A guide that helps you assess content for increased traffic, leads & sales.
Content Marketing ROI — The Ultimate Beginners Guide
Unsure if your published article or how-to video. Even your ebook series converts better than the last time? Clueless on how long it takes to reach a positive content marketing ROI.
Content marketing is the secret you unlock to understand your buyer personas better. At the same time, trying to help them achieve their business goals.
Neglecting a customer-centric content strategy to achieve long-term goals/gains can be risky. Content marketing can be 62% more cost-effective than traditional marketing. Plus, it drives 3x more leads.
So content isn’t about churning out more without a specific purpose. Nor is it limited to curated business blog posts. Interpreting available data or metrics on content marketing ROI can often be mind-boggling.
This guide walks you through the key aspects that break down content marketing ROI. Maintain budget & scale your business goals. Also, calculate the ROI of your future content marketing campaigns. Easy to assess the value of content that beats your competition point-blank.
Why Should Marketers Calculate Content Marketing ROI?
Whipping out content at irregular intervals. Without a clear plan to engage your prospects.
It can be an uphill task while draining your budget & resources.
Delivering high-quality content tied to achieving your long-term strategic business goals. You can drive your website conversion rates almost 6x times higher.
When you launch a campaign, website, or post a video series, it can take months or weeks to analyze the numbers. Also, understand if your efforts will drum up the conversions you want.
Since every part of your sales funnel is set up with specific goal-oriented content. Content marketing ROI helps you assess published content. Causes the desired results such as :
- Increased website traffic
- Lead generation/ qualified leads
- Sales
Using content marketing, marketers can better understand the type of content customers prefer. You’d create more visuals or written content based on their interest.
Plus, that helps you decide the content you need to create at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Thus creating content that leads to a better customer experience.
Across-the-board ensure your content strategy connects with marketing goals. Hence maximize the budget & multiply your business growth in the long term.
What is Content Marketing ROI
You can begin with nailing down content marketing metrics. Favorable to your company’s bottom line. It is best to understand the key components to calculate content marketing ROI.
- Measure your Investment — First, calculate the cost to produce (labor, software, etc). Next, work out the cost of distributing content (advertising & marketing).
- Revenue earned — Add up the direct sales made from the content created.
Since content marketing ROI gauges the impact of your content marketing efforts. A well as it contributes revenue. Here is the formula used to measure content marketing ROI:
ROI = Revenue — Investment
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Investment
ROI is an essential measure of a successful marketing campaign. But it isn’t the only one. As there are several content metrics, you must consider.
Not enough page views, shares, leads on content produced. You don’t gain any revenue. So the sooner you realize, the better that creating more content has no impact & is of no value. The key is to give preference & so let’s look at a few important metrics & factors that matter.
How Can I Measure Content Marketing ROI
First, there are a few must-haves to consider. Don’t rush to know how to calculate your content marketing ROI.
Work out a performance benchmark before strategy.
Begin with comparing content marketing ROI with other periods. Irrespective of how expensive it can get.
The first step is to have a benchmark performance in place. Next, you can create a content strategy to convince prospects. Also, it is easier to measure content with set benchmarks. Helps you understand if content reaches your business goals or needs work.
Make use of data visualization software. Get to know how your business performs in different conditions.
Figure Out Purpose of Your Content Marketing ROI
Decide on a clear content strategy that’s tied down to your business goals. So for that, you must ask yourself.
Why are you calculating content marketing ROI?
Don’t rush to define ROI metrics only to justify your company’s marketing budget. This process will yield you no results. Instead, you’d get a clear picture when you analyze what’s working & use it to improve your content strategy.
The constant pressure on content marketers to prove the value of their campaigns. Now & then, you run the risk of tracking vanity metrics.
It is crucial to define the purpose of determining ROI. Before you start to collect data or choose content metrics.
Use Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides you data to analyze & review metrics to confirm content strategy.
Easier for you to review data within a time range. Plus, get real-time coverage with this free & comprehensive tool.
When you’re target audience is within sight on social media. Use Google Analytics to get hold of social media metrics. Also, view how much traffic you get from each social media platform.
So if you’re running a business, Google Analytics is a handy tool.
Track Content Marketing Metrics That Count
Confused about how you can profit from content marketing to meet your business goals. It can be daunting, so how do you track content metrics?
As well as focusing on picking the right metrics can be a challenge. But if you are aware of the purpose behind each metric, that’ll become a simple process.
Are you unsure of how many new subscribers for your newsletter? Even lost track of leads that made direct purchases on your website. Use such measurements to track KPI’s Key Performance Indicators. Such as traffic, conversions, engagement authority & SEO.
Below is a table from Content Marketing Institute that shows vital KPI’s & metrics used to measure them.
