• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Articles
  • News
  • Events
  • Advertize
  • Jobs
  • Courses
  • Contact
  • (0)
  • LoginRegister
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS
      Articles
      News
      Events
      Job Posts
    • Twitter
Datafloq

Datafloq

Data and Technology Insights

  • Categories
    • Big Data
    • Blockchain
    • Cloud
    • Internet Of Things
    • Metaverse
    • Robotics
    • Cybersecurity
    • Startups
    • Strategy
    • Technical
  • Big Data
  • Blockchain
  • Cloud
  • Metaverse
  • Internet Of Things
  • Robotics
  • Cybersecurity
  • Startups
  • Strategy
  • Technical

What Metrics Should IT Companies Track To Measure Content Marketing Effectiveness?

Katsia Radziuk / 9 min read.
July 7, 2021
Datafloq AI Score
×

Datafloq AI Score: 78.33

Datafloq enables anyone to contribute articles, but we value high-quality content. This means that we do not accept SEO link building content, spammy articles, clickbait, articles written by bots and especially not misinformation. Therefore, we have developed an AI, built using multiple built open-source and proprietary tools to instantly define whether an article is written by a human or a bot and determine the level of bias, objectivity, whether it is fact-based or not, sentiment and overall quality.

Articles published on Datafloq need to have a minimum AI score of 60% and we provide this graph to give more detailed information on how we rate this article. Please note that this is a work in progress and if you have any suggestions, feel free to contact us.

floq.to/l6q7z

Content marketing is a great instrument to attract new customers and convert them into leads, which should be high on every company’s list of business goals. To understand how successful your content is at achieving this goal, you need to track metrics. But what metrics should you choose to measure content marketing effectiveness? This article will help you better understand your objectives, filter out irrelevant metrics, and reach your goals.

Measuring Content Marketing Effectiveness Starts with SMART Goal Setting and a Thorough Content Audit

Before you start choosing content performance metrics, you need to determine your marketing and business goals. Remember that a good goal is a SMART one – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. The idea was originally coined by Peter Drucker in the early 80s, but it‘s still relevant today. Have a successful website is an excellent example of a non-SMART goal. Convert 50 leads into purchases by the end of the quarter, on the other hand, is an example of a SMART goal. See the difference? The second one helps you map out what exactly you’ll do to accomplish this task.

Now that you’ve decided on a goal, it’s time to conduct a content audit. This will help you create a library where you can organize all of your content by category, like buyer’s journey stage, type of content, format, number of words, date of publication, keywords, title, meta description, and h1.

Then you need to organize the process of measuring content marketing effectiveness. First, you need to decide how often you will gather data. A monthly audit is often ideal. You should also consider keeping all of your data in one place, like a shared spreadsheet. This document should include your marketing goals tied to the content marketing plan and chosen metrics. Consider using Google Analytics or Salesforce to automate this process and save you time and energy.

It’s not a secret that each type of content correlates with different metrics. For example, for promotional videos, it’s important to know the average time views, comments, and YouTube CTA. Blog posts require unique visitors, average time spent on a page, and bounce rate.

Next, Measure Content Marketing Effectiveness All the Way Down the Content Marketing Funnel

Say you have a team of talented copywriters who regularly publish excellent content but have no customers or purchases. What’s wrong?

You might just need to improve how you’re using content. You can have a fascinating piece of content, but if it’s not correlated with the right stage of the buyer’s journey, it probably won’t work. People behave differently and have different expectationsdifferent stages of the buyer’s journey.

For example, it’s a bad idea to give a product overview with a CTA to buy an expensive app to a person who’s hearing about your company for the first time. To avoid such situations, you need to divide and bridge all your content with a concrete stage of the buyer’s journey. This is all about the content marketing funnel – a system that guides your audience from the first contact with your product till the customer makes a purchase.

The content marketing funnel consists of three stages:

  • top of the funnel (TOFU)
  • middle of the funnel (MOFU)
  • bottom of the funnel (BOFU)

Customers have different intentions at each level of the funnel, so we need to take different content approaches to each one, too. Let’s look step by step.

Measuring Content Performance at the TOFU

The buyer’s journey starts with the first stage: the top of the funnel (TOFU). This is when the customer is first hearing about your company. They might not know who you are, but they share some of the same interests as you. So, the main goal at the TOFU stage is to pique the interest of the audience and introduce your IT service unobtrusively.

This can be achieved by light, easy-to-understand, and visually attractive content for the customer. The main target here is to create an attachment with your brand.

