How can you measure the effectiveness of your content marketing campaigns?

Actually, when it comes to today's content marketing campaigns and the online landscape, I've found SMART goals aren't the way to go. It's been a staple for years in the business world, and the way business is today in a digital landscape requires some disruption, especially for content marketing, and the ever-changing moods and requirements of readers and viewers. Many of the clients I work with today have instead adopted CLEAR goal setting (Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable, Refinable). This is the zag to the zig of SMART goals, with the focus being on flexibility, emotional engagement, and ongoing learning. With an ever-changing digital landscape, flexibility and adaptability need to be an integral part of any campaign.

Controversial opinion, but as someone with 16+ years in the content and brand space I’d say most brands that start their content strategy with their business objectives create bland, iterative, boring, non-user specific and average content. To create exceptional content I get my clients to start their content marketing strategy with their customers. Get to know their audiences inside and out. What are their pain points, what are the channels they are engaging with? Customize your content strategy to your customer needs - not your executive team needs. This allows you to create content that is engaging to your audience, native and customized to the platform you are operating on.

I always define a hierarchy of goals. Unless I'm working for a non-profit, Goal #1 is profit. Every sub-goal should be SMART, yes, but it needs to be clear how these sub-goals contribute to the main goal of making money. Too often, organizations get caught up playing a game of metrics and they lose sight of the only real reason to do anything in business: make money. It's entirely possible to go broke creating the world's most engaging and insightful content. Don't fall for that trap. Start with profit. Then figure how (and if) content marketing can help you get there.

At this stage, it's also helpful to think about what you want to write about. Content pillars are a simple way to get started. They are a set of topics that you and your brand can use to create content. If you're just starting out, I wouldn't recommend doing more than 5. I have content pillars that focus on marketing attribution, data intregration, Google Analytics, etc.

Consider Different Metrics for Each Goal When defining your goals for a content marketing campaign, it's important to understand that different objectives require different metrics to effectively measure success. For instance, if your goal is brand awareness, metrics like website traffic, social media engagement, and reach might be more relevant. On the other hand, for lead generation, metrics such as conversion rates, click-through rates on call-to-action buttons, and form submissions would be more appropriate. By tailoring your measurement metrics to align with specific goals, you can gain a more comprehensive understanding of your content's impact and effectiveness.

Before you choose your metrics, marketers need to map out a measurement framework. Where most brands go wrong is that they measure all content with the exact same metrics. But not all content resides as the same stage of the purchase funnel. Content lives in brand awareness, consideration, lead generation, advocacy and post purchase stages. And as such each stage of the journey must be measured by different metrics. In brand awareness you might track video views, sentiment, SOV whereas lead generation content may be tracked by MQLs, SQLs or CLTV. If you’re measuring every piece of content based on leads generated or revenue produced - you’re doing it wrong.

To expand on the other contributors in this article each piece of content supports the stages of the funnel. Campaigns are based on science. It takes at least 7 to 10 touch points for a perspective buyer to consider purchasing. If the majority of your content is focused around aggressive conversions, you will net abysmal results. Awareness content KPIs are reach and impressions. Once the reader or consumer is interested in what you are talking about when they will be motivated to learn more about your solution. Your middle of the funnel content should be about educating the prospective buyer. The KPI‘s are downloads, demo requests, Webinar views, etc.. Then the converting content will turn into measurable dollar signs.

When choosing your metrics, keep in mind that not every piece of content you create will generate direct revenue. Some content is created to purely nurture prospects who are necessarily not yet ready to buy. This type of content may not generate direct revenue, but it can help to move leads closer to buying. Your metrics should vary depending on the purpose of your content. For example, if you are creating content to generate demos, you might want to measure the number of leads generated or the conversion rate from leads to opps. If you are creating content to help educate your audience you may want to focus more on time spent on page, the number of pages viewed or engagement.

You absolutely need objective metrics. But do not mistake great metrics with great results. The only result that matters is profit. If you're killing it on your metrics but your bottom line isn't improving, you have the wrong metrics.

After you define your goals and objectives, you need to analyze the performance of your content to see what's working and what needs to be improved. As mentioned, you should create content that resonates with your target audiences and provides valuable information at all stages of the funnel. It's important to look at how content performs holistically - not just in Google Analytics, but connecting the outcome of the content with your CRM.

Integrate and Centralize Data Across Tools While using individual tools like Google Analytics, social media analytics, and email marketing analytics is essential, consider integrating and centralizing the data they provide. - Utilize marketing automation platforms or data visualization tools to consolidate metrics from different sources into a unified dashboard. This approach allows you to not only save time but also gain a holistic view of your content marketing performance, enabling you to identify correlations and insights that might be missed when analyzing data in isolation.

