Tons of companies enter the content marketing world and spend thousands of dollars on it, but don’t know if it’s actually paying off. Luckily, there are ways to track your content marketing ROI and know if your strategies are working in your favor.
Not many companies actually track their ROI. 35% of B2B marketers say they do, while the rest remain unsure or don’t take action.
For many, the biggest difficulty in tracking ROI is getting an accurate measure. A large amount of customers consume around 3-5 pieces of content before deciding to make a purchase, so tracking the ROI for an individual piece of content can get tricky.
So, how do you find out which pieces of your content are driving leads and helping you succeed?
1. Know your analytics before tracking content marketing ROI
Before tracking your content marketing ROI, you’ll want to get a good grasp on your analytics. Google Analytics is a great platform for measuring how well your social channels and website are doing. It’s also great for figuring out the sources of your leads and engagement. When you know how you’re performing through and through, you’ll have a better grasp on your content marketing ROI.
2. Set up ROI goals
A good content marketing ROI is going to look different to each company. Generally, a healthy ROI happens when you earn more than what you spend on a campaign. For some, a more favorable ROI is going to be way above and beyond what was spent. For others, the numbers will be more modest. Set a realistic goal on what you want your return on investment to look like.
Your goals should reflect what kind of space you are marketing in. For example, you can focus on the sales and conversion numbers if you’re selling a specific product. Or, if you bring in clients, you can focus on the number of clients, how long they worked with your company, and how much money they are spending with you. Your measurement of content marketing ROI is going to look different depending on what you do.
3. Learn the money metrics
Content marketing ROI is not based on basic social media metrics, such as likes, clicks, or reach. ROI is calculated using metrics that go hand-in-hand with money. Those metrics can be leads, bounce rates, traffic, page views, signups, sales, and more. The measurements can be chosen based on any specific goal you have for a piece of content.
For example, if your content marketing goal is to generate sales, you can find out what piece of content is driving the sales. Using online tools like Ahrefs, you can find out what keywords are leading customers to find and buy from you. If you want to get fancy, you can use UTM codes to track inbound traffic coming from specific pages holding your content.
Get a grasp on what converts a first-time visitor into a loyal subscriber, and what turns that subscriber into a purchaser.
4. Get some assistance
It’s a great idea to use an online tool to track your content marketing ROI. You can organize each of your campaigns in HubSpot’s campaigns tool to track the sources of your leads and conversions. Tools like Improvely help you easily view how each user engaged with your pages. When you look at this, you can see what content they viewed if they made a purchase. From there, you can find the numbers you want to crunch.
5. Do it the old-fashioned way
You don’t always need a fancy analytics tool to collect your data. Sometimes, the best way of finding out what content drew people to become your customers is by simply asking. Customer feedback is a valuable source of knowledge, as well as a great way to encourage lead generation. Checking out your comments and encouraging more feedback is a great way to get a general understanding of your most valuable pieces of content.
6. Crunch the numbers right
As mentioned before, a good ROI is a positive number in the equation of money earned minus money spent. For the metrics you use, you can find a dollar amount that is directly tied to it, so that you can do this equation easily. For example, if you’re calculating using leads as a metric, you can find out how much money you earned from each lead and use that sum. Whatever you’re calculating, it should be tied to a monetary number so that you can do your ROI math.
Once you have tracked your content marketing ROI, you’ll know whether or not you’re satisfied with it. If you’re not, there are plenty of ways to make your numbers grow. Nailing SEO, tailoring content to customers in different stages of the sales funnel, and running ads to drive traffic are a few of them. Always remember that content marketing is a slow and steady growth, and your ROI will reflect that as you track, update, and persevere. 🐢
