Content marketing has become an integral part of digital campaigns, helping businesses engage with their audiences, build trust, and boost conversion rates. Nevertheless, the real value of content marketing lies in its ability to deliver a tangible return on investment.
Therefore, for many modern-day businesses, particularly those operating on a delegated budget, knowing how to measure the content marketing ROI is essential for enhancing overall campaign success and developing more efficient strategies to reach target customers.
By identifying the metrics that must be considered and using the relevant tracking mechanisms, companies can determine the ROI for all types of content and discover which ones are effective and why. As an IT company that provides a range of content marketing and SEO solutions, we specialize in promoting the message of our customers online.
Key Metrics for Evaluating Content Marketing ROI
Since content marketing is a rather complicated business tool that serves multiple purposes and, therefore, can be viewed through a plethora of perspectives, measuring the return on investment requires an understanding of which metrics are more important than others. While some of the indicators described below are focused on engaging with the target audience, others measure the pace at which the targeted customers shifted to the stage of buying the promoted product.
Site Traffic and Page Visits:
The overall number of users visiting the site (i.e., traffic) can be seen as the most basic yet crucial aspects of content marketing. The number of page views will also show how popular specific content pieces are and how willing people are to view them.
The Number of Leads:
While the sheer number of traffic and page visits will demonstrate the interest that content raises among the target population, the number of leads will show how many people are ready to consider taking the upcoming action.
Content marketing has become an invaluable tool for customer attraction and retention, as well as brand building. Therefore, gauging its effectiveness is critical, and the KPIs should be considered that would allow the organization to evaluate its content strategy effectively. The KPIs that could be used in a B2B context include:
Number of readers and unique visitors:
The simplest way to ensure that the content is reaching the audience is by tracking the number of people reading it. New unique visitors would also help determine whether the current approach is successful in attracting interest.
Conversion rates and number of downloads:
Conversion rates are critical in assessing the usefulness of the content in generating leads. High conversion rates would indicate that the material is of great interest to the company’s customer personas. Downloads, in turn, would serve a function similar to the number of readers.
Social media sharing data and backlink data:
Tracking the social media, shares would indicate the reach of the content. Backlink data would help measure the credibility of the site and SEO.
Demographic data:
The demographic data of the readership would help adjust the content strategy more adequately to the customer personas.
With these KPIs, B2B organizations would be able to more easily gauge the effectiveness of their content strategy, and, with the right data analysis tools, they will be able to make data-informed decisions to further improve the results. Some of these data analysis tools are included in the section
Marketing Analytics Tools
In order to regularly monitor the ROI of content, it is necessary to use analytics and tracking tools that will help capture valuable data and understand audiences’ behavior or trends affecting websites. Among the numerous content marketing tools, the most helpful solutions would facilitate the collection and analysis of data, which directly entails more effective ROI measurement. These tools typically report about audiences’ behavior, engagement, and conversion. Below, the most prominent ones are described.
Google Analytics:
Google Analytics is the most popular platform to track website performance, help understand overall traffic volume, and see how long users remain on the website. It is full of relevant data about bounce rates, conversion tracking, and more. In terms of tracking content, one can set up custom goals in Google Analytics, such as signing up for a newsletter or free downloads, among others.
HubSpot:
A leading content marketing tool has in its arsenal trackers of leads as well as email metrics. The program allows tracking data of how users interact with content and offers tools to calculate ROI based on engagement. With its CRM integration, one can track leads from the first site visit to conversion. The tool is quite helpful in this regard, as it can be utilized to satisfy dozens of marketing needs while allowing to gather the full range of ROI and content engagement data.
Ahrefs and SEMrush:
When it comes to traffic tracking, backlink analysis, and SEO performance, there are widely used tools that many businesses utilize. They also allow tracking data on how well content performs. One can use their features to access tools for measuring content performance while looking at data on organic, paid, and other types of traffic.
Sprout Social and Hootsuite:
Both tools are quite essential for tracking social media content. They generate detailed reports on users’ engagement with content in terms of likes, shares, and comments. One can find out which social posts have the best traffic to the website.
Hotjar
Hotjar is a behavior analytics tool that provides heatmaps and session recording. By seeing what the users do, Hotjar helps businesses understand which type of content people are interacting with most and which section seems more vague. Thus, it is possible to optimize landing pages and long-form content. Therefore, with the help of that tool, analyzing page performance across all platforms will be more manageable. Consequently, businesses enable calculating the ROI more specifically and refining strategies.
