Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
Measuring your content marketing ROI is essential. It helps you understand what works and what doesn’t and allows you to adjust your strategy. But, the ROI of content marketing isn’t always about making an immediate sale. It’s also about building a relationship with your audience. It’s about developing brand awareness and establishing your brand as an industry thought leader.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some key performance indicators (KPIs) you should be monitoring to measure the ROI of your content marketing efforts in more than sales.
What’s the Financial ROI of Content Marketing?
Just because sales isn’t the only way to track ROI doesn’t mean you aren’t interested in the cash value, right? Right.
Unlike other forms of marketing, content marketing often involves a long-term investment that’s difficult to tie to specific revenue. Because of this, calculating the financial return on investment (ROI) of content marketing can be a bit tricky. Yet, with the right approach, it’s possible to measure your content’s financial impact.
To start, you need to understand the costs associated with creating and distributing content. This includes the cost of content creation, distribution, and promotion.
- Content creation costs: Include content team salaries, software subscriptions, equipment, and freelancers
- Distribution/promotion costs: Include expenses related to social media advertising, email marketing, or paid content syndication.
Once you have a clear understanding of your costs, you can start to measure the revenue generated as a result of your content marketing efforts. To calculate the financial ROI, compare the revenue generated to the costs incurred:
ROI = (Revenue – Cost) / Cost
For example, if your content marketing efforts generated $100,000 in revenue and cost $50,000 to produce and distribute, your ROI would be:
ROI = ($100,000 – $50,000) / $50,000 = 1.0 or 100%
This means that for every dollar you invested in content marketing, you generated $1.00 in revenue.
This is a high-level view of your content marketing ROI. It’s important to remember that many factors can influence these results. For example, your ROI may be influenced by changes in your industry, shifts in consumer behavior, or fluctuations in the economy.
To get a more accurate picture of your content marketing ROI, do the following:
- track and analyze your results over time
- make data-driven decisions about your content strategy
- optimize your efforts based on the insights you gain
The Rest of Content Marketing ROI
As mentioned earlier, there are other ways to look at ROI, such as building awareness and encouraging engagement. Here are a few areas that you can look at to see how well your content marketing is doing.
Traffic
One of the most basic KPIs to track is website traffic. It’s essential to keep an eye on the number of people visiting your website, how they get there, and what they do when they arrive. This information can help you determine whether your content marketing efforts are driving traffic to your site.
To increase your website traffic, consider creating high-quality, engaging content that your target audience will find valuable. Use keyword research to identify topics that your audience is searching for and optimize your content.
Engagement
Engagement is another important KPI to track. It measures how much your audience is interacting with your content. You can measure engagement in a variety of ways, including social media likes, comments, and shares, as well as blog post comments and email click-through rates.
Engagement is an excellent indicator of whether your content is resonating with your audience. If you find your engagement levels are low, adjust your content strategy to create more compelling, shareable content.
There is no single formula to measure content engagement. The way it’s measured depends on the type of content and the sharing platform.
Here are a few examples of how engagement can be measured for different types of content:
Social media
Engagement on social media can be measured by counting the number of likes, comments, shares, and saves on a post. Divide the total number of engagements by the number of followers or impressions the post received.
(Engagement / Followers or Impressions) x 100 = Social Engagement Rate %
Blog posts
Engagement on blog posts can be measured by tracking the number of comments, social shares, and backlinks. Divide the total number of engagements by the number of pageviews the post received.
(Engagement / Pageviews) x 100 = Blog Engagement Rate %
Engagement in email campaigns can be measured by tracking the open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. Divide the total number of clicks or conversions by the number of emails sent.
(Conversions / Emails Sent) x 100 = Email Engagement Rate %
In general, engagement can be measured by tracking any action that a user takes in response to your content, such as likes, comments, shares, clicks, downloads, sign-ups, and purchases. By measuring engagement, you can gain insights into how your audience is interacting with your content and identify opportunities to improve it.
Lead Generation
The goal of content marketing, of course, is to generate leads and sales. Lead generation is an essential KPI to track to determine whether your content marketing efforts are bringing ROI.
To measure lead generation, track the number of leads generated from your website, such as form fills, newsletter sign-ups, and gated content downloads. This will help you understand if your content is attracting high-quality leads and generating revenue for your business.
