How Should You Measure the Success of Your Content Marketing?

Effective content marketing is one of the best strategies you can take when it comes to marketing your business online. Content marketing not only helps you provide valuable information to your audience, but it also helps you spread the word about your company and show that you are an industry authority. Plus, it’s often much more cost effective than other forms of digital marketing. But how do you know if your content marketing strategies are actually paying off? If you’re wondering how to measure content marketing, keep these four metrics in mind.

Lead Generation

The ultimate goal of any business is to make sales. To make sales, you need leads. Content marketing is a great way to generate new leads for your business, and it’s one of the most telling metrics you can track. Google Analytics is an excellent tool for tracking lead generation; simply look in the “Conversions” section and select “Goals” and “Overview” to begin tracking. Keep in mind that conversion and lead generation can mean something unique to every business, whether you’re trying to get people to sign up for your email newsletter, request a demo, or another action.

Keyword Rankings

One of the main facets of content marketing is search engine optimization, or SEO. When a potential customer is searching the web, they are likely to use specific keywords and phrases to find what they’re looking for. If you’ve been integrating effective keywords into your content, then your website will likely pop up for that user. Still, you’ve got countless competitors to outdo, so it’s important to track how your keyword rankings stack up.

Tools such as Google Search Console and SEMrush are valuable resources for checking your keyword rankings. You can also identify where your competitors are ranking and determine whether there is an untapped keyword or phrase for you to capitalize on. 

User Actions

Many simple user actions aren’t effective measuring tools on their own. But when you combine these metrics with others, like your traffic performance, you can get a deeper understanding of your content’s effectiveness. Looking at metrics like bounce rate, pages per session, and time on page can help you visualize how your content is accurately bringing users what they’re expecting. (Luckily, these actions are quite easy to track on Google Analytics or any other analytics platform you might use.)

For instance, let’s say you have a social media post that is bringing in quite a big audience to your website. However, you notice that most of these users are only staying on your landing page for a few seconds, resulting in a high bounce rate. This could indicate that the landing page isn’t a logical next step for users who are interested in that original social post. 

Web Traffic By Source

When it comes to how to measure content marketing, focusing on specific channels can be key. Tracking your traffic by its source can help you identify which channels are actually bringing people in and which ones you may want to reconsider for now. Google Analytics and other analytics platforms can show you how audiences are actually finding you; simply look under your “Channel” report.

You can use this tool to, for example, compare social media platforms to see where your audience is largely coming from. You might discover that your content is being shared quite a bit and that a large portion of your traffic comes from referrals. Whatever the case may be, tracing the source of your traffic can be a huge help when you’re deciding where to focus your time.

Content marketing success isn’t built overnight, but you don’t have to do it alone. WriterArmy is proud to offer an extensive catalog of content creation and content marketing services, helping clients from the most in-demand verticals connect with audiences and prove their expertise in an ever-changing world. Contact us today for more information or to request a free quote.