Marketers invest their time and energy into content marketing because they expect to see a return on their investment (ROI). But how do you know if your efforts are paying off? To answer this question, you need to know how to measure the ROI of your content marketing efforts.
Before diving into how you can measure the ROI of content marketing, it’s essential to know the basics.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a unique strategy that aims at informing customers with content that matches their interests. This makes it different from more direct marketing approaches, like outbound marketing. The significant difference is that outbound marketing directly promotes products or services.
Content marketing is much more subtle in comparison, and works by engaging customers and earning their attention with content that’s genuinely interesting to them. Your content should also be instructional and informative.
One of the significant differences between content and outbound marketing is that content marketing pulls, while outbound marketing pushes.
Some of the benefits of content marketing
The single most important component of content marketing is the content itself. Having powerful, engaging, and relevant content is essential to growing your customer base through all platforms.
What are the challenges in content marketing?
One of the challenges in content marketing is how to measure the ROI. As evidenced by the figure below, many firms struggle with how to do this.
Only 21% of marketers feel that their measurements of the ROI on content marketing are effective.
The preceding figure is startling and speaks volumes. Businesses have a dire need for effective ways to measure their ROI in content marketing.
How to measure the ROI in content marketing
The key to measuring your ROI in content marketing is to keep track of metrics like upticks in website visitors after producing content marketing materials during your campaigns.
By keeping an eye on your web traffic, you can measure how effective your content marketing campaigns have been. You can also use your web traffic data to make improvements to your content in the future.
Your web traffic can be broken down into more specific insights. For example, page loads are the most vital metric to measure, as they indicate the number of times your page has been seen.
Next, you should compare the number of visitors—which is a different metric from page loads—as well as shares. The number of shares is perhaps more important than your page loads by themselves because they represent a much higher level of customer engagement.
Comments are also significant marks of customer engagement, and you can follow up with them to keep the conversation going and cultivate their interest in your brand. Be strategic in your responses and keep track of what works when engaging with your customers through comments. There may not always be time or resources to respond to everyone, which is why comments should also be prioritized. Be sure to always focus on the positive feedback and don’t waste your time combating negative feedback, as that can cause it to escalate.
Does it really matter?
Content marketing matters a great deal to businesses looking to grow a customer base more organically. With content marketing, you can drive conversions and build stronger relationships to gain more long-term customers.
To make it count, you need to give it your all when it comes to the content you use, as it’s a direct conduit to your customers.
The importance of content marketing can be determined by the level of engagement you get on your website. Great content attracts customers and helps generate organic interest in your brand.
What now?
Now that you’ve seen how vital content marketing is and how massive the ROI can be, it’s time to put it into action. You can take what you’ve learned here to engage with customers through content marketing that’s effective and powerful.
The advantages of content marketing are prolific, and, with a partner like Campaign Monitor, who’s invested in your success, your brand will soar ahead of the competition.
Take advantage of content marketing and learn how to measure it with Campaign Monitor.