Metrics are definitely important BUT be careful they don’t because the goal. The aim of good content marketing is to tell a story and take the reader ‘through a journey’, and to show that you’re an authority in your subject area.

When determining which tools to use, keep it simple. What are the bare minimum metrics you need to keep track of to understand your profit story? Which tools are necessary for telling that story? It's easy to get lost in hundreds of different metrics and to lose sight of the forest for the trees, or vice versa. At its simplest, you need to know how much you're spending on customer acquisition, and what that works out to per customer. Everything else can help you understand how you got from A to B (i.e. from Investment to Return), but never lose sight of the only metric that matters: your bottom line.

While many solutions can help you track and analyse your content performance, the truth is there’s no single tool that meets every need. The tools you choose will depend on your specific goals. When it comes to tracking which content is converting the most leads and revenue, you’re going to want to use a content attribution tool. Attribution tools help marketers measure customer journeys across multiple touchpoints. So even if a piece of content wasn't designed to generate revenue, you can still see the role it played in the customer journey.

Beware of Benchmarking. One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is relying too heavily on competitive / industry benchmarks or best practices to judge their brands performance. You can’t beat the competition if you’re copying them. Instead experiment to see what works for your unique brand and target audience and then benchmark against your yourself over time.

Beware! Set your benchmarks too high, and you'll demotivate your team. They'll feel like nothing they do is ever good enough. Set the bar too low, and they'll coast. You want your benchmarks to be challenging, not impossible.

Benchmarking is key, especially when it comes to updating your content for better results. I recently isolated a group of blog posts on our website and made changes to improve their conversion rate. I took note of their performance in the previous 90 days (e.g. # of leads, # of opps, opp value and deals generated). 90 days after the changes, I reviewed the performance again, and saw a: 93.3% increase in leads 71.4% increase in opps 42.5% increase in opp value 100.1% increase in close MRR Without benchmarking my performance, I wouldn't have been able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the changes I made.

Data collection is paramount to understanding what resonates to your target audience. But don’t forget that data comes in many forms. Look at both qualitative and quantitative to tell the full picture of how your content marketing is serving your target audience. And looks to how different pieces of content serve different customers along different stages of their purchase journey.

Beware #2: Data analysis is useful, but it's also a great way of distracting yourself from the business itself. Don't get so bogged down in data that you lose sight of your flesh-and-blood customers.

Watch out for paralysis by analysis. When you analyse your data too frequently, you can miss the big picture and make decisions based on short-term fluctuations. It's important to analyse your data regularly, but it's also important to step back from time to time.

In my experience, adjusting your content marketing strategy is crucial to measuring its effectiveness. By analyzing data and insights, you can identify areas for improvement and make informed adjustments. For example, conducting A/B tests allows you to compare different versions of your content and determine what resonates best with your audience. Additionally, repurposing or updating existing content can breathe new life into it and reach a wider audience. Remember, continuously adapting your strategy based on data-driven insights ensures your content remains relevant and valuable to your target audience.

One tip when you adjust your strategy or content: Always document your changes so you can track what's working and what's not. This will help you to make better decisions in the future and avoid making the same mistakes twice.

The ultimate metric is cold, hard cash. Is your content helping to get bums on seats or people through the door? If not, all of the above won’t matter.

When I'm setting the metrics I want to measure and creating a benchmark I check this with other stakeholders to ensure we are all on the same page. There is nothing worse than getting to the end of the campaign and realising you have all been monitoring something different! Keeping good communication throughout the campaign with stakeholder is crucial to ensure everyone is aware of progress and what success looks like.

If your organization is investing in engaging and captivating advertisements, it is imperative to ensure that the communication and interactions with customers are equally exemplary. Maintain a consistent level of enthusiasm and professionalism throughout all customer touchpoints. A failure to do so may result in a disconnect, which could lead to diminished consumer confidence and potentially compromise the trustworthiness of your brand.

The best way to improve your marketing campaigns digitally is to go log on Instagram then from there, go to account settings and look at the terms of service agreement in regards to third-party applications. From here you can parse through the multitude of tracking devices you agree to for both Facebook and Instagram And WhatsApp — they’re all owned by meta. Some stand outs to me were: AppBoy, HotJar, and ReactNative to name a few…then use all these privacy invasive platforms to penetrate a person personal information. This is not limited to the major platforms on social media. There is a plethora of major platforms, including chat GPT via OpenAi that state flat out, they will track everything you do on and off the platform.