You should present your product to potential customers clearly and succinctly. For example, if you are selling time tracking apps for HR management, you should write about the difficulties of manual timesheets and then quickly transition into discussing how apps can help automate this process. This way, they will know that there is a technology solution to their problem.

The best content formats at the TOFU stage are

  • how-to guides
  • landing pages
  • infographics
  • checklists
  • e-books

With the help of this content, your target audience should clearly understand who you are and how you can help them. You can tie these pieces of content to your landing page to help potential customers learn more about you.

You should consider the following metrics for content at this stage: number of visitors, page views, average time on page, traffic sources, and bounce rate. If the average time spent by the customer on your page is high, your content effectively attracts the attention of potential buyers.

You also need to make sure that your content fits the audience. If your content has a lot of views and shares by targeted audiences and converts, then your content strategy is successful for the TOFU. And always be sure to remember: first impressions matter.

Metrics to Track at the MOFU Stage

Let’s move further, to the middle of the funnel (MOFU). This stage is critically important for lead generation, because it is a link between first contact and final purchase. This stage attracts fewer people than the TOFU. It can be really hard to maintain the audience’s attention enough to help them get involved with your company. But people at the MOFU already want to know about you and how your product can help them solve their business problems; they’re just not necessarily ready to buy.

At this stage of the funnel, your content should be specific and detailed. Your goal should be to thoroughly educate your target audience. That’s why you should provide content with solutions and more specific branding.

Success stories, product overviews, case studies, and customer reviews will help the audience to engage in your brand. How-to guides are also beneficial at this stage. The content should convince the reader of the benefits of the product and describe how to use your product in different ways. The middle stage is also great for adding interlinks and calls-to-action, which can be effective in increasing sign-ups. For example, you can tell would-be customers to request a demo of your product by filling a form on the landing page of your website.

At the MOFU stage, it’s better to track the number of leads and conversion rates. These metrics will show you if your target audience is still interested in you, what kind of problems they have, and what they are searching for. It will also show when they recommend and share that information with others.

How to Track Content Performance Metrics at the BOFU

The final stage is the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), which has a concrete target: to convert your leads into purchases. At this stage, the goal is to ensure that your customer trusts you enough to buy from you.


Interested in what the future will bring? Download our 2023 Technology Trends eBook for free.

Consent

Content at this stage should be more specific and more detailed to persuade your customer. This is an opportunity to emphasize the benefits of your product in comparison with competitors. Product overviews, customer reviews, success stories, use cases, and landing pages suit this stage particularly well.

The main metrics to be tracked here are conversion rate, number of payments, and return on investment (ROI).

You’ll see the success of your content marketing strategy in constant traffic growth and increasing sales.

In this final stage, it’s vitally important to choose valuable metrics that show what segments of your content marketing strategy can be improved. That’s why it’s better to figure out which metrics show valuable results and which can be misleading.

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics

We’ve talked about which metrics to use at each stage, but what about the metrics to avoid? Some measures just pull the wool over your eyes and don’t show real results. Useful ones are called actionable metrics, and we refer to misleading ones as vanity metrics. Let’s talk about how to tell the difference.

First of all, a valuable metric supports your business goal. Second, it should help you to improve your content process. Each metric should help you clearly understand how that result was achieved. Third, your metric should show how to recreate successful results. A good rule of thumb for determining if something is an actionable metric is asking yourself: do you understand what to do after looking at the data?

Actionable metrics show how repeatable actions lead to results, so you can improve or fix your process. To make a metric actionable, you should tie it to concrete users.

According to Lars Lofgren, actionable metrics should answer the questions:

  1. How do you gain or lose revenue?
  2. How do you gain or lose customers?
  3. What are the key functions and benefits that people are coming to you for?

Examples of actionable metrics include: revenue, account sign-ups, conversion rates, A/B tests, funnels, cohorts, and marketing campaigns. At the start, you may want to pick 1-5 metrics that correlate with your business goals.

Vanity metrics make us feel good but in fact make no sense at all. They are unpredictable, so you can’t use this data effectively for developing your content marketing strategy. Focusing on this type of metric is just a waste of time. The most common examples of vanity metrics are page views, running total of customers, running totals of purchases or downloads, and number of social media followers.

You can buy thousands of followers for your Instagram account – but does this number of followers affect the number of purchases? Nope! Bots don’t buy products.

You may notice a spike in the traffic on your blog or website, but frankly, what does it give you except the feeling of self-satisfaction? Just because there are more eyeballs on your content doesn’t mean that there are more dollars in your pocket.

