This article has been written by Cressida Arora pursuing a Startup Generalist & Virtual Assistant Training Program from Skill Arbitrage.

This article has been edited and published by Shashwat Kaushik.

Introduction 

Content marketing is one of the most important digital marketing tools. It needs a well thought and long-term strategy to yield a positive ROI. Defining simple and relevant performance indicators is important to measure the success of content marketing campaigns. Is it possible to measure something creative, like content creation? It takes time to notice a positive ROI on the investment; however, it is crucial to measure the results. By measuring the results early on, you can gauge whether the content resonates with the brand voice.

 Let us see what the key performance indicators are and how they can be measured. 

What are the content metrics and KPIs

Content metrics are the tools and methods used to analyse the performance of content marketing strategies. They provide insights into how well your content is engaging and influencing your audience. By tracking and measuring key metrics, you can identify what’s working and what’s not and make data-driven decisions to improve your content strategy. Some common content metrics include:

• Reach: The number of people who have seen your content.
• Impressions: The number of times your content has been displayed.
• Engagement: The number of people who have interacted with your content, such as by clicking, liking, sharing, or commenting.
• Conversion: The number of people who have taken a desired action, such as subscribing to your email list, downloading a whitepaper, or making a purchase.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the lifeblood of any successful content marketing strategy. By setting clear and measurable KPIs, you can track your progress, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimise your results. Some common content marketing KPIs include:

1. Website traffic:

• Total number of unique visitors to your website.
• Average number of page views per visitor.
• Bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page).
• Time on site (the average amount of time visitors spend on your website)

2. Lead generation:

• Number of new leads generated from your content.
• Conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as downloading a whitepaper or signing up for a newsletter).
• Lead quality (the relevance and engagement level of your leads).

3. Customer acquisition:

• Number of new customers acquired as a result of your content.
• Customer lifetime value (the total revenue generated by a customer over their lifetime).
• Customer churn rate (the percentage of customers who stop doing business with you).

4. Brand awareness:

• Reach (the number of people who have seen your content).
• Engagement (the number of people who have interacted with your content).
• Sentiment (the overall tone of the conversation surrounding your brand).

5. Social media engagement:

• Number of likes, shares, and comments on your social media posts.
• Follower growth rate.
• Reach of your social media posts.

6. Content consumption:

• Number of downloads of your content.
• Average time spent reading or viewing your content.
• Content engagement rate (the percentage of people who engage with your content).

7. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO):

• Organic traffic to your website from search engines.
• Keyword rankings.
• Domain authority.

By tracking these KPIs, you can gain valuable insights into the performance of your content marketing campaigns. This information can then be used to make strategic decisions about your content strategy, such as:

• Identifying the most effective types of content for your audience.
• Optimising your content for search engines.
• Promoting your content through the most effective channels.
• Measuring the ROI of your content marketing efforts.

By setting clear and measurable KPIs, you can ensure that your content marketing strategy is on track to achieve your business goals.

Why are they relevant?

It is important to get insight from the data for content marketing performance. This will, in turn, help to adjust and improve the efforts to yield the best results and ROI. The biggest benefit of having measurable content KPIs is the insight that it gives to engaging with the target audience. It also helps to understand the right distribution channels. Measurable content KPIs help make smarter and more intelligent decisions around content marketing strategy. 

Eventually, this will help to optimise spend, create a brand voice, generate more leads and increase sales.

Nowadays, companies are spending a lot of money on creating and distributing content as part of their marketing budget. As per the study conducted by Demand Metric, content marketing costs 62% less than other forms of marketing campaigns and generates three times more leads. Henry Canitz talks about it in his article, ‘ The value of content marketing’

Few things to consider before choosing the content KPI

In order to identify the content marketing KPI that a business would like to measure, It is paramount to understand the objective of the marketing campaign. Defining the KPI is related to the business goals, and once the goal is defined, it is easy to match it with the relevant KPIs.

