
However, this makes it difficult when marketing teams need to report their impact. As they can’t attribute all sales directly from their efforts, they instead need to show that they’re driving both the right quantity and quality of traffic to the business in the first place.
Seven ways to measure the impact of your content
To prove that your marketing efforts are making a difference, you’ll need to find ways to measure the impact of content that are both robust and also show it’s valuable to your prospects – even if you can’t track that activity right back to a sale.
Not only that, but you also need to agree what success looks like, in the form of objectives or KPIs, so that you can set expectations for the rest of the business.
Don’t know where to start? Here are seven ways you can measure the impact of your content.
1. Ask your customers directly
Speaking directly to your customers after a sale can help you truly understand their journey with you, with the information coming straight from the source. This can include:
Talking to customers to find out what content they loved
Trying to get people to remember what they first interacted with
Asking how long they knew about the brand before they bought something, and what contact point tipped them over the edge
This kind of analysis isn’t an exact science, since people may remember incorrectly (or struggle to remember) every piece of content they’ve interacted with. But, understanding more about their buyer journey and combining it with what you can measure will help ground the engagement statistics you choose.
2. Monitor product purchases
In some cases, it may be possible to track a new customer’s entire journey through the website to point of sale by using Google Analytics. This is particularly true with the new GA4 update – the introduction of User IDs means you can track an individual person across various browsers over the course of multiple sessions.
However, Google Analytics isn’t perfect. There will probably be points of contact with your brand that aren't picked up by analytics. Even though you know how they moved through your site, you won’t know what triggered them to make a purchase.
3. Track how many people book a sales call or demo
This is a great way to see how you’re directly impacting the sales funnel.
For instance, you can add a simple call to action at the end of an article asking readers to book in a sales call or demo with the team. Then, if you add a tracking link to the URL, you can see how many people are booking in calls after engaging with that specific piece of content.
Other places you can add tracking links include social media posts, emails or even QR codes.
4. Measure your engagement
Google Analytics gives you the power to see the amount of time users are spending on your site, which pages they visit and how they move from place to place.
The longer someone reads content, the better. This is because it indicates that they’re interested, engaged and value the content. What you may determine to be a ‘good’ average engagement time will vary, so you should set your own benchmarks of what you want each article to hit based on historical data – for example, a ‘good’ average engagement time on The Pitch website is around four minutes.
You can then use this data to feedback into your marketing strategy. What content performs well and what doesn’t? Was there a certain format that worked better than others?
5. Observe how often people return to your site
Having a lot of users returning to your site is a great indicator that they’re moving through the marketing funnel, that your site is becoming a destination and that people are getting to know the brand.
A high returning-user rate should also help you prove ROI. Returning users proves that customers are being retained; these customers are much more likely to spend than new ones.
Generally, 30% is considered a good returning user rate. This is because it demonstrates a lot of people are returning to your site, but you’re also showing a promising level of growth. However, there are various things that can affect this number. For example, a new business will understandably have a very low returning-user rate.
You can figure out how many people are returning to your site by clicking into your retention overview in GA4.
6. Monitor your page views
Another simple way you can measure the impact of your content is by monitoring your page views. This is a really simple way to measure whether your audience is growing sustainably or not.
However, be cautious about relying too heavily on page views. It’s more important to build the right audience and develop high-quality engagements, rather than driving lots of low-quality traffic to your site.
7. Measure asset downloads and email subscribers
Email marketing is a valuable tool to marketers, and shouldn’t be underestimated. According to Hubspot, the average email marketing ROI is an impressive $36 for every $1 spent.
Not only that, but building up a strong email list is also a really great way to maintain direct contact with your audience – a valuable tool as a marketer. For more tips on building up a great email list, read our article here.
Similarly, measuring how many people download assets gives you an idea of how many users are seeing value in various types of content, which can be used to guide your marketing strategy further. It can also give you the basic contact information of every user who has downloaded your content, which you can then add to your newsletter list.
This means that tracking your email subscribers and asset downloads can be a great way to prove that people are moving through the marketing funnel, and that you're building up data you can leverage.
You just want three or four simple metrics, don’t overload yourself
When setting metrics, it’s important to pick just three or four things to focus on. Selecting any more may cause you to get overwhelmed by numbers and lose focus on why you’re tracking them in the first place.
Use your wider business goals to guide what you’re tracking – for instance, if you’re trying to raise brand awareness as a whole, you may want to focus on page views or email subscriber growth.
To test out your chosen metrics, try doing a deep-dive into your most successful content. If they don’t feel right, it may be worth reconsidering your options, so you can find the most powerful metrics for you and your business goals.
Finally, keep aware of vanity metrics. As mentioned previously, page views are important to show growth, but can distract you from creating high-quality interactions with prospects. It’s important to measure what really matters to you and your business.
Tired of creating content that doesn’t convert? As experts in content marketing, Inkwell can help. Get in touch with the team today to discuss how we can help support your marketing needs.