Let’s take page views as an example. A high number of page views can’t tell you anything about who your visitors are, where they come from, and whether they convert their visits into sales. Instead of tracking page views, you can follow bounce rate, sessions, unique users, and so on.

If you try the Google Analytics tool with the default settings, it will provide you a wide range of vanity metrics. So be accurate and set it up for your requirements.

Final Notes

One of the biggest challenges for marketers is pushing leads down the funnel and converting them into actual purchases. Appropriate metrics, like conversion rate and ROI, can be tracked at each stage of the buyer’s journey to help you understand the successes and failures of your content marketing strategy and make consistent appropriate improvements to it.

One of the biggest challenges for marketers is how to push leads down to the funnel. To solve that problem content creators use keyword research and competitor analysis. You also need to figure out the sources your leads came from.

To measure the general effectiveness of the content marketing funnel, the conversion rate, several payments and ROI can be tracked during each stage of the buyer’s journey. According to a Semrush survey, email marketing could be a useful tool to keep your audience engaged while moving in the tunnel.

Remember, the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy can’t be measured in a moment. Usually it takes from 6 months to a year to understand the results. Customers are visiting dozens of web pages and making dozens of clicks before they make a purchase. Don’t expect changes to come in a week.

Be flexible with the changes that your metrics suggest and be ready to edit your content strategy if necessary.

You may also want to track what your competitors are doing with their content and make a competitive content marketing analysis.

Conclusion

To summarize, your plan on how to measure content effectiveness should consist of the following steps:

  • Clarify your goals
  • Perform a content audit
  • Optimize your content plan for each content marketing funnel stage
  • Pick the most actionable metrics you will track every month
  • Create a spreadsheet to collect your data
  • Glean insights

Categories: Strategy
Tags: content, marketing, metrics

About Katsia Radziuk

I'm a content marketing assistant at Exadel.com. I'm obsessed with content creation, new technologies, and startups.

Primary Sidebar

E-mail Newsletter

Sign up to receive email updates daily and to hear what's going on with us!

Publish
AN Article
Submit
a press release
List
AN Event
Create
A Job Post
Host your website with Managed WordPress for $1.00/mo with GoDaddy!

Related Articles

The Advantages of IT Staff Augmentation Over Traditional Hiring

May 4, 2023 By Mukesh Ram

The State of Digital Asset Management in 2023

May 3, 2023 By pimcoremkt

Test Data Management – Implementation Challenges and Tools Available

May 1, 2023 By yash.mehta262

Related Jobs

  • Software Engineer | South Yorkshire, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer with C# .net Investment House | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Senior Java Developer | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer – Growing Digital Media Company | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • LBG Returners – Senior Data Analyst | Chester Moor, GB - February 07, 2023
More Jobs

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app Apple application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business CEO China Cloud Companies company content costs court crypto customers Data digital future Google+ government industry information machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research revenue sales security share social social media strategy technology twitter

Related Events

  • 6th Middle East Banking AI & Analytics Summit 2023 | Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - May 10, 2023
  • Data Science Salon NYC: AI & Machine Learning in Finance & Technology | The Theater Center - December 7, 2022
  • Big Data LDN 2023 | Olympia London - September 20, 2023
More events

Related Online Courses

  • Oracle Cloud Data Management Foundations Workshop
  • Data Science at Scale
  • Statistics with Python
More courses

Footer


Datafloq is the one-stop source for big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence. We offer information, insights and opportunities to drive innovation with emerging technologies.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent

  • 5 Reasons Why Modern Data Integration Gives You a Competitive Advantage
  • 5 Most Common Database Structures for Small Businesses
  • 6 Ways to Reduce IT Costs Through Observability
  • How is Big Data Analytics Used in Business? These 5 Use Cases Share Valuable Insights
  • How Realistic Are Self-Driving Cars?

Search

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app Apple application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business CEO China Cloud Companies company content costs court crypto customers Data digital future Google+ government industry information machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research revenue sales security share social social media strategy technology twitter

Copyright © 2023 Datafloq
HTML Sitemap| Privacy| Terms| Cookies

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • WhatsApp

In order to optimize the website and to continuously improve Datafloq, we use cookies. For more information click here.

Dear visitor,
Thank you for visiting Datafloq. If you find our content interesting, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter:

Did you know that you can publish job posts for free on Datafloq? You can start immediately and find the best candidates for free! Click here to get started.

Not Now Subscribe

Thanks for visiting Datafloq
If you enjoyed our content on emerging technologies, why not subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive the latest news straight into your mailbox?

Subscribe

No thanks

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Marketing cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!