If your content marketing is working, then it will be able to support your business goals. Since you will need to put money into this kind of marketing, you would like to know how effective it is mainly regarding returns on investment. Unlike most traditional mediums that businesses depend on to support business goals, Content marketing is quite easy to track and quantify.
This article will introduce you to the different ways you can measure how effective it is and decide if you should continue investing in it.
Collect Customer Data:
Your customers will be the target of your content, but before you start anything, you will need to get to know them. Collect as much information about the customers as you can. Many marketing experts will advise that you create a persona using the data you collect about the customer.
Find out what they like, why they like it, which influences their decisions most, what they wish for but cannot get, how they choose to communicate most, etc. This information helps to form a basis for what content you will be sending out and create ways to measure the impact the content you send out to them has.
Set Goals to Achieve:
This one should be obvious; goals will help you have measurable achievements. The goals need to be actionable. You should be able to illustrate the impact a campaign has had on the overall business objectives. Speaking of targets, do not mistake intentions for goals.
Objectives are more of a statement describing what you hope to achieve. It would help if you usually had actionable goals to achieve your objectives.
Goals can include awareness goals, marketing goals, sales goals, and after-sales goals. For example, you can set out to increase social media followers, increase the number of leads, Quicken the selling process, and increasing the number of repeat business. It is best to have the goals quantified. For example, state the number of social media followers you want within a month.
Keep Tabs on Conversions:
One of the most significant roles you will want your content to achieve is to create conversions. If the translations are steadily increasing, then your content is successful. Now saying it is expanding is not enough; there has to be quantifiable conversion. If you have set goals, you will see how close to the purpose you have come, gone beyond, or failed to reach.
It is advisable to have periodic records of conversion, such as the number of conversions per week, day, and month. Keep all that tabulated because you will be able to trace trends.
Automate Tracking and Recording of Data:
The number of statistics that need to be collected and tracked can be overwhelming; however, it is not an excuse to get out of tracking and recording data. That is why there is a lot of software that can be used to keep track of data and record it. Google Analytics is one such software. Automation of the system is effective and ensures nothing is left out.
Alternatively, you could come up with a well planned manual system to record and track data. It may not be as effective as automated systems, but it still ensures tracking and recording. This should only be an option if it is impossible to have automated monitoring.
Constantly Study the Data:
Although you can automate data collection, unfortunately, reading the data is something you will have to do manually. Plan how often you will analyze the data collected. Data can keep you updated on the performance of the content.
For example, you can find out how many conversions are being made from Facebook content compared to video content on YouTube. The data also shows you how close or far off from the goals you are.
Learn From the top Players:
There is a lot you can learn from the top players in the industry. First of all, you can learn how they measure their content. If their ways of measuring effectiveness provide them with useful information, you can also adopt those techniques.
The top players can also act as a benchmark for your content marketing effectiveness. Regularly measure your effectiveness with theirs. They could help you define what a successful campaign is. You can also plan how you can do better than them.
Define the Actions You Expect Visitors to Take:
Your content is not intended merely to entertain or teach your audience. If it is, then you are not doing content marketing. There should be specific actions you would like to invoke in the prospects and customers. Define these actions in line with business marketing goals.
Your call to action must be able to get the targets to interact with the business at different sales funnel levels. Get them to sign up for an email newsletter, Inquire about your service, make an order for a product, make a second and third purchase, or attend a webinar.
Develop a goal and come up with test calls to action to see which may be more productive, sometimes offering FREE samples will go a long way in attracting work. It is advisable to be flexible with your goals, be ready to change is you realize they may not be as measurable as you thought initially.
Final Thoughts:
Remember, you are not just collecting and storing data, you need to analyze this data and figure out how well you are doing or if you are falling off the mark. Find software that will help in analysis.
By measuring the impact of your content, you learn more about what entices your targets, and you can amplify that to create more interest in your business, which should be able to translate into more profits.
In the end, you will be able to show top management that content marketing is indeed a powerful tool to grow the business.