You want to improve your content marketing ROI. What data should you use?

Don't just rely solely on marketing demographics. Utilize the technologies and tools available to gain deeper understanding of your target customers. This helps you target the right audience better. For instance, If you’re launching a YouTube campaign to promote a new fashion line, refrain from speculative categorization based on general attributes such as age and gender. Instead go for a group of people linked by a common interest such as fashion enthusiasts. Based on affinity groups tailor your content to their interests and goals, and personalize your messages.

To accurately gauge Content Marketing ROI, it's essential to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) across different channels: Website: Track page views, unique visitors, and time on page to gauge engagement. Social Media: Count shares, comments, and bounce rate to measure virality and relevance. Sales Enablement: Focus on lead volume, quality, and conversion rate to track lead generation. Shared above are primarily the most prominent data points that drive any business' content-marketing journey. However, being open to considering other aspects of ROI growth is important.

Improve content marketing ROI by analyzing demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data. Consider customer journey insights, feedback, and competitor analysis. Utilize social media, SEO, and email analytics for targeted, personalized content that resonates, fostering engagement and loyalty. Regularly update data for ongoing relevance.

As an online marketing coach, I recommend that you also look at how many leads are actually coming in and where they're finding you. Remember, not all audience members will be actively engaging with your content - and not all followers or active audience members will be your ideal client. It's important to take audience data with a "grain of salt" and compare it to your actual conversion rates. It's also a good idea to regularly "clean" your audience by removing those you've identified as "not a good fit" or bots/spam accounts. This will give you more reliable data.

Audience data is critical to understand when leveraging content marketing. Prior to creating content, here are a few steps to take: 1) Narrow down your target audience. 2) Interview your ideal client to learn more about their biggest pain points and how you can help them. 3) Understand how your audience consumes content. Once you've created content, the following data is critical for improving the ROI: -Comments left by your target audience (qualitative feedback). -Engagement from your audience (open rates, shares, clicks, likes). -You can also leverage polls and surveys to learn more and improve ROI. -Ask leads how they found you to understand how content is performing over time.

Measure your content effectiveness by looking at other things - content stickiness, engagement depth, and shareability. For instance, your article may have received 1000s of shares but has a low average read time. This means you have a captivating headline, but your article lacks depth. And then use it to make it even better.

Average read time is something that can help a lot in understanding whether your content is actually performing for you. Identity how much is the Scroll Depth(you can find that in Google Analytics) for long format content, that gives a clear idea of whether the content is actually being read or not.

Leverage engagement analytics to measure how users interact with your content. Track metrics such as click-through rates, time spent on page, and social media shares. Analyzing engagement data provides valuable insights into which content resonates most with your audience, helping you tailor future content to maximize user interaction and build a more engaged and loyal readership.

While everything is important to gather a comprehensive understanding. But increasingly as tools will get sharper and pointed fundamentals like keywords will be critical. 1. Decoding what is working for your brand and how it's unique versus competition and what is the fairshare contribution of unique keywords will become increasingly important in the near future where ads and searches will be AI sharp and pointed. 2. Matching it with trend and doing a correlation and regression on how far you are from the market direction is important. Are you too much of an outlier? Would that help you be niche or are you falling behind competition?

It's not just about analyzing the current data - Tapping into historical data is just as important to get a headstart. Those data allows you to evaluate how your content typically performs on a specific channel and identify the most effective aspects of your content strategy. E.g., when examining historical data for social media channels, consider what is the typical growth rate and engagement rate as a benchmark. Thereafter, identify high-performing content and plan future content/assets that can replicate the success. That way, you can create a flywheel effect for your small wins to gain momentum and become bigger wins.

Common content marketing mistake: Focusing on leading indicators. These are things like: - Impressions - Likes - Comments - Reposts - Etc There's nothing wrong with any of these metrics. But they don't always translate to downstream results. That's why it's crucial to prioritize lagging indications like: - Newsletter subscribers - Webinar registrations - Completed applications - Booked calls - Sales Ultimately, the purpose of content marketing is to drive downstream results. Don't lose sight of the goal.

This area is not just the domain of marketing, you need to bring sales into this conversation as well. Remember, marketing is not just about attracting new prospects, but equally so, it helps sales influence and persuade their existing opportunities. This is called MIR - Marketing Influenced Revenue.

