We need to talk about how effective content marketing can be in terms of ROI (Return On Investment).
It’s common for marketing programs to be initiated without a solid understanding of how to measure their success. The ROI of content marketing is important, but if you don’t know how to identify a successful content marketing program, you’re not alone.
We’re going to change all that.
In this article, we’re going to teach you:
- What is content marketing ROI
- How to measure your content marketing ROI
- What metrics you need to track your content marketing ROI
Additionally, you will also learn about other advantages content marketing can have for your business, as well as whether the indirect benefits of content marketing can be measured. (spoiler alert: they can)
What Is Content Marketing ROI?
The ROI of content marketing is the percentage of revenue gained from content marketing in comparison to what was spent.
Content marketing ROI is important because it is a measure of how much revenue is generated.
If you’re not getting pageviews, shares, and visitors aren’t engaging with your content, your content marketing strategy won’t be successful.
It’s important to think about which content marketing metrics will give you the clearest picture of your ROI. We will look at 6 important metrics later in this article.
First, we will look at the content marketing ROI formula to see how much your content marketing is earning.
How to Measure Content Marketing ROI
There’s a simple, 4-step content marketing formula to weigh the cost of your content against the revenue you earn from it. Here’s how you work it out:
Step 1. Calculate how much you spent to produce the content.
If you create your content internally, there is still a cost associated because you are paying the salary of the content creator or work done by other departments.
Be sure to include any paid content assets, like images, video, audio, or work you outsourced, in your final project cost.
Step 2: Figure out what it cost you to distribute the content.
Don’t forget to include the cost of any promotions you do internally, like paying for ads on social media or other channels.
You will also need to include the cost of any tools or software required for content creation or content distribution.
By totaling the expenses from Step 1 and Step 2, you will have the total cost for producing your content.
Step 3: Work out the dollar amount for what you got in return.
If your content is effective, it will result in sales leads.
Sometimes, the relationship between content and revenue is clear, like when people read a piece of content and then click on your call to action to buy something.
Sometimes content marketing doesn’t have an immediate or direct relationship to sales. We’ll look at some of those less obvious content marketing metrics later in this guide.
If you want to know how much profit you made from a piece of content, simply add up all the sales that it generated.
Step 4: Calculate your content marketing ROI.
To calculate your final content marketing ROI, we use Convince and Convert’s simple content marketing ROI formula: “Return minus investment, divided by investment, expressed as a percentage.”
Here’s an example of how that works:
If you spend $500 on creating a piece of content and it leads to $2000 worth of sales, then your ROI is 300%.
(Return) $2000 – (Investment) $500 = $1500
$1500 / $500 = 3
3 x 100% = 300% (ROI)
Here is a good rule to follow to know if something is worth it: if you spend less money on producing something than you make in sales from it, then it is worth it.
Now that you understand how to calculate content marketing ROI, we’re going to look at some of the key metrics that will help you understand and report on content marketing ROI even better.
We looked at how success in content marketing isn’t just about directly making money, we’ll also look at some less tangible metrics.
Before we can begin, you will need to have Google Analytics set up on your site. If you use WordPress, there are some great plugins for Google Analytics available.
6 Content Marketing Success Metrics to Start Tracking
If you understand the purpose of your content marketing, you can start paying attention to the following metrics, which are important for any content marketer.
1. Traffic
If your website isn’t getting any traffic, it doesn’t matter how great your content is because no one will see it.
You should measure traffic if you want to simplify things and get back to basics. In a way, it’s a measure of your brand’s strength, but it has more value than just the abstract concept of “brand.”
Of course, you can split this traffic up into different categories. In Google Analytics, the metrics you want to be looking at are:
The total number of different people who visit your page in a given amount of time is known as users.
This is one of the most important pieces of data to track.
Views of a page on a website is an important metric to track.
If a single user views your page multiple times, these visits are combined and counted as one pageview.
The data from these metrics can give you a general idea of how much traffic is coming to each page on your site. You can also analyze the data to see where your traffic is coming from (geographically and how they found your site online) and what type of device they used to view your site.
The following information can be useful to know for your future content strategy. For example, if you target U.S. customers primarily, but you’re getting a significant amount of traffic from the U.K., you can use this information to tailor future content to your U.K. visitors. Or, if a large proportion of your traffic is coming from one of your social media channels, you can use this information to tailor your content based on your social media followers’ data.
2. Conversions
After people finish reading your blog, are they taking any other actions that you want them to take? Are they clicking on links, signing up for your newsletter, or completing a transaction?
