Content marketing is an ever-evolving field that keeps moving forward. What works now may not work next year or even the following month. That is what makes it interesting!
With all the changes occurring in content marketing, there are also new metrics being coined to measure its success. Different companies develop their own metrics for how successful your content is, but some stick around longer than others.
The Quintia Group strives to learn as much about content marketing strategies and metrics as possible so that you don’t have to. In this article, we will be talking about one particular set of metrics — ones that can help you with your content strategy.
The way we market is changing rapidly, and it can be difficult to keep up with all of the new strategies and approaches. With the amount of content being published online every day, using key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate your campaigns is more important than ever!
Marketing professionals use numbers in several different ways to determine the success of their campaigns. They may track how many people visited an individual website page or whether or not they bought a product or service. These numbers provide them with information about what worked and what did not for their business.
It is very common to see marketers add new components to their campaign at some points but then later find that they have lost momentum because they do not know if their strategy was successful until weeks or even months down the line.
A good way to avoid this problem is to use metrics! Having access to concrete numbers makes it possible to compare one period to another, which helps you identify trends and patterns. This, in turn, allows you to make informed decisions about how to improve your business processes and products.
The most common way to measure the effectiveness of your content is by looking at how many times it was shared, how many comments there were under or above it, and how much discussion it ignited online.
These are all good indicators of whether or not your audience liked what you gave them and if they wanted to share it or talk about it.
But they’re only limited to the internet. You can also track engagement with media such as podcasts or TV programs that feature your product or service.
Tracking these metrics across various channels gives you an even better picture of how well your content is performing.
Developing a solid content marketing strategy that wins brands new followers or re-engages existing ones is like baking with all-purpose flour – you need to use it to know how to do it!
That said, there are several ways to measure the effectiveness of your content strategies so that you can continually assess whether what you’re doing is working. You can evaluate both its in-theory effects as well as actual impacts.
For example, let’s say your product has received lots of buzz but no sales. What might be going wrong? Is the media coverage too promotional? Are people just not interested in the product?
Content marketers often use keywords and tools to determine how popular their products or blogs are. They may also look into bounce rates (or how long users stay on a page before leaving) or average time on site to get insights about engagement.
It’s important to remember though, that traffic doesn’t always mean business. A lot of sites have heavy amounts of referral traffic from sources such as social media or direct ads.
Likewise, if someone spends an excessive amount of time on a given page or site, it could be because they were very engaged with the content there. Or maybe they just really wanted to read more material from the publisher at that moment.
By tracking user behavior and conversion data, you can sometimes find answers to these questions and more.
Track your clicks!
Tracking how many times you clicked on a link to leave the site or complete an action can help determine if there are any trends in activity. If there is, you can modify the content, offers, or advertisements to better resonate with your audience.
Conversion tracking allows you to measure the effectiveness of changes made to content and advertising. For example, you could find that new ads for a product feature more persuasive language than before, thus boosting conversions.
You can also compare different types of advertisements to see which ones work best. It may be found that creating your own advertisement boosts engagement slightly more than using someone else’s.
As mentioned earlier, one way to determine if your marketing efforts are working is by looking at the metrics related to that campaign.
If you’re not receiving as many views or likes for your posts as you would like then it is time to look into what may be factoring in negatively and preventing people from engaging with your content.
As mentioned earlier, finding your marketing passion and developing it into an expert skill set is the first step to creating an effective content strategy. The next important part of establishing solid strategies comes down to using metrics to determine what works and what does not.
Content creators spend A LOT OF TIME doing research and testing different styles and approaches. It can be difficult trying to figure out which ones work and why before investing more time in them!
That’s where numbers come in handy. By studying how successful other marketers have done things and tracking their results using quantitative (numbers) tools, you will know exactly what changes work for your niche and industry.
There are many ways to use metrics in order to develop your content strategy but one of our favorites is by looking at consumer behavior studies. These focus mostly on statistics about how people behave while shopping or using products and services.
By analyzing these surveys, polls, and experiments, we are able to learn some valuable information that helps us create better content or improve the content that already exists.
In this article, we'll go over five such studies that can help you hone in on the best content strategies for your business.
As we mentioned before, creating a clear, powerful brand image is the first step in developing your marketing strategy. This should be done with the help of metrics – how well you are doing for your company, what people want from you, and to clearly describe who you are as an organization.
After that, you must have a clear understanding of your market, the competition, and what makes your product or service different than others. Only then can you begin defining your brand!
When designing your brand, think about things like: What do I stand for? Who will associate me with this message? How can I emphasize my strengths while downplaying weaknesses? If I were talking about myself, would these ideas sound good?
Take some time to research successful brands and make notes to use as references. The easiest way to test your own branding is by looking at it yourself — see what sounds best to you, what emotions you feel, and whether those emotions match up with the intended audience.
As we mentioned earlier, your branding is about creating an emotional connection with your audience. This means more than just having fun logos and slogans!
Your branding should tell people who you are and what you stand for beyond your marketing materials and advertisements. It includes things like your company logo, style, tone, and brand colors.
When creating our content strategy, one of the first steps we took was to determine our branding goals. We wanted to make sure we were very clear on what we intended to convey to our readers.
We also needed to know if our messages were consistent across all channels – from social media sites to blogs to YouTube videos to printed material. And we wanted to be sure that they matched up with our overall mission as a business!
A good way to evaluate this is by using some metrics. These metrics can be determined and changed at any time, which makes them helpful in determining whether or not your messaging is working. Some examples of these metrics include: page views, comments, shares, and likes.
These metrics will show you how well your messages are resonating with your audience and will give you information about how successful your strategies have been. For example, when your posts get many comments it shows that your message struck a chord with your followers/visitors.
However, if there are few comments then may mean some of your messages didn’t connect with your audience or that people were trying to figure out the correct answers.