Defining the correct KPIs- In a goal-setting framework, setting up objectives and measuring key results are important. It is important to define KPIs that are measurable and align with the business goals. KPI help us gauge the progress and performance of a business

Defining realistic KPIs- KPIs should be realistic after measuring the current performance and not what we expect.

Defining measurable and actionable KPIs- We should be able to measure the KPIs we define and translate them into actionable steps.

The SMART goal-setting method of any business establishes that the goals we set are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-Based

These 5 elements make our goal smart, and they help us track progress effectively. If we identify roadblocks on time, SMART goals help us achieve our targets by taking clear, time-bound actions.

KPIs that define the success of content 

In content marketing, online content is shared with customers to spread awareness. Every business wants to incorporate a content marketing strategy to ensure a return on investment. By creating various forms of content, such as blogs, social media posts, and videos, you create brand awareness and position your business as an expert in the given field.

As we list down the content marketing metrics, it should be aligned with your business goals. There are hundreds of metrics that may gauge the effectiveness of content; however, they can be confusing at times. A handful of parameters can prove to be effective, and measuring them accurately will indicate the effectiveness of content in the marketing dashboard. Every content marketing strategy wants to boost SEO rankings. KPI need to be defined to assess the effectiveness of content for a certain time period. It is also important to monitor performance from time to time and redefine them wherever necessary.

Different types of KPIs assess different aspects of the performance of content. It is important to incorporate different KPIs to gauge the performance of content. This will help us to make an informed decision.

TOP content KPIs to measure

1. Traffic sources- How did people find out about my content? How many visitors find your content through the search engine result page? Organic traffic is an important KPI to track and measure. This KPI will help to understand the content`s potential to engage with potential customers, deal with market competition, and generate new leads. In order to find organic traffic sources for a website, the Google Analytics tool can be helpful.
2. Impressions- Does Google consider your business to be an answer to a user`s problem? This KPI helps understand how many impressions your content has received. The more impressions, the better reach the content has.
3. Click-Through rate (CTR)-  While views of content are important, without measuring the CTR, it is difficult to understand the effectiveness of content. Many people may be viewing the content; however, what actions are they taking? How many viewers have clicked on the hyperlink posted on social media or visited the website? Have they clicked on the link for the email campaign? This is an important metric to measure audience engagement. CTA can help businesses to engage with prospective customers and track how many customers are visiting their shops after reading the blog post.
4. Backlinks- Backlinks are hyperlinks that take viewers from one page to another. They help to drive traffic and improve the SEO ranking of the linked site. Backlinks are words that link to other pages or beyond, and this way, it helps to build domain authority of a website. Search engines see it as a solution when more content is shared. 

When a backlinking strategy is successful, it helps to show a site higher in the search results. This can help lead generation as well, because there are higher chances of attracting new visitors. Google considers it to be a trustworthy source within its algorithm.

5. Social shares- It is the number of times the content is shared on social media platforms. If content is shared more on social media, it helps to understand the kind of content that creates audience engagement. This KPI can help to understand the effectiveness of content and provide useful insights into creating content that resonates with the audience.
6. Bounce rate- Bounce rate is the number of people leaving a website immediately after landing on it. When viewers visit a website, they usually take time to read and navigate through it before buying. A high bounce rate indicates that they are disappointed with the content on the website. It can be due to the poor performance of the website, no call to action, navigation not being user-friendly etc. This KPI helps to measure customer engagement and helps to create value by creating engaging content.
7. Average time on page- This is an important KPI to measure in website analytics. This metric measures the average time a user spends on a page before moving on to another one. If users spend more time on a page, it indicates that they find the content engaging. This metric is different from session duration, which measures the total time spent on a website.
8. Keyword SERP positions- This refers to the ranking of a website on a search engine page. This helps businesses understand the visibility of their website to their target audience. A high SERP position indicates more engagement, leads and conversions. Optimising keywords, on page content can help improve the SERP position and generate organic traffic.

