Leads and Revenue Down? Don’t Forget These Key Content Marketing Metrics.
- Dean Ara
2024 is shaping up to be a rough year. Marketers all over are cutting back on pet projects, putting rebrands on hold, and focusing on their core mission: generating quality leads and driving revenue for the brand. But what does that look like in a time when AI is infiltrating all aspects of search and marketing, and social media has all but murdered the idea of blogging? Do content marketing metrics even matter anymore?
Short answer: Yup.
Longer answer: OMG, YES. Anyone who thinks content marketing doesn’t matter anymore is simply not paying attention. Content marketing plays a vital role in generating leads and driving revenue. So content marketing metrics, lead generation KPIs, and revenue metrics are all closely linked. And you won’t know if you’re nailing your strategy unless you know which content marketing metrics to track.
If you’re not sure how to measure lead generation, content marketing metrics are a good place to start. Content marketing has grown beyond blog posts to include everything from emails to infographics, from podcasts to paid ads. And with every new media type you add, it can be tempting to let KPIs for content marketing fall by the wayside — but your lead generation metrics will suffer if you do. If you aren’t tracking what content performs well, how do you know where to invest to keep leads flowing and revenue growing?
How to Measure Content Marketing Success
Some of the content success metrics on this list will be familiar. That doesn’t make them less important. A few may be new to you. Some are probably content performance metrics you used to track until you got busy with other things. If you’re already tracking some of these — fantastic! There’s no time like the present to up your content marketing metrics game. If you’re not monitoring most (or any) of these — here’s your wake-up call. The only way your campaigns will yield consistent results is if you’re tracking what works and what doesn’t.
Here are eight content marketing metrics you can’t afford to ignore.
1. Traffic: Are You Visible and Attractive?
Traffic generation has long been — and still is — one of the most critical content success metrics. Monitoring traffic lets you know how visible your content is and how effectively it attracts the audience you want to reach.
How to Measure Traffic Generation
These tools can help you determine if the content you create is bringing traffic to your site.
- Google Analytics: Break down traffic by channel to see how many people find your site from organic search, direct, social media, referrals, and other sources
- Google Search Console: Tracks your site’s performance in Google search results, including metrics like click-through rates and organic search impressions
- Content Management System Analytics: Many provide in-depth insights into metrics like page views and unique visitors to help you effectively monitor traffic
The Bottom Line: More visitors equals more leads, which translates to increased revenue. Ignoring these metrics means you could be wasting your time on creating content that isn’t bringing in prospects.
2. Engagement: Are You Relevant and Interesting?
Another oldy-but-goody. Does your audience stick around once they’ve found you? Engagement metrics like click-through rates, bounce rates, and time on page help gauge how well your content resonates with your readers, viewers, and followers.
How to Measure Engagement Rates
Make sure you’re holding your audience’s interest with these content performance metrics tools.
- Google Analytics: Behaviour Flow report shows where visitors enter your site, how they navigate it, and where they leave
- Heatmaps: Tools like Crazy Egg or Hotjar offer heatmaps showing where users click and how far they scroll on your pages
- Scroll Depth Tracking: Implementing scroll depth tracking in Google Tag Manager lets you measure how much content users consume
The Bottom Line: All the traffic in the world won’t help you if visitors bounce within a few seconds of finding your site. Monitoring engagement helps you identify if you’re leveraging every opportunity to capture visitors’ attention and convert them to leads.
3. Conversions: Is Interest Driving Action?
Your visitors have found you, and they like what you have to say enough to consume a decent amount of content. But are they taking a secondary action once they’re finished? Conversion metrics reveal how well your content persuades visitors to take the next steps you want them to.
How to Measure Conversion Rates
Keep an eye on how effectively you’re turning prospects into leads and leads into customers with these tactics.
- Google Analytics: Conversion Report can provide an overview of your progress on goals you set, like form submissions or product purchases
- A/B Testing: Tools like Optimizely and VWO can help you experiment with different CTAs and landing page designs to identify what factors most effectively drive conversions
- Sales Funnel Analysis: Visualize your sales funnel to identify points where potential customers drop off and optimize weak points
The Bottom Line: Remember that part where we said content marketing was a vital part of lead generation? Yeah, that only works if your audience is converting. Overlook these measurements and you might be the proud publisher of amazing content that everyone loves and nobody acts on.
4. Reputation: Do Prospects Trust Your Brand?
This metric is a bit newer than some of the classics on this list, but its importance is rapidly increasing. Public trust in government agencies, media outlets, and yes, even companies, is declining rapidly. Maybe there was a time when simply ensuring customers knew your name was enough, but that era is over.