Calculating ROI for Different Types of Content
Clearly, whether it is blog post or video content, they all serve different purposes in content marketing. To exclude redundant types of contents or instead add more successful ones, it is crucial to calculate their ROI and find those that are most advantageous for a particular business. Thus, there are common ways to calculate ROI for blog posts or videos:
Blog posts and articles:
For blog posts, the necessary metrics that need to be considered are page views, engagement, and conversions. For example, if there is a CTA and a blog post generates leads, it is feasible to calculate the ROI by the following formula: revenue from the leads minus cost to create the blog post = ROI. Additionally, if the presence of the blog is done to attract organic traffic due to the included highly valued SEO, then it can also indirectly generate ROI in the long term.
Videos:
Since the price for videography is more expensive, it can be considered a direct effect if the video gets many views, comments, and shares. If there is CTA implemented, businesses can also measure conversions there. Apart from those, video hosting sites, like YouTube, provide various analytics for watch and retention time as well. Thus, on that platform in particular, it is feasible to calculate ROI using those as well.
Social media content:
Measuring ROI for this content type involves tracking engagement, reach, and traffic to the website. Shares, likes, and comments are social media-specific metrics that shed light on how effective the content is at attracting the attention of social media users. Moreover, the traffic to the conversion pages tracked through social platforms enhances the performance of the content type as far as the generation of new leads is concerned.
Email marketing campaigns:
Measuring the ROI for this content type is typically done through the analyses of open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. As an example, if a campaign invites people to read a blog post on the company’s website, the ecosystem would track how many people clicked on the email and proceeded to visit it.
The conversion rate from the emails, in turn, can be used to identify the share of website traffic and overall sales that can be attributed to the content type. Comparing this information to the cost of creating and sending emails allows making a conclusion about their performance.
By calculating the ROI for the abovementioned content, a company receives information about how to distribute resources among different format types. For example, if social media content yields better results and is likely to reach more people and generate more leads, it is an incentive to invest in this type of content. The same goes for other formats that drive higher engagement, visibility, and traffic toward conversion pages.
Strategies for optimizing content ROI
However, measuring the content ROI and receiving information about which types are likely to generate better results is only the first step. The performance of any content type can and should be enhanced in a number of ways that will improve engagement, visibility, and conversion results, thus prompting better returns over time.
A/B testing and content iteration:
this strategy is frequently used to determine the elements that attract the highest attention of the audience. Landing pages, emails, and posts can be formatted according to two criteria, all else staying the same.
A/B testing reveals which version works better among the target audience, determining the best-performing elements of the content, including headlines, calls to action, shades of design, etc.
Repurposing high-performing content:
This relatively low-cost strategy depends on the expansion of content format types. If, for example, a blog post generates a lot of interest and engagement, it can also be published as an infographic, a video, or a small post on social media.
How often do you make companies share your site and add you to favorites? Promoting a new launch, make it as big as possible in the shortest possible time. Your company should know the current location of potential customers and their interests. Waste time and money on finding new customers. Initiate the formation of the interests of the target audience.
Hot products require proper social media marketing on as many platforms as you can. Your industry might do well to advertise in specialized groups, share on Pinterest, do a guest post, or use a Web 2.0 platform. Try content syndication to reach new customers and track the results. Only the data will show which strategy is right, where the errors are, and how to monetize content properly.
Improving the Distribution of Content:
Strategic use of content marketing ensures maximum reach and monetization of the material. The social web is just one conduit for experiencing content. Use new ones: email newsletter; committees of interest for industry; well-read forum; guest spokes on third-party resources; and partner network for weekly content syndication.
Improving Targeting and Differentiation:
Tailor the material for your different audience in a one size fits one approach! Introduce the material to the target market by segmentation: by demographics; by interests; by purchase. This way, we will improve the efficacy and convertibility of the material, and the business will receive its return on investment.
Constant Analysis and Correction of Work:
The only way to monetize the material is to constantly analyze the results. Roll out metrics: engagement; conversion into leads, customers, and sales; sources of performance; and work through the content marketing strategy.
I work at an IT company that has built a business around providing content marketing and SEO services. Businesses need a comprehensive content strategy if they want to earn money and see measurable growth. Our company offers tailored solutions that focus on monetizing content by teaching out clients to track it, analyze it, and understand how to do the content correctly. Our services in the field of marketing and optimization attract new customers in the most popular areas of digital business.