Are you wondering how you should choose the right metrics for your campaign? You don’t need to measure all the metrics. But use metrics to disclose what you want to know that’s in sync with your business goals. So it is best to work on a few metrics relevant to your campaign or content piece.
Here we’ll focus on five crucial content marketing metrics.
Consumption Metrics: Check how many people have consumed your content. Either on your website or other platforms. Also measure to what extent & frequency of content viewed, traffic & brand awareness. Here are some metrics:
- Pageviews
- Video views
- Downloads
- Average time on the website
- Unique visitors
- Abandonment rates
Sharing Metrics: They or show the relevancy of content to your audience. You get a grip on brand awareness & engagement. These metrics pinpoint social media activity. Help pinpoint if the content resonates with prospects. Hence people want to share it. So you can measure the frequency, reach & on what channels the content gets shared. Metrics that include sharing are Likes, Shares, Retweets & Forwards.
Sales Metrics: These metrics show how much your content contributes to sales. You know that content produced gives a leg up to your sales funnel & revenue. Key sales metrics include:
- Leads generated: Combine marketing automation tool & CRM. Notice how many leads you got from each content piece published. Plus, how prospects interacted with your content & on which platforms. Some important lead generation metrics include bounce rate, click-through rate & subscriptions (Blog & Email).
Don’t neglect lead quality. Try to understand how often leads get nurtured before converting. - Funnel conversion rate: You can track a specific content piece. And that leads the prospect down the sales funnel.
- Pipeline generated: Determine the dollar value of every opportunity. So that helps you locate a specific content piece. The pipeline boosts your content marketing revenue in the future. So you can tweak it to generate more leads & close customers.
Retention Metrics: Your current customers are valuable resources & don’t want to lose. The metrics help you track if the content is engaging & consumed for existing clients. You can assess customer loyalty when monitoring customer feedback & renewals secured.
Metrics you can use :
- Return rate: Opt for a healthy mix of new & return visitors to your site.
- Pages per visit: You get to know if most of your content was engaging. Besides, you’ll know if the content has led visitors to your webpage.
Email Metrics: Tracking email metrics help you with increased reader’s
engagement & understand how campaigns perform.
- Email Open rate: For email blasts & newsletters. You’d want to know how many got delivered to prospects’ inboxes.
- Click-through rate: Percentage of subscribers that have clicked at least
one link in your email from the total emails delivered. - Conversion rate: Percentage of readers who took a specific action (
buy of monthly subscription) out of the total emails delivered. - Email-subscriber churn rate: Keep count of how many unsubscribers. Caused due to email content.
Here is an image of using Google Analytics to track sent emails.
Cost Metrics: Track cost per content piece to keep a tab on
internal expenses. The nitty-gritty of salaries, benefits & other overhead expenses can make it a tad harder for you to analyze. In case of insufficient funds, work out the pros & cons of outsourcing vs. in-house content creation.
Also, it is vital to measure distribution costs for content promotion on social media & ad networks. Thus it helps you to plan or divide budgets in the future.
How do I give a go head for achieving the ROI of content marketing?
Since ROI on content marketing isn’t direct cash. Yet, only identifying metrics is not enough. You’ll struggle to prove the investment & results got from content marketing efforts. Track the snowball effect of content in various ways apart from the standard ROI formula.
One of the best ways is to take time to pinpoint content-related activity. So you can track & measure it. Let’s look at website content, social media & SEO.
Measuring ROI on website content
Not every visitor on your webpage would convert into a customer. Also, some websites measure ROI for less tangible metrics such as brand awareness.
When trying to find the actual ROI make sure to know the value of the average ROI in your business.
So here is how you calculate it:
First, multiply the average transaction amount & the average number of people that converted. Distinct & clear-cut for blog or website conversions.
Content marketers are aware that you don’t stop tracking conversions. Limit it to only a particular page. For example, your website visitor becomes a customer. First & foremost, consuming an insightful case study that your blog has led them to. You could find it all confusing, to begin with, don’t worry.
Use Goals in Google Analytics to know page views per session. Plus, the time duration of visitors staying on your site. Also, notice other events triggered on your website during their visit. Besides, use this data to calculate projected blog revenue for each goal.
Repeat this process for every goal & add up the number of blog conversions. Use it for a specific timeframe & average it out.
This is helpful when done in tandem with sales teams. Cross refer the content with sales & leads so you can work on identifying improvements. And work on successful content themes or formats.
Measuring ROI on Social Media
Social media is a powerful way to broadcast your content gain trust & brand awareness. So measuring content marketing ROI on social media (Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram) is crucial.
Make the most of social media metrics based on your company sales & goals. Moreover, you’d want to build a community of influencers. As well as advocates to increase your customer base.
Yet, you’re not vying for new customers. In B2B, form valuable partnerships on social media. Skyrocket your content marketing efforts.
Choose relevant metrics that you can track. Often depending on business objectives for each audience. For instance, conversions or audience engagement for new customers. Make the most of shares & comments for your partnerships.
