3 simple steps to start measuring content ROI
Is your content working for you? How do you know? So many businesses still don’t measure the effectiveness of their content.
Yes, it can be difficult to attribute the impact of a piece of content to closing a deal when B2B decision cycles are so long and have so many stakeholders. And, full-blown, revenue-attribution models can appear expensive and complicated – even if they deliver the insights you need.
You don’t need to go that far to begin to see which content CTAs, channels and platforms are driving meaningful engagement. But you do need to reach a little beyond simple page views and visitor counts
Here are three simple steps that can help you understand the return on your content investment:
- Use UTMs everywhere that readers can click through to your site: emails, social posts and ads, embedded in PDFs, etc. Enforce a strict taxonomy so you can easily track where traffic came from, then analyse regularly using Google Analytics.
- Map journeys through your site. Again, Google Analytics is your friend. If someone arrives at your homepage, blog post or campaign/content landing page, where do they go next (and next after that)? Dwell time and bounce rates are helpful here too, but if the next click is off to cat videos maybe your content isn’t converting (unless cats are your thing, of course).
- Ask! It’s the obvious things that can make a difference, so establish a discipline that always asks (and records), at first contact, “Where did you hear about us?” That first contact could be inbound calls or emails, web contact forms, in-person at events, etc . If you don’t ask, you won’t know.
With those basics in place, you’ll soon be able to see which content – and which routes to the content – are having the greatest effect. You can also begin some simple A/B testing to trial different headlines, different social media ad/posts or different email CTAs.
Understanding true ROI on content marketing is critically important, but notoriously difficult. With these three steps, you can begin to see what is playing best with your audience.
(I posted a shorter version of this post on LinkedIn.)
Image: rawpixel-com via https://www.lifeofpix.com/photos/307670
