On average, business owners in the United States spend roughly $10,000 a year on content marketing campaigns. Most entrepreneurs realize that great content can help you further their reach and attract more customers. Keeping a close eye on how well your content marketing campaigns are performing is crucial if you want to avoid wasteful spending.
Return on investment (ROI) is a term that every business owner needs to be familiar with. Knowing the ROI of a content marketing campaign allows you to see if the strategies being used are actually paying off. Here are some things to keep in mind when trying to track your content marketing ROI.
What is Content Marketing ROI?
The data that reveals what your company has gained from a particular marketing campaign is referred to as content marketing ROI. With this data, you can see how much your company has made off of your initial investment in a content marketing campaign. If you are a newcomer to the world of content marketing, you might be unaware of how difficult it can be to track the results these campaigns provide. The best way to make tracking content marketing ROI easier is by using certain metrics.
Content Marketing Metrics You Need To Track
Collecting data from your content marketing campaigns can help you assess how well they are performing and whether or not certain strategies are worth investing in. When attempting to track the ROI of your content marketing campaigns, you need to use the metrics covered below.
The Number of Leads Generated
Qualified leads come from potential customers that have indicated their interest in buying the products/services offered by your business. One of the key indicators of a successful content marketing campaign is a steady stream of qualified leads. On average, well-organized inbound content marketing strategies can generate three times the leads as an outbound marketing campaign. These inbound content marketing campaigns also cost around 60% less than outbound marketing campaigns.
When trying to track the leads your content marketing campaign produces, consider doing things like:
- Measuring the number of content downloads
- The number of contact forms filled out by potential customers
- Track completed purchase rates and conversion rates
Website Traffic
Great content can help a business owner drive traffic to their website. If the website is optimized for lead generation, visitors will be moved to the next stage of your sales funnel. If you want to measure website traffic, you need to monitor things like:
- Popular landing pages
- Average session times
- Pageviews
- Unique sessions
By tracking all of these metrics, you can figure out what type of content is attracting attention from your audience. With this information, you can start the process of optimizing poorly performing content to be more engaging. By tweaking the content on your website, you can keep readers engaged and interested.
As you can see, tracking content marketing ROI is a complex process.