Potential customers for B2B (Business to Business) brands are most likely to convert into leads or direct sales. It is unlikely that buyers will go from not knowing who you are to buying something from you based off of one article. Therefore, B2B brands should focus on tracking conversions from lighter interactions like subscribing or clicking through to deeper conversions like offer registrations.
You get to decide what a conversion is. Sometimes, the intended outcome of your content could be something like making a sale, while other times it could be something less tangible like increasing brand awareness or upping your credibility. If that’s the goal, then you should pay more attention to social media shares and engagement rates.
If your blog’s primary purpose is to generate sales, you can track how many sales it produces by enabling ecommerce in Google Analytics and then viewing the page value of your content under the behavior section.
This will give you the average revenue that each page has generated when users have gone directly to make a purchase or complete another goal you’ve set.
3. Engagement
The amount of traffic your content receives is not always indicative of how good it is. Sometimes, it is a measure of how effective you are at getting people to click on your links.
If you want to know how engaged people are with your content, you’ll need to track how long they spend on your site and how many pages they visit in each session.
The goal is to keep visitors on your site for as long as possible so they can read more of your content. You may want to funnel them to a sales page as quickly as possible.
The average number of pages per session, average session duration, and bounce rate can all be found under the Audience Overview section in Google Analytics.
The ideal number of pages per session and the ideal session duration depend on the length of your content. A high number of pages per session and a long average session duration usually indicate that people are engaging with your content. A low bounce rate usually indicates that people are finding the content relevant and useful.
If you want to see how well your content is engaging your audience, another effective way to measure it is to look at how it does on social media.
While there are various things you can track, the most important is how many times your content has been shared on social media. A share means that others find your content valuable.
The social share buttons will show you how many times the content has been shared on each platform, but this information isn’t available in Google Analytics.
BuzzSumo is a tool that allows you to quickly see which content on your site is being shared the most on social media.
Google Analytics can help you measure how much engagement your content is getting from social media platforms. This is done by tracking how many clicks you’re getting from social media. More clicks from social media means more people are sharing and interacting with your content.
4. SEO Performance
Although social media is a great way to generate traffic, it’s not the only method. You’re likely getting visitors from search engines as well. You can use Google Analytics to track the percentage of your site traffic that comes from search, but this doesn’t give you much information about whether your site is doing well in search engines.
To measure your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) performance, you’ll need to track your SERP (Search Engines Results Page) ranking. This is your page’s position in the search engine results for a particular keyword phrase.
Changes in ranking can show you whether you are gaining or losing trust and authority.
Google Search Console is a tool you can use to keep track of which search terms you are ranking for and to monitor how your ranking changes over time.
A well-optimized website will result in more site visitors, potential customers, and ideally more sales and conversions. Creating high-quality content is the first step to achieving better SEO. (This is in line with what Google’s own report says.)
5. Authority
Although authority is more difficult to quantify than other metrics, it is nonetheless crucial to attempt to raise your authority over time.
If you want to improve your SEO and get more search traffic, you need to increase your authority. This will also help you build your brand, increase trust, and improve your conversion rate.
You can use Moz’s authority metrics as a guide for how Google might judge your page and site’s authority. The scores range from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to greater authority.
There is not one specific DA (Domain Authority) or PA (Page Authority) that is considered good. You just want a score that is higher than your competitor’s score.
6. Lead Quality
There are a lot of ways to measure lead quality. For example, if you’ve just created an epic blog post with a lead magnet or content upgrade, you can tell it’s working to attract quality leads if:
- People read your blog post and grab your lead magnet, which shows they could be thinking about doing business with you.
- Your visitors check out related resources that are part of your marketing or sales funnel.
- Visitors contact your sales team to ask pre-sales questions.
Actions that generate qualified leads who are interested in your product are a good indication that your content is effective.
To track whether your visitors are qualified, you can set up goals in Google Analytics to see if they’re visiting important pages on your site, like your pricing page.
To see which pieces of content help turn people into leads, go to Conversions » Goals » Funnel Visualization.
If you’re getting a lot of traffic, but most visitors leave your site quickly without completing a purchase or taking another desired action, that’s an indication that the leads you’re attracting are of low quality and are not interested in what you have to offer.
There you have it: 6 key content marketing metrics!
Pick just a few key performance indicators to more effectively measure your marketing performance.
If you try to focus on too many metrics at the same time, it will be counterproductive and can also lead to “analysis paralysis.”
You should start every new content marketing project or campaign by picking a few key metrics to use as concrete goals. This way, you can keep track of your ROI and know exactly what a successful outcome looks like.
Now that you understand how to measure your content marketing ROI, you are ready to begin creating more content. A great place to start is with some keyword research, which will help you create not only blog posts, but also ebooks, case studies and other lead magnets.
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