Measuring the ROI of Content Marketing
Content marketing is an integral part of any marketing strategy because it benefits both the brand and consumer. While the brand is able to drive sales and generate new leads and upsell opportunities, the consumer is able to get valuable information that can help with their everyday life.
Along with attracting current customers, an effective content marketing strategy can also reach, and connect with, current and potential customers through online and email marketing efforts. This can generate brand recognition, customer loyalty, and future sales. It can also lead to greater customer retention and referrals.
Take Advantage of Analytics
The ultimate measure to gauge the success of your content marketing campaign is through several key measurements, such as the sales and cost savings incurred due to the campaign.
In order to determine if your strategy is working, the ROI, profits, and other sales and social metrics will need to be measured. Site analytics can provide the most clear, comprehensive picture of your brand and customer interaction. It offers some of the best metrics to show whether your content efforts are paying off.
Some of the most important metrics to note on your analytics include the following:
· Total visits
· Unique visitors
· Return visitors
· Page views
· Average visit duration
· Bounce rate
Simple ROI Calculation
There are no exact calculations that can accurately predict ROI because a number of unexpected influences can affect the ROI. Fortunately, there is a simple ROI calculation that can help you determine whether you are profiting from your content marketing strategy:
ROI = (# of leads x value of each lead) - Investment
While this calculation can provide a simple measure of the monetary return on investment, it is important to recall that social media metrics should also be measured. This can be more difficult because there are no exact numbers to measure because the value of a Facebook “Like” or Twitter “Follow” is really dependent on the company. Search engine rankings can also be heavily influenced by posting relevant content, which is another important factor to consider.
Content Marketing is a Long-Term Solution
Content never goes away. Once something has been published, it can be viewed for years to come. This means that you will have a never-ending marketing solution. In fact, content marketing is unique because it can take some time to reach the campaign’s full potential and realize a ROI.
Rather than paying for one advertising campaign, which will run for a certain period of time, content marketing will exist on the internet indefinitely. This means that your current strategy can pay off for years to come. Promoting existing content can also help reach a wider audience and increase your content marketing ROI.
A recent study by Kapost and Eloqua also showed that the costs of content marketing reduce over time. The study proved that in the first five months, cost per lead dropped by approximately 80%.
Is It Attracting the Right Customers?
In order for content marketing to work, it needs to grab the attention of your ideal target market. This requires useful content that can engage your customers and will encourage them to share the information with others. Creating viral content is only helpful if it is actually attracting the right customer and generating leads.
Producing relevant content can gain trust among consumers and lead to more sales and customer retention, so focus on the items that have been found to produce the greatest return, including featured articles, blog posts, “how-to’s”, videos, and white papers. Optimized content can establish authority by addressing key questions and concerns.
Utilizing strong keywords and SEO strategies can better attract the right type of customers, resulting in more actual leads. Once your content marketing strategy is implemented and tracking has been set up, you can measure what is working and how it is paying off for your business.