When it comes to content marketing, success isn’t so easily quantifiable. When it’s not clear how to measure content marketing ROI, how then do you evaluate your content’s performance? The key is tracking multiple metrics over time. Focus on trends rather than finite statistics. If you’re stuck on how to measure your content’s performance, begin by tracking these 9 key performance indicators. These metrics will signal your content marketing strengths and weaknesses.
9 Content Marketing KPIs You Should Track
1. Unique Visits. Unique visits are an excellent indicator of the size of your audience, according to Content Marketing Institute. Compare UVs of different type of contents to see which have the highest readership. Investigate why some pieces capture more traffic. Is is it a matter of quality? Or do you simply need to make some pages more SEO friendly? Are your overall unique visits low? Do some work on your social strategy and optimize your site for search so your page gets more eyeballs.
2. Bounce Rate. A page’s bounce rate measures the amount of people who visit the page and leave without exploring more pages on your website. Bounce rate is an effective indicator of how well your content engages the consumer. To keep bounce rates low, create unique content that will capture visitors’ attention and add compelling calls-to-action that will lead them deeper into your site.
3. Location. Where is your content being read? Knowing where in the world your audience is located is extremely helpful in evaluating your content marketing strategy, says the Content Marketing Institute. If you aren’t reaching your desired locales, cater your content to your target audience and tweak your social strategy to reach that part of the world.
4. Social Media Signals. Shares, mentions, and comments indicate how well your content resonates with your target audience. These softer performance metrics should guide your content strategy rather than page rank or conversion rate. If you create content with the sole goal of conversion, you are setting yourself up for failure. Instead, create content that educates, entertains, inspires, and delivers legitimate value to your consumers. If people are retweeting your content, sharing it on Facebook, posting it to your LinkedIn page, that means you have brand trust. That trust will turn into loyalty measurable by Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Conversion and quantifiable ROI will follow. Trust me.
5. Inbound Links. Inbound links indicate your content’s performance in a few ways. If people link to your content, they are flagging it as valuable and advising others to check it out. Keep track of link sources. If a major, reputable organization links to your site, that is a huge win. Prepare for spikes in traffic, page rank, and conversions. Links will also tell you which content pieces are more valuable than others. If truly quality content isn’t getting any link love, maybe it needs to be optimized or shared more to reach a larger audience.
6. Landing Page Visits. Landing page visits signal how well your content drives traffic, says Hubspot. A prime goal for many brands is motivating consumers to visit a landing page to fill out a form or some other type of conversion feature. If landing page visits are low, maybe you need to add more calls-to-action or make them more compelling.
7. Quality of Lead. Conversion is great and all, but unless you are generating the right leads all your hard content marketing work will be for nothing, explains Mashable. Analyze who is filling out that form to receive your newsletter, access your content, or whatever your conversion goal. Are they a lead that will likely become a paying customer? If you attracting the wrong type of consumer, reassess your content strategy.
8. Search Rankings. Search rankings are an effective indicator of your content’s overall performance. An increase in rank demonstrates your content is high quality, optimized for the right keywords, and is capturing more search traffic. It can take months, however, to see a change in rank and it’s certainly not the most important indicator of content success.
9. Conversions. A high number of conversions is the coveted goal of all content marketers. This means your content was so engaging it compelled consumers to take the next step and complete an action. This can range from subscribing to a newsletter or other actions that require users to fill out a form (thus, generating a lead) to the endgame of purchasing a service. This is the best indicator of the power of your content and overall success of your content marketing strategy. But conversion doesn’t happen overnight, and there are many other measurements that indicate your content is performing well and conversion is on the horizon.
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