As JK Molina said- LikesAintCash! Neither are the number of emails that reach someone's spam folder. Guess why? You never conditioned them to open your emails. They don't know what to expect. As Nicholas Cole says: If your email subscribers aren't converting and you're scared to push for a sale because they might "unsubscribe", you have to let them. The only two outcomes of your email list are- 1. They buy 2. They unsubscribe (so you can get a reality check on the number of people you need to reach so that they can move to #1) Unless you're driving Ad Revenue via your newsletters, conversion is the only thing that matters.

Employ multi-touch attribution models to gain a nuanced understanding of how various touchpoints contribute to conversions. These models, available in platforms like Google Analytics, allow you to analyze the entire customer journey and assign value to each interaction. This in-depth insight helps you optimize content strategies by recognizing the most influential content pieces throughout the conversion funnel.

If you have a good CRM with reporting you should be able to calculate ROI. The one challenge can be if you’re able to incorporate your MCAC Marketing Cost of Acquisition that looks beyond ad spend and includes labor and fixed costs. Otherwise you can always do basic TOI in Excel by entering your cost data along with conversion and revenue. Add website traffic data to calculate website conversion rate and then look at CPA Cost Per Acquisition. Ideally you should have channel and campaign metadata to segment by those parameters.

Social hearing and interaction is an important activity a brand should be doing. This gives a sense of personal touch and direct connect to the audience. It is a first hand information from the end users that helps in improvising on any shortfalls. Similarly, Suggestion from the users/audience helps in fine-tuning the buyer persona.

Soliciting audience feedback through surveys, analytics, and social media interactions provides qualitative insights into the quality and relevance of content. By actively listening to audience feedback, I can identify areas for improvement and refine content strategies accordingly. Analyzing competitors’ content strategies and performance metrics provides valuable benchmarking information. By understanding what content resonates with your audience and how they engage with it, I can identify gaps and opportunities to differentiate my content and improve ROI.

Leverage feedback on content quality, relevance, and usefulness. Monitor user comments, social media interactions, and surveys. Analyze sentiment, identifying positive elements and areas for improvement. Track engagement metrics, such as click-through rates and time spent on pages. Use this data to refine content strategies, ensuring alignment with audience preferences and enhancing overall content marketing ROI.

Here's a tip on evaluating online reviews that I learned from the brilliant Kathy Sierra: You want customers to write reviews where they talk about how your product or service HELPS THEM. Example: Let's say your company sells pots and pans. Which review would you rather see? 1 - "I love this company and its products, I've bought them for years!" 2 - "I have become a better cook and can confidently feed my entire family, thanks to their products!" The second review speaks to an impact that your products made on the customer's life. That review will resonate with other customers. Create content that gives your customers new skills and makes them better at using your products to perform tasks that create value for them.

Encourage customers to share reviews emphasizing how your product benefits them. For instance, rather than generic praise, aim for reviews showcasing tangible impacts, like improved skills or enhanced capabilities. Craft content that empowers customers, enabling them to derive maximum value from your products or services. This approach not only resonates with potential buyers but also fosters a deeper connection with your brand.

Competitive data plays a crucial role in tracking and improving content marketing ROI. By analyzing your competitors' content strategies, you gain insights into industry trends, audience preferences, and successful tactics. Understanding what works for others helps you refine your own content strategy, identify gaps, and capitalize on opportunities. Competitive data provides benchmarks for performance, allowing you to set realistic goals and measure your success against industry standards. Additionally, by staying informed about your competitors' activities, you can identify unique value propositions and differentiate your content to better resonate with your target audience, ultimately contributing to improved ROI.

Competitive data is instrumental in enhancing content marketing ROI. Analyzing competitors' strategies unveils industry trends and audience preferences. This insight refines your strategy, fills gaps, and seizes opportunities. Benchmarks set realistic goals, gauging success against industry standards. Staying updated on competitors uncovers unique value propositions, differentiating content and resonating better with your audience, ultimately boosting ROI.

Look beyond just comparing yourself to others and analyzing the competition. Use market research to spot trends and find new opportunities. Take into account what customers are saying in surveys and reviews to improve your messaging and products. By using a mix of data, both numbers and people's opinions, you can fine-tune your marketing approach and make your content stand out.

The Competitive data help you stay in the game, keep your eyes and ears open as what happening around in the industry. This plays an important role in analysing on what content a brand should be communicating for an effective ROI.

Acompanhar os dados dos concorrentes pode ser uma grande chave para que você possa trabalhar melhor seus diferenciais e posicionamento. Para isso é necessário que você acompanhe e análise os conteúdos gerados pela sua concorrência, também pode utilizar ferramentas como SEMRush ou SimilarWeb.