How to Measure Brand Reputation
These content marketing measurement strategies can help keep your finger on the pulse.
- Audience Engagement: Tools like SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics let you ask audiences directly what they think of your brand
- Social Media Monitoring: Maintain an active social media presence and use tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to see what the buzz is on your brand
- Other Engagement Metrics: A steep decline in other metrics like email open rates or organic traffic can indicate a problem with your reputation
The Bottom Line: Word of mouth is key when measuring what customers think of you. Proactively monitoring your reputation and the level of trust potential buyers have in your business ensures you can address missteps or misunderstandings before they hit the bottom line.
5. Attribution: Where Are Your Leads Coming From?
The buyer journey is becoming increasingly complex as the number of platforms and places where your customers might engage with you grows. Measuring attribution has always been important, but it has gained critical status as investments in more varied marketing touchpoints increase and news tools like AI chat and voice search add to the ways visitors might find you.
How to Measure Attribution
There are several ways you can track where and how visitors are engaging with your brand.
- First touch: Tracks the first interaction visitors or prospects have with your brand (single-touch attribution is best for organizations with short sales cycles and only a couple of marketing channels)
- Last touch: Another single-touch attribution method, last touch focuses on the final interaction a prospect has before conversion
- Linear: Companies with a longer sales cycle, or who use multiple marketing channels can use multi-touch attribution to track every interaction with visitors along their journey
- Account-based: All interactions from a single organization are grouped together in this model but can be weighted based on the title of the person involved
The Bottom Line: Tracking attribution ensures you consider every single prospect and buyer interaction when determining where to focus your efforts. When budgets get tight, knowing where leads come from can help you maximize the return on your marketing budget.
6. Retention: Are You Earning Repeat Business?
Content marketing isn’t just about acquiring new customers — it’s also about keeping the ones you already have engaged. You don’t want to be constantly trying to combat customer churn with a stream of new leads — you want to grow a base of loyal customers that will keep revenue steadily flowing.
How to Measure Customer Retention
Include customer retention in your content marketing metrics to minimize churn.
- Customer Segmentation: CRM tools can divide your audience into segments and analyze their behaviours to identify different responses among different groups
- Churn Rate: Calculate the percentage of customers who stop engaging with your content or services over a given period
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Survey your customers to gauge their loyalty and willingness to recommend your brand
The Bottom Line: There is disagreement about how much more it costs to gain a new customer vs. keep an old one, but regardless of cost, existing customers can be valuable champions that help grow your base — and regularly losing customers points to a critical problem you need to address.
7. Feedback: What Does Your Audience Think?
Sometimes the best way to know if your content marketing campaigns are succeeding is to ask the people you’re trying to reach. Understanding what your audience wants and making sure your content addresses their pain points is essential for long-term success.
How to Gather Audience Feedback
There are many ways to incorporate customer feedback into your content strategy.
- Social Listening: Tools like Mention and Brandwatch can help monitor social media, forums, and review sites for mentions of your brand and content while tracking online sentiment
- Surveys and Feedback Forms: Collect direct feedback from your audience through surveys, feedback forms, or comment sections
- Online Reviews and Ratings: Platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google often contain valuable feedback that can inform your content strategy
The Bottom Line: Social media sentiment and online ratings are often overlooked in favour of “harder” metrics, but listening to what your audience is telling you is vital to converting them and keeping them as customers.
8: ROI: How Does Your Bottom Line Look?
Your content marketing efforts should translate into quantifiable returns. Organic traffic and loads of leads are great, but they’re of little value if you’re paying more to achieve them than you can afford.
How to Measure Return on Investment
Calculate ROI by assessing the costs of content creation and the revenue generated by your strategy.
- Cost Analysis: Calculate the expenses associated with your content marketing efforts, including content creation, distribution, and promotion
- Revenue Tracking: Measure the revenue generated from content-driven channels, such as organic search, email marketing, and social media, using unique tracking URLs to attribute sales to specific content pieces
- Attribution Models: Use attribution models like first-touch, last-touch, or multi-touch attribution to understand how content contributes to the overall ROI
The Bottom Line: The bottom line of the bottom line feels like a fitting way to end this post. Marketing is an investment and must be treated that way. Be sure to calculate the ROI of different facets of your campaign (blogging, social, paid ads, videos, podcasts) separately so you know which tactics are generating revenue.
Get Help From the Content Marketing Experts
The team at TPM has years of experience helping technology brands of all sizes develop and implement content marketing strategies that bring in leads and help boost the bottom line. If you’re struggling with how to measure lead generation, which content marketing metrics to track, or how to keep your business growing when times are tough, we can help. Contact us to discuss your needs.