Sales
Sales are the ultimate KPI for measuring the ROI of your content marketing efforts. You want your content to drive sales and revenue for your business.
To measure sales, track the number of conversions your content is driving. This could include product purchases, service sign-ups, or other conversion goals that align with your business objectives. By tracking sales, you can determine whether your content marketing is contributing to your bottom line.
Best Practices for Measuring Content Marketing ROI
Measuring the ROI of content marketing can be a complex task, but following some best practices can make it easier and more effective. Here are some key tips to keep in mind:
Set SMART Goals:
Before you start measuring your content marketing ROI, you need to establish clear and measurable goals. These goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Examples of SMART goals for content marketing might include increasing website traffic, generating more leads, or improving engagement on social media.
Track KPIs Regularly and Consistently:
Once you’ve established your goals, you need to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure progress toward those goals. These might include metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, or social media engagement. It’s important to track these KPIs regularly and consistently over time to get an accurate picture of how your content marketing is performing.
Use Tools and Software:
There are a variety of tools and software available to help you track and analyze your content marketing data. For example, Google Analytics can help you track website traffic and engagement, while social media management tools like Hootsuite can help you track engagement on social media platforms. These tools can help simplify data collection and analysis, making it easier to measure and optimize your content marketing ROI.
Analyze Data in Context:
While tracking KPIs is important, it’s also essential to analyze data in context. This means looking at data over time and comparing it to industry benchmarks or your own historical data. You also take into account other factors that might be influencing your results.
Increasing your ROI with Optimized Content
Once you’ve set your SMART goals, identified your KPIs, and established your content creation and distribution process, the next step is to optimize your content for better ROI. Here are some tips to help you get started:
Test different formats and channels
Not all content formats and channels will work for your brand or audience. Experiment with different types of content, such as videos, infographics, and whitepapers, to see what resonates with your audience. Similarly, try distributing your content on different channels, such as social media, email, and paid advertising, to determine which ones generate the most engagement and conversions.
Leverage data insights to inform content creation
Analyze your data regularly to identify content that is resonating with your audience and driving the most conversions. Use this information to inform your future content creation efforts and optimize your content for better performance.
Align content with the customer journey
To maximize the ROI of your content, it’s important to create content that aligns with each stage of the customer journey. Consider the questions, pain points, and goals that your target audience has at each stage of the journey and create content that addresses these needs.
Repurpose content
Don’t let your content go to waste. Repurpose high-performing content into new formats and channels to reach new audiences and drive more conversions.
By following these tips and continuously optimizing your content, you can improve the ROI of your content marketing efforts and drive more business growth.
Content Marketing Case Studies
The best way to understand how to measure content marketing ROI is to look at real-life examples of companies that have done it successfully. Let’s take a look at a few case studies to see how companies have used KPIs to measure their content marketing efforts.
- Dell Perspectives grew its audience by 200% with a dedicated content marketing campaign that centered around high-impact, human stories.
KPI: Audience growth
- Cardinal Health tripled its traffic with a new content distribution strategy.
KPI: Traffic growth
- BuzzStream generated almost 66,000 shares and saw record-breaking new sign-ups with a content marketing campaign focused on positioning the company as a niche thought leader.
KPI: New sign-ups, social shares
- Coca-Cola went viral with its “Share a Coke” campaign, selling over 250 million drinks in a single summer.
KPI: Sales
- HubSpot grew $920M in valuation over 10 years thanks to its content strategy focused on building trust through information.
KPI: Valuation growth
By looking at these case studies, we can see that content marketing ROI is possible. It requires the use of KPIs that are specific to your business and industry. Once you have identified the right KPIs, you can begin to measure the success of your content marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions about how to optimize your strategy.
Wrapping It Up
Measuring the ROI of your content marketing efforts is essential if you want to maximize your marketing budget and ensure that your efforts are paying off. By tracking key performance indicators and following the tips outlined in this article, you’ll be able to measure the success of your content marketing campaigns and make data-driven decisions about how to improve them.
Remember, content marketing is a long-term strategy, and it may take some time before you start seeing significant results. Be patient, stay consistent, and keep measuring your progress. With the right approach, you can turn your content marketing efforts into a powerful tool for driving growth and success for your business.
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