5 Metrics to Assess your Content Marketing Effectiveness

The most effective B2B marketers spend 39% of their marketing budget on content marketing.Opens a new window But how do you know whether your content marketing activities are effective?

Do you measure effectiveness by a sudden spike in Google Analytics? That’s not enough.

Often content marketers choose to be “content” with surface-level data such as likes, shares, page views etc. To know if your content is effectiveOpens a new window , you need to measure different metrics.

Talking about the effectiveness of a content marketing strategy, Jeff Cheal, Director of Personalization, Campaign, and Analytics Strategy at Episerver says,

Content is continually pushed to be cutting-edge, relevant and timely. The problem with this is that content groups often don’t have the time or structure to slow down and make sure their content strategy aligns with the rest of the organization. The expectations of communication channels like social media and efficient content creation platforms is that marketing teams can publish as fast as possible. A successful content strategy should instead focus on producing relevant content, not aiming for critical mass. By synthesizing cross-team communication with effective attributable data practices, teams can do less work and produce more successful results.

Here are 5 metrics to get you started:

1. Consumption Metrics
2. Retention Metrics
3. Engagement Metrics
4. Sharing Metrics
5. Lead Metrics

(Before we begin, make sure you befriend Google Analytics!)

1. Consumption Metrics

These are the most fundamental metrics that let you know the effectiveness of your content marketing activitiesOpens a new window . Consumption metrics answer the following questions:

• How many people are viewing/downloading your content?
• How much time are they spending reading your content?

Following are the key consumption metrics:

1. Page Views: This metric tells you the total number of pages viewed. In Google Analytics, Behavior —> Site Content —> All Pages will give you an overview of top performing pages.
2. Unique Visitors: Also known as Users, this metric gives you the size of your audience.
3. Average Time on Page: This lets you know how much time users spend on your website. So, you get to know if users are actually reading the content or just briefly glancing through the pages.
4. No. of Downloads: With this metric, you understand how many people took time to fill out a form to access gated content on your website.

Consumption metrics are just a starting point and they give a helicopter view of the performance of your content strategy.

2. Retention Metrics

Retention metrics allow you to track how well your content is able to retain your existing visitors. Retention metrics help you understand:

• How many users come back to consume your content?
• How often do they come back?

Let’s look at some important retention metrics:

1. Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate indicates that your content is not compelling enough for the user to stick around.
   If you see a high bounce rate consistently, it’s time to revisit your content strategy. Also, check Users Flow report under Audience section in Google Analytics to understand where the user is actually leaving the website
2. Percentage of New vs. Returning Visitors: If the percentage of returning visitors is higher than the percentage of new visitors, it means your content is doing a good job of retaining visitors.
3. Unsubscribers: The unsubsriber count shows how well your content is being received by your existing users. Keep a track of opt-outs from your email listOpens a new window to understand if your content needs any changes.

Combining consumption metrics with retention metrics helps in understanding how well your content supports audience retention.

3. Engagement Metrics

How do you know if your audience is loyal to your brand? Engagement metrics shed light on that aspect. Engagement metrics come quite close to consumption and retention metrics. They tell you more on how involved your audience is with your content.

Here are the key engagement metrics:

1. Blog Comments: Track how many comments readers are posting in the comments section of your blog. Not all comments are going to be helpful. See if you can find any comments that can be used as a feedback. Also, observe what type of content generates better engagement.
2. Page Depth: Also known as pages per session, this metric gives you the average pages your audience visits per session.
3. Click-Through Rate: CTR is the ratio of the clicks on the links to the views it garnered. If people are clicking on the call to action (CTA) present in your content, it tells you that your content motivated your visitors to click on the CTA to engage further.
4. Social Media Engagement: This metric tells you how many likes, comments, favorites etc. your content generated on different social media platforms.

Engagement metrics guide you towards developing engaged audienceOpens a new window which can be converted into customers if followed-up with the right lead generation tactics.

4. Sharing Metrics

Sharing metrics directly reflect the success of your content in generating brand awareness. People share content if it is informational, useful or entertaining. People are motivated to share content that reflects their personality.

Key sharing metrics are:

1. Social Media Shares: Monitor various social media metricsOpens a new window like shares, retweets, repins etc. that your content is receiving. This will help you understand what type of content resonates best with your audience.
2. Email Forwards: Track how many email subscribers clicked on the Forward-to-a-Friend button to measure the performance of your email. Compare it with previous email campaigns to see what type of email motivated the subscribers to share it ion their network.

If your content is able to generate shares on social media and other platforms, then you can be sure that your content marketing game is on point.

5. Lead Metrics

Lead generation is the number one priority for content marketers as you are just one step away from converting attention into revenue. How do you justify the ROI on your content marketing activitiesOpens a new window ? Lead metrics help you do that. Lead metrics inform you about new leads and where they came from.

Below are some important lead metrics:

1. Gated Content Downloads: If you have downloadable content such as ebooks, reports, presentations or whitepapers on your website, the download count specifies number of downloads generated by each piece of content. Setup Goal Completions in Google Analytics to track this metric to know the exact count and its referral sources.
2. New Newsletter Subscribers: Similar to gated content downloads, if a user signs-up for your newsletter whilst on the blog, it shows a strong indication of staying updated with your latest content.

If you are finding it difficult to generate leads through content at the moment, follow the right metrics, and you will be well on your way to making your content a lead generation machine.

Let us know your approach towards assessing your content marketingOpens a new window effectiveness.