Content marketing campaigns are conducted by brands with the expectation that the brand will reap the rewards of a well-spent budget. On completion of these campaigns, content metrics, in the form of hard data, will assist brands in identifying successes and gaps between the initial content marketing plan and the results obtained. These findings can be utilised to facilitate the implementation of corrective measures and the achievement of goals.
What are the first steps you should take to make sure marketing activities are measurable?
According to strategic marketing, theory and applications for competitive advantage published on https://www.oxford.co.za/, reproduced with permission from Advertising & Marketing Review magazine and Pam Giordano. These are the first steps you should take:
- A clear understanding of the content marketing campaign objective, which must be aligned with the right solution.
- With a clear understanding of the objectives, you need to identify the measurable components of the campaign with regard to the frequency of the measurement and the format to be used.
- There should be clear communication with the implementing team, who must adhere to the reporting schedule.
Metrics brands and content marketing campaigners should know
According to Rancati Elisa and Niccolo Gordini, who have published a research paper on content marketing metrics: theoretical aspects and empirical evidence on https://core.ac.uk/, there are four main content metrics. These are:
Consumption – Consumption focuses on measuring brand awareness and website traffic generated by the content. Prominent consumption metrics in this regard are page views, downloads, visitors, and time spent on the page. All these can be obtained through Google Analytics.
Sharing – Sharing metrics are used to measure the extent of content sharing within a consumer network of like-minded people. Sharing metrics include likes, shares, tweets, email forwards and inbound links.
Lead generation – Lead generation metrics are about finding out how effective the content is in generating leads because this is often a goal, especially in B2B. Key metrics in lead generation are form completions, email address disclosure, newsletter and blog subscriptions, blog comments, cookies, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and conversion rate.
Sales metrics– Sales metrics are designed to assist in identifying the impact of content metrics on business performance which comes down to acquisitions and sales targets. Sales metrics include online and offline sales, customer retention, cost saving, and content marketing return on investment.
The content metrics listed above are key in managing measurable and goal-oriented content marketing campaigns. For more on available advertising and content marketing opportunities, contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected].
Trained as a Journalist, he carries wealth of experience having worked across the media spectrum in print, electronic and currently in the digital media space.
Patrick's current responsibilities include writing commercial content and most importantly ensuring quality control is achieved on internal and external content which gets published on various platforms.
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