Measuring ROI on SEO
Having your content found by the right audience & for that SEO is vital. SEO forces you to be patient & could drain your budget. Yet you struggle to calculate your content marketing ROI.
Optimize your content based on search engine ranking criteria that change often. Avoid Black Hat SEO techniques & agencies that use them.
Even as a beginner, you can track ROI for SEO in a few simple ways.
- Keyword Ranking — Use the Traffic Sources tab in Google Analytics. Even check sought-after search terms on different tools & platforms.
- Check your page ranking — It is vital to track this KPI on a constant basis. Use tools like Ahrefs or search for the target keyword in an incognito window to view the position it ranks.
- Domain Authority — Indicates how your target audience grasps the content. Ensure it takes into account when calculating content marketing ROI. A free domain authority checker such as Moz is helpful on how Google would rank your page & site authority.
FAQ’s on Content Marketing ROI
How long does it take to start seeing results for content marketing to work?
Content Marketing is a long-term game. For campaigns to become successful, it takes six months to a year to see the results. But it depends on your business model, industry, goals, execution & how you’d define success.
And a lot depends on knowing if your content strategy is working. You’ll use all inbound tactics to push website visitors through the funnel. Plus, turn them into qualified leads.
So here is what you’d make of it:
3 months: Don’t expect to gather hundreds of leads. But you’ll need a system in place to track prospects.
6 months: Optimizing website content via guest blogging. Ensure you aim for high-quality backlinks to your site. You’d get 2–3 leads per post at this stage.
In a year: Expect a pipeline of leads generated. Content strategy uncovers content that works best for your target audience.
What is a good content marketing ROI?
Your industry & company history gives you a clear picture to set business goals. Also, helps you discern the expected average content marketing ROI.
You need to assess your goals & content plans as you move forward. Hence not all content marketing efforts deliver identical results.
Test your campaign & content marketing analytics that are best suited for your business.
How is the quality of content measured?
Here are some questions to get you started with monitoring the quality of content.
- Does your content resolve audience pain points & user intent? Is it engaging?
- How well is your content structured for readability?
- Is your content optimized to rank higher in SERP?
Establishing ROI for downloadable assets
You’ll find it challenging to determine ROI for downloadable content assets. In the case of white papers, ebooks & case studies. Since you can measure only the number of times it takes to download. And that leaves you clueless on how well it performed while you’ll miss out on tracking the following:
- Gaining insight into how much prospect’s content consumption. Makes you decide on scheduling a follow-up call from your sales team.
- Measuring the shares of your asset every now & then. Gives you access to collect 2nd-degree leads via an embedded form.
- Identifying chapters & sections that resonate with your readers. You can segment the audience by their interest & follow-up using a customized approach.
Assessing & Evaluating Content Marketing ROI
Assess if your content strategy is working. Even create brand awareness, garner interest & bring in sales. It is common to see low or negative numbers. During the start of any content marketing campaign rollout.
Yet when you continue to notice low or negative ROI for some time. It is time to re-evaluate your content, strategy, or distribution channels.
But you’d want to count in on some non-financial factors not related to any specific campaign. Since money is not the only measure of success for calculating content marketing ROI. Revenue is doubtful if your website doesn’t get page views, shares & visitors aren’t engaging. Yet can influence your business fundamentals.
- Brand Awareness: Content marketing can build brand awareness. Use engaging content on various digital platforms. Since 59% of customers connect with familiar brands.
- Brand Reputation & Customer Loyalty: Build brand equity with share-worthy content. Every successful campaign contributes to increased customer trust & which boosts your brand authority. Continue to share valuable content that results in followers. Excited to amplify your brand in their network. Moreover, they’ll stay loyal to your brand.
- Backlinks from Authoritative Sites & Influencers: Your business can profit from better ranking & reputation. When experts from a related domain comment or link back to your blog or website. Later leads to increased conversions.
Hence these factors are difficult to quantify. Yet play an essential role in driving your business revenue.
Key Takeaways
Content Marketing drives our world & has become an essential part of your daily life. From watching videos or subscribing to insightful newsletters. Even listening to podcasts on the go. Figuring out content & formats that meet your brand objectives. Boosting ROI can be a constant struggle. You’ll need to find a balance & focus on what works for you in the long haul.
- Look at subtle ways to impact user experience & not dilute user intent. Otherwise, it can wreck your brand value in the process.
- The key is to align your goals with every metric you measure. So the focus remains on rewarding your audience with the right course of action.
- Test & experiment with content formats, designs, types, or topics. Take a holistic approach to every aspect on the whole.
This guide reveals key content marketing success ingredients -content strategy, valuable content & consistency. Thus content marketing ROI is the quantified output of these prerequisites.
Comment below what measures you’d take to boost content marketing ROI for your business.
