The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing KPIs and Why It's Important

Content marketing metrics, or KPIs, are numbers you need to be tracking, studying, and using as actionable insights to guide your content marketing strategy.”- GatherContent

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Meta Description:  Learn how to track the performance of your content marketing efforts, including the metrics you need to understand what’s working and what isn’t.

The internet is rife with content, with millions of blogs produced every day. In order to make yours stand out, creating great content is no longer enough. 

You need to know which content marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure. 

This guide will show you how to choose the right KPIs for your business, so you can make sure your content is truly effective.

What are Content Marketing KPIs?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for content marketing are data that can be tracked and analyzed over time in specified ways. 

Based on the results, the company plots a course and implements growth strategies.

The organization may simply repeat the process and further build processes and techniques if the outcomes of the defined metrics (KPIs) are positive.

If the outcome is poor, the company tweaks (or changes) the strategy to boost lead generation and conversions.

Learn more about what important KPIs to track for your business in this blog article, “4 Content Marketing KPIs to Measure for Success”

Are KPIs Important in Content Marketing?

You have a tremendous competitive advantage over your rivals if you monitor content marketing KPIs.

By tracking and evaluating your KPIs, you can understand where your marketing campaigns stand and where they are headed.

It also reveals whether the content you're producing and disseminating is reaching and engaging your target audience.

Finally, monitoring KPIs enables you to assess whether you're utilizing the right channels. You can do this by utilizing the power of web funnel analytics. 

Learn more about how web funnel analytics can help you measure your content marketing performance by reading,”7 Great Reasons Why Content Marketers Should Use Web Funnel Analytics”

Identify the Right KPIs Before Launching a Content Marketing Campaign

Content marketing KPIs let you monitor your progress and set a standard for a fruitful campaign. Additionally, you can use split testing and be more flexible with your marketing tactics.

Increase your chances of having a successful campaign by taking the following steps:

• Decide what your marketing campaign's objectives are.

• Establish specific content marketing KPIs to help you assess the performance of your strategy.

• Only gather information that is pertinent.

• To meet your marketing objectives, develop a unique content marketing strategy and tactics.

• Utilize your KPIs to monitor performance and make adjustments as needed.

• By using a content marketing analytics tool that can help you track these metrics like SaturnOne. 

Know the Best KPIs for Your Campaign

Some of the best KPIs to choose from are:

1) Conversion rate

If you want to know about the conversions of your website, then it is the most important metric that you need to measure. It will help you to measure how many people actually read the content that you have created for your business. Be sure you segment by channels, geographic regions, and even content type (content campaigns) generating the leads. Bonus: Track across multiple engagements, such as 4-articles, over 3-visits.

‍A good resource to get you started in measuring is, “7 Steps to Double Your SaaS Monthly Recurring Revenue Growth Rate”.

2) Number of visitors/leads

This is the basic metric for your content marketing strategy. It will help you to understand the number of visits to your website or the number of leads that you have attracted. Do not worry about visitors to start, it is more important to get conversion and engagement rates up first, then visitor traffic.

3) Cost per lead

If you want to know how much money you are spending on content marketing then it is the best way to find this metric. It will help you to understand the value of each lead that you are generating. Bonus: Break it down by channel and region. Super Bonus: Segment by customer revenue and/or type!

4) Content Attribution

Content attribution is a hard subject for many companies. Most are not familiar with attribution terms such as first touch of content attribution or last touch of content attribution. (This is a specialty of SaturnOne.io …unmatched in the industry.)

If you want to know more about how to measure and hit your ROI using content attribution, read the full article, “Content Marketing Attribution: 3 Powerful Ways to Measure ROI”

5) Content Engagement

If you are like most content marketers, you will have a few categories of content. It is super important for both your conversion, segmentation, and cost per lead/customer to measure category engagement. I bet you, there is one category that contributes most to your best customers. Wouldn’t it produce a better ROI if you focused more effort here and less on the lower ROI content?

Given that most B2B sales and even lead generation efforts today can take up to 6 to 8 website visits over many months, some strategies may not be helpful to you. 

What you need is to know what content is working and where to spend your marketing dollars and time. 

6) Engagement rate

This is the best metric to measure the quality of the interaction of your audience with the content that you have created. It will help you to understand the number of likes, shares, comments, views and other interactions that you have on social media.

7) Social media reach

It is the most common metric that people use to gauge the reach of their content marketing strategy. It helps to measure the number of people that you have reached through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google etc. Bonus: If you measure your social traffic and correlate it to content engagement and conversion metrics you will find that certain channels favor certain types of content. So as always, analytics are important.

The Future of Content Marketing KPIs

In the rapidly changing landscape of digital marketing, one thing is certain: content is still king. But as the world of content marketing evolves, so do the ways we measure its success.

That's why it's important to stay up-to-date on the latest content marketing KPIs (key performance indicators). 

By tracking the right metrics, you can ensure your content strategy is on track and aligns with your business goals. Go here and download the eBook for FREE  "How to Double Your Monthly Recurring Revenue" .

See how SaturnOne optimizes your content marketing strategy by getting a DEMO now. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, to create a successful content marketing strategy, you have to learn how to track the performance of your content marketing efforts, including the metrics you need to understand what’s working and what isn’t. 

If you follow the simple steps I have enumerated above, you will be on your way to clarity, confidence, and peace of mind in scaling your business through content marketing.

Get a DEMO or a FREE consultation with our product advisors at SaturnOne Analytics today. 

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