KPIs that measure leads and conversion

Lead generation and conversion rate measure the performance of a content. They measure the effectiveness of the content as well as the marketing strategy. They have a direct impact on sales and financial figures.

1. Lead generated- A lead is someone who shows interest in any product or service. They provide their contact details to get something which they think offers value. Leads may come from various sources, such as referrals, social media platforms, online queries, etc.
2. Conversion rate- Conversion rate is when an actual sale is made. How many people take action in the end? It can be measured differently, but it remains a critical KPI for businesses to measure. You may need to define the desired action (which could be making a purchase or filling a form with details, etc.)
3. Revenue- One important metric for measuring the effectiveness of content marketing is revenue. Revenue also measures how fruitful is the content strategy adopted by a business. ROI for a business is not just sales figures but when a content marketing strategy is able to create a brand voice and sustain brand loyalty.

If by investing $20,000 in the marketing budget, you earn $100,000, the ROI will be 400%.

4. Churn Rate – It is the number of users that have stopped using the product or services for various reasons, like-

• Dissatisfied with the product
• Got a better value somewhere else 
• They no longer need the product or services 

        A high churn rate may be an alarming sign for a business. This KPI should be monitored and tracked from time to time to measure brand loyalty and high revenue.

Content marketing dashboard

Businesses can create a content marketing dashboard that includes key performance indicators (KPIs) for daily monitoring. This dashboard provides marketing strategists with a clear overview of their defined objectives and goals. The specific KPIs will vary depending on the goals that each business has set for a particular time period. For example, if the goal is to increase awareness for a particular product, KPIs such as website traffic, social media engagement, and brand mentions may be relevant. On the other hand, if the goal is to increase sales, KPIs such as conversion rates, average order value, and customer lifetime value may be more appropriate.

It is important to note that not all KPIs are equally important. Some KPIs may be more closely tied to the overall objectives of the business, while others may be more relevant to specific marketing campaigns or channels. For example, if the business’s primary objective is to generate revenue, it may not be necessary to monitor backlinks frequently. However, if the business is engaged in a link-building campaign, then backlinks may become a more important KPI to track.

By carefully selecting and monitoring the right KPIs, marketing strategists can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts. This information can then be used to make informed decisions about how to improve the content marketing strategy and achieve the desired results.

Here are some additional tips for creating an effective content marketing dashboard:

• Use a variety of KPIs to get a holistic view of your content marketing performance.
• Set realistic goals for each KPI.
• Track your KPIs over time to see how your content marketing efforts are progressing.
• Use data visualisation tools to make your KPIs easier to understand.
• Share your dashboard with other stakeholders in the business to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

By following these tips, you can create a content marketing dashboard that will help you measure your progress and achieve your goals.

To sum up, the importance of good content can never be undermined. If the content we create is not engaging and does not create value, all the efforts of the content marketing strategy (which includes defining, measuring and monitoring KPIs) will go in vain.

Conclusion

Evaluating the success of the content marketing strategy is a time-consuming task that need effort and planning. There is no definite way to track its success; however, it depends on the goal, setting up relevant KPIs and the ways to measure them.

To conclude, the importance of defining the correct KPI in this scenario can’t be ignored. They are not merely measurements but indicators of a successful strategy. With their help, we can fine-tune our strategy not only to succeed but also to lead the way in this competitive field. In the realm of content marketing, KPIs are the ultimate guiding light for your success.

References

• KPIs VS OKRs: What’s The Difference? | Slingshot App
• 7 Content Marketing Metrics to Consider for Continued Success (hubspot.com)
• 10 Must-Track Content Marketing KPIs & Metrics in 2024 (Updated) | Dashthis
• https://surferseo.com/blog/content-marketing-kpi/
• https://digifloat.io/blog/content-marketing-kpis/
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-marketing-kpis/what-are-content-kpis-why-they-matter/
• https://www.portent.com/blog/content/guide-choosing-content-kpis.htm