How to Check if Your Content Marketing is as Effective as Thor’s Hammer

10-Dec-2019 05:30 PM Content Marketing

We know the Mjölnir (Thor’s hammer), however that’s pronounced, can flatten mountains and strike down enemies. But how does Thor know if his Mjölnir has done the required damage or not? Probably when there’s blood and gore sticking to the hammer?

Content (writing + marketing) done right can break the internet. But how would you know if its effective or not? It does leave enough evidence to measure success, and we know the right tools for the task.

Publishing content is like the doomsday weapon that cannot be called back. You choose a ‘ground zero’ and then fire. The first step to publishing content is to know your audience. After that there is the writing/storytelling process. Without the first step, step 2 will seem long-drawn, like a common cold that refuses to leave for days.

Most businesses that take advantage of the power of digital marketing, know that they must write content, publish it, and promote it on social media. In 2020, companies will spend a combined dollars of 8 billion on influencer marketing alone. They will probably spend more on other channels of marketing. But most of them fail to calculate its success.

It probably takes a lot of energy to throw the hammer. You must assess damage before throwing it the second time. They have to know if they have done it right or not.

Measuring Content Marketing ROI

There are content marketing metrics to look at. Before doing so, let us see if your content marketing is making or breaking your business.

Content production cost: Add up all the cost involved in creating content. Add cost weather you are paying a freelancer or engaging with an employee. Add cost of work from the design team, social media team, cost of video, audio, and images.

Cost of content distribution: Calculate what is the cost of distributing content like PPC advertising, social media advertising, tools and software used, etc.

Calculate the sales from marketing content: Sometimes people read your content and click on the Buy button. There are other metrics to consider while calculating sales which are mentioned in the Content Metrics Section.

Calculate ROI: As per Convince and Convert,

Content Marketing ROI = ({Return - Investment}/Investment)x100

For example, if you have a podcast, with the cost of producing 100 episodes is $55 per episode, the investment is $55,000. If you have 10000 subscribers paying $10, then the return is $100,000. The ROI is ({100000-55000}/55000)x100 = 81%.

As you can see, the ROI is in the positive. If the ROI is in the minus, then you know your content marketing is not working. If the ROI is in the plus, then congratulations, you are the new demigod.

Content Marketing Metrics

Below are the list of metrics you can track. However, not all metrics need to be tracked. It is too daunting, even for Thor. It’s true. Track two or three metrics depending on your goals. For example, if you are writing a resourceful article to attract backlinks and a lot of traffic, you probably want to track backlinks and monitor your search engine rankings.

Let us look at the seven metrics you must track. You must know that the first two are important for revenue.

SEO

It is put here because it is important. If you have managed to use keywords in your web copy, and have managed to rank higher, then you will get higher traffic. Your SEO is performing well if:

Your content is appearing in the answer box for relevant terms.
Your content is ranking well for the target keyword.
You have a high domain authority.
You are getting a lot of inbound links which increases the domain authority.

To check if all this is happening, open an incognito window in your browser, enter one keyword and press enter. If your website is in the top 3, then you are getting some traffic. To learn about domain and page authority, use the Link Explorer and type in the url of your website.

Web Traffic

No traffic, no revenue. To check the traffic on your website, click on Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages. You can also compare time periods to see how your traffic is growing over time. Also look at referral traffic. Knowing traffic source will tell you which part of your content marketing strategy is working, and where you should work on.

At the landing pages report, click a page you want to analyze. Then, click the Secondary Dimension button and click on Acquisition > Source/Medium. If the Source of traffic is from organic search while you are concentrating on social media marketing, then your social media marketing is not working for some reason.

Onsite Engagement

Attracting visitors to your website is a small part of the content marketing puzzle. Once your visitors come, they must stay and engage with your content. If you have a low bounce rate, then people are staying on your website for a while. They also must read the entire article you painstakingly put together.

To see your engagement metrics, go to Audience > Overview. Some important stats to look at are pages per session, average session duration, and the dreaded bounce rate. Engaged visitors will spend more time on your site and view more pages, provided there is something of interest to them.

For the bounce rate for an individual piece of content, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. Browse through the list of URLs or type the URL into the search box on the right of the table.

Referral Traffic and Engagement

It is important to track social media engagement and referral traffic as a lot of purchase decisions are influenced on social media. On Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals. You can check what each referral platform is earning by going to Acquisition > Social > Overview. If you see which referral platform you are seeing the most traffic and sales, you must invest in promoting on that channel.

Quality of Lead

While the top priority for any business is increasing the size of your email list, it is not worth it unless you get qualified leads. A lead will qualify as a lead if they download content like a cheatsheet, template, etc, or if they contact your sales team or use the contact us form to ask questions before buying.

Set up goals in Google Analytics to see if they are visiting important pages like the pricing page. If you have low conversions and high bounce rate despite the high traffic, your quality of lead is low. Maybe you have to check if you want to offer something else or not.

Sales

The most important metric after leads is how much sales you have got, and what the value is. It is one of the key numbers in the content marketing ROI. Once you get qualified leads, you must nurture them with the right content, answer their questions, and give them the necessary information.

Check Behavior> Site Content > All Pages if you’ve enabled eCommerce in Google Analytics. The Page Value columns show the average value for a page that user visited before landing on the goal page or completing an eCommerce transaction.

Using Assisted Conversions, you can track visitors who leave your website, do some comparison shopping, research, then return to your website to complete their purchase. You can go to Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions to see which channels are assisting them. Look at Lead or Click Direct Conversion Value.

Authority

This is something which cannot be measured with Google Analytics or any of the analytics tool. It is because it happens both online and offline. If people are mentioning you everywhere, if they are sharing the content you publish, then you are considered an authority.

Offline, you may be invited to participate in industry events or talks. Also track media mentions you get. Maintain a sheet to track all this. However, this is long term, and you must be consistently consistent.

You can calculate ROI for social media, PPC, and others. Depending on the results, you can create a strategy about where and how you want to spend your content marketing resources. Is your blog earning you dollars in the +? Or is your facebook marketing making a killing? Maybe you must do PPC, Facebook marketing, and Instagram. Connect with Verbinden to know more about creating a responsible content marketing plan for your business.