Monitoring industry trends and emerging topics allows me to stay ahead of the curve and capitalize on relevant opportunities. By aligning content with popular topics and themes, I can increase visibility, engagement and, ultimately, ROI. By effectively leveraging these data sources and considering other pertinent factors such as seasonality, market conditions, and channel dynamics, I can optimize content marketing strategies to maximize ROI and drive sustainable business growth.

Trend data is often tricky because it is fast-moving and rarely corresponds to data tailored to your product, target group, industry, etc. Nevertheless, I think it can sometimes be refreshing to look at it and broaden your horizons. The fact that a content marketing strategy is stuck is something that happens to quite a few companies. This is where trend data helps to change the perspective and open up new possibilities in content marketing.

La inteligencia artificial es un gran aliado para identificar tendencias del mercado y si creamos buenos promts podemos descubrir la manera de aplicarlas a nuestro negocio, así mismo identificar las marcas que ya están aprovechando esa tendencia en sus estrategias de marketing. Para ello es indispensable analizar la competencia e identificar lo que está moviendo al mundo. Teniendo presente que no toda tendencia nos aplica. Por lo tanto, debemos experimentar con un nicho de clientes peque?o el impacto en el revenue que nos puede traer si hacemos uso de una tendencia. Se recomienda experimentar en email ya que es un canal que nos permite medir interacciones e impacto en los KPIs de negocio.

O mapeamento de tendências pode beneficiar significativamente a cria??o de webstories com foco em assuntos pontuais e sazonais, o que poderá gerar tráfego qualificado organicamente, bem como contribuir para a gera??o de conteúdo para blogs e newsletters, alimentando a base de clientes com informa??es valiosas, inova??es e novidades. Uma outra forma de conhecer as tendências de um setor é a participa??o ativa em eventos, que pode trazer insights e gerar networking de qualidade. Para a mensura??o desses dados, o uso de ferramentas como Google Search Console (Discover), taxa de abertura de e-mail via CRM e listas de e-mails de participantes de eventos, ajudar?o a entender o retorno efetivo das a??es.

While there's no one best way to determine what data would deliver the best ROI, there are a few things you can consider to increase the efficacy of your content marketing dollars : 1. Good storytelling wins 10/10 times. I'd focus on a story through my content that connects the audience with my brand in the most meaningful way. 2. I'd carefully analyze the audience data, historical campaign data, market trends, and competitive data to figure out how they connect (give wings) to my brand story in the most authentic way 3. Run A/B testing with a couple of stories and hooks to check what is resonating with my audience and double down on the winning story. In summary, well-researched data-driven storytelling improves content marketing ROI.

My take on Content Marketing ROI (rather any ROI): Some ROIs are difficult to measure. When ROI is NOT intuitive, divide it in two parts : 1) Output ROI 2) Input ROI If Output ROI is difficult to measure look at Input ROI. e.g. In case of content marketing, Output ROI (easy measurables) : SEO Ranking, Newsletter/Channel Subscribers Input ROI : Is your org learning with each content being created? Is content creation process leading to some team building activities? Is it helping for 'Employee Engagement' Most of the people ignore Input ROI. Many times Input ROI matters a lot. It matters even more when the Output ROI is not measurable/difficult to measure. Regards, Chanakya

Back up to the ideation stage. If your content isn't performing, maybe it's because it isn't problem-focused. Or maybe it's just boring. Does your content answer what buyers want to know? Try both qualitative or quantitative methods to find good topics. Talk to salespeople and customers. Mine search queries and common questions. And then if your content looks and reads like everyone else's and doesn't provide a distinct, authentic point of view (looking at you GenAI), your ROI metrics will suffer. Marketers can find a lot of ways to measure whether a piece is landing after the fact (traffic, shares, lead conversion). My suggestion is to think about ROI *before you start creating it.

To improve marketing ROI, utilize various data sources to inform decision-making. Start with customer demographics, behavior data, and purchase history to segment and target effectively. Track conversion rates, customer lifetime value, and cost per acquisition to assess campaign effectiveness and profitability. Analyze website traffic, engagement metrics, and social media interactions to understand audience behavior and preferences. Utilize market research and competitive analysis to identify trends and opportunities. Incorporate feedback from customer surveys and reviews to refine messaging and offerings. By leveraging a comprehensive dataset encompassing both quantitative and qualitative insights, you can optimize marketing strategies.

Had to scroll right down... Likes and shares are nice for the ego, but do they ring the cash register? Focus on metrics that tie directly to revenue. Are people clicking that 'Buy Now' button after reading your blog? That’s the juicy stuff.