So, how can you decide on a content marketing goal and the accompanying metrics?
By now, most organizations know of the value that content marketing can bring and whether it is a beneficial practice to employ in your business in the first place.
That being said, one of the largest issues surrounding content marketing is the lack of knowledge in how to convert your goals into trackable metrics.
What isn’t measured, doesn’t get improved, after all. So being able to convert a generic goal like “awareness” into a trackable system is going to really maximize your content marketing efforts.
Therefore, today, I’m going to explain the most common goals around content marketing and how to track them with relevant metrics!
So, let’s begin!
Content Marketing Goal 1: Awareness
Probably the most common goal for companies who are just establishing content marketing efforts is building awareness!
All companies want more awareness. In fact, most times, a product that is sold can be of lesser quality but still sells respectively well merely due to the fact that awareness for a greater competitor doesn’t yet exist.
Awareness is the first necessary stage in the sales life-cycle, and the first stage of creating an effective marketing funnel!
Generally, the main goal of awareness is to drive traffic to your web page in order to begin the conversion cycle or establish a way to be sure that visitors know of your offer and/or subscribe to it.
Here are a few metrics that you can use to track such a thing!
Traffic: Obviously, you’ll want to measure traffic as your MAIN source of information and your defining factor of success. Traffic is exactly what you plan to augment in the first place.
Referral Traffic: The benefit of referral traffic is that, often, referrals come in the form of backlinks which do well to benefit your site’s SEO. Referral traffic also gives you an idea of the most effective ways to reach an audience more proactively, as you can hunt for referrals to further augment your audience.
Subscription Sign-Ups: Generally, the amount of subscription sign-ups that you receive is a reflection of how well your website presents content that your audience actually wants. You can easily utilize different forms of content or various offers that increase your subscriptions and ensures that people are aware of your brand and offer.
Social Shares: Obviously, the more people that share your content means you’ll have more awareness and reach over their respective audiences as well. If anything, this is a testament to the value of quality content that people will want to share, and avoiding “sales” based content that put people off from your brand.
Content Marketing Goal 2: Consideration
When I ask any business owner what their content marketing goals are, I often get a single root answer. More Money.
And this isn’t a bad thing! After all, that’s what business is about isn’t it?
The only issue is that you need to produce interest and desire in the minds of your consumers. All the awareness in the world won’t help you if you are not considered interesting or viable to your audience!
This is why businesses with lots of awareness can still fail if they don’t find a way to provide value or desire within their target markets.
Generally, the main goals to track when it comes to consideration is having more return website visits, more subscriptions, and more leads with which you can gain additional ROI based on your average revenue per lead.
So, here are a few metrics you can use to track your audiences consideration of your offer!
Leads: Are your leads growing alongside your traffic? If not, you may have done something differently to instigate this negative effect. Or, are your leads growing faster than your traffic? In this case, you’ve done well to prove that you’re optimizing your content to build interest in consumers.
CTR: Your CTR (or Click Through Rate) will tell you exactly how people are reacting to certain offers or calls to action. The higher the CTR the more that people are curious enough about your brand to learn more about it and/or willing to do research into the offer.
Open Rates: Highly relative to email marketing, your open rate will tell you how many people are seeing your email/content and considering the offer that you present. Obviously, the more people who open the CTA, the more interest and consideration they are giving your brand!
Conversion Rates For Added Content: You want your additional content to be something seen as valuable and interesting to your audience, that’s exactly the point of content marketing, after all! Therefore, the more content you dish out, the more conversion you will want to see due to that content.
Time on Site: The more time that people spend on your website directly correlates to the quality of the consumer’s interest in your offer. Whether they are consuming content or browsing the site, this curiosity means well for the consideration aspect of the sales funnel.
Content Marketing Goal 3: Buy Decision
The main goals for increasing buying decision are going to remain the same as with goal 2: Consideration in the sense that you will want to increase returning visitors and leads with which to convert.
The good news is that these metrics are all rather easy to track!
Conversion Rate: Obviously with the main goal here is conversions, so naturally, we’re going to place a heavy weight on the conversion rate. To increase the buying decisions, you will have to produce content that presents a desire for your needs or services, then capitalize on that desire by increasing the conversion rate wither through your sales ability, or through value.
Conversion Cycle Length: The other thing you can do to increase the buying decision, other than converting more people, is to decrease the amount of time between awareness and the buying decision. Ask how long it takes before your average consumer converts! This is an important consideration. Obviously converting in less time allows you to convert more people over the course of a month or a year, which means more revenue.
Content Marketing Goal 4: Brand Loyalty.
.Brand loyalty is important, and is often one of the most overlooked part of the consumer and conversion process.
The job isn’t done once the sale goes through. In fact, you could say that the brands job is just getting started!
Ultimately, the goal of loyalty is to increase sales and brand evangelists/brand advocacy!
Here’s how you can track this!
% Repeat Customers: The greater the percentage of repeat customers that there are, the more that you and your brand can be sure that you present a quality product that meets consumer expectations. This perfectly translates into loyalty.
Up-selling: If you employ the process of up-selling, the amount that you up-sell also correlates to the number of people who have experienced value and help from your brand to solve their issues. This not only speaks volumes of the quality of your product but also about the experience of the consumer in doing business with your brand from the beginning of the conversion cycle.
Retention Rate: The higher the retention rate of your consumers, the fewer people you are losing to competitors, which (if not for switching costs) is a direct representation of the satisfaction and loyalty that people feel towards your brand.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I hope these points have helped you in better tracking your content marketing efforts based on your goals throughout the conversion and funneling cycle!
If you are still having trouble understanding some of these points, then I’d love to speak with you more!
Here’s another article on the Hub and Spoke Content Marketing Model!
Thanks for reading!
Work With Austin
-Austin Denison is a management consultant and coach from Southern California and founder/CEO of Denison Success Systems LLC. He is the author of The Essential Change Management Guidebook: Master The Art of Organizational Change as well as The Potential Dichotomy: The Philosophy of a Fulfilling Life, and, coming soon: KICK*SS Content Marketing, How to Boost Your Brand and Gather a Following.
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