Content Marketing Institute has some seriously sad news when it comes to content marketing metrics:
Our content marketing research indicates, 33 percent of B2B marketers and 41 percent of B2C marketers cited the inability to measure as a significant challenge.
There are so many content marketing metrics being touted as the “absolute most important” that it’s hard to know which ones truly matter.
So let’s break it down into manageable chunks. (That’s what I do when dealing with numbers!)
Here are the metrics you should consider measuring with your content marketing efforts.
Back in 2012, Jay Baer came up with the four metrics that must be measured, but we’re going to include two more that Curata CEO Pawan Deshpande later added to the mix:
Here’s a flow chart of how Pawan sees all of these pieces working together. (Don’t mind the operations metrics –that’s another post for another day!)
Now let’s put each one of these practical measurements into practical tactics so you know exactly where to go to collect!
How is consumption defined with content marketing metrics?
Website
With your website, use Google Analytics to check the following:
Email Marketing
If you’re using emails to reach peeps, that’s marketing with content! Track these consumption metrics:
Social Media
With social media, it doesn’t matter if you’ve grabbed a “like” or a retweet. Users need to CLICK to gain a point for consumption. So it probably makes sense that you should track:
We perform click-through audits for our clients that look something like this:
With these type of reports, we can track consumption and see which content is getting the highest amount of clicks — which can then tell us what to promote more of, what to content to put ads behind, or what types of content we may want to reproduce in the future.
Tools to use:
Here’s where to look for shares when tracking content marketing metrics:
Website
Email Marketing
Social Media
Tools to use:
Website
Email Marketing
Social Media
Tools to use:
Note: ConvertKit is also great for showing us form conversion rates … see below for a look at the form we created for our blog last month.
Sales is a bit harder to track, but not at all impossible! Look at these content marketing metrics:
Website
Email Marketing
Social Media
Tools to use:
All of the above-mentioned tools plus a CRM if you have one.
Engagement can be pulled from many of the other areas we’re measuring with a few added metrics to help us understand trends and patterns:
Website
Email Marketing
Social Media
Tools to use:
Retention is also a great way to uncover patterns and help you see the bigger picture with your content marketing metrics. Look at:
Website
Email Marketing
Social Media
Tools to use:
All of the above-mentioned tools.
We’ve mentioned both hard and soft content marketing metrics for you to measure.
Even so, you may find it difficult to find the exact metric you need to meet a business goal or KPI (key performance indicator). You may need to group several of these metrics together to achieve your desired result.
You will have to know what your goals are, and then choose the complimentary metrics accordingly.
There is no magic metric, formula or way to know how many of the above metrics are “the most important to measure” because it all depends on what goals you need your content marketing to successfully navigate.
At least starting here will ensure you’re not one of the high number of marketers who find content marketing metrics challenging!