Return on investment is arguably one of the most important metrics to track, yet it can also be one of the most difficult. ROI can encompass many different aspects or efforts made across an organization, and some can be hard to quantify.
In marketing, content marketing efforts are one of those areas where attaching revenue generation to efforts can be difficult. What does return mean in content? What’s a good ROI? In this article, we’re going to help you learn how to track your content marketing ROI so you can see what’s working and make better decisions on future content marketing investments.
What does content marketing ROI look like?
Content marketing ROI can take many forms. The reality is that you will have to be precise and specific in your analysis, as it can be difficult to attribute return to certain efforts.
Content & Engagement
The straightforward tracking for content that you produce is the quantified views, leads, etc. that you gain. Taking note of how your content performs can be beneficial for deciding what works best and how to maximize the reach of your content. While this is a good way to see specific reception of certain content, the costs and revenue gained from that content can be uncertain; this is where it gets tricky.
Leads to Sales
Working off of the previous point, you can begin to attribute leads and sales metrics to your content engagement and reception. An increase in leads and whether they become a Marketing Qualified Lead or Sales Qualified Lead, can be telling about who your content is attracting and how effective it is. If you are generating leads through content but they continuously fail to become qualified opportunities (and eventually, paying customers), it may indicate that your content is appealing to the wrong audience – meaning, poor ROI.
From here, you can work to dissect any revenue gained as a result of content marketing. A simple way to do this is to ask how a lead/ client/ customer found you. There are also ways to automate this type of tracking through things like marketing automation systems, CRMs, and via website analytics with tools like Google Analytics. Finding what channels leads and customers come from – and even more granularly, what specific content attracted them to your brand – will allow you to analyze the costs to sustain that channel against the revenue gained.
Referrals
Referrals are very useful in gaining insight on how prospects hear about you. Shares are a prominent form of return for content marketing as it serves as Word of Mouth (WOM) advertising. WOM has a high chance of returning more leads and subsequently more customers, to which you can apply the previous analysis to evaluate how qualified they are. In fact, customer referrals account for up to 65% of new business and have a 37% higher retention rate.
SEO
Another way to view your content’s effectiveness is via SEO performance. While not an explicit dollar figure, search rankings, backlinks and domain authority can signal content marketing performance. The higher the ranking, more backlinks and stronger authority, the higher return you gain from content (assuming your content is targeting the right audience). This strengthens your position on the web, which can then better your chances at attracting leads, sales and referrals.
Setting a Schedule
As with any metrics, you need to be regularly tracking to have solid comparison periods. Each period should serve as a learning curve to which you can change and improve to increase your ROI. Improving ROI can be a long, challenging process revolving around content dedication and in-depth analyses/ customer discovery sessions. Check out this article on how to improve your content marketing ROI for more insight.
Diminishing returns from content marketing is a reason for concern which should not be ignored. Be aware of poor content that can be damaging your ROI. More content isn’t always better. Duplicates, unoriginal content, or poor value propositions will be looked down upon by search engines and viewers, setting a dangerous downwards spiral. Keep a pulse on how your content is performing on a regular basis, whether that’s monthly, quarterly, or otherwise. Updating high performing content, or optimizing content that is losing traffic, can go a long way in improving content marketing ROI.
Check out how you can make the most out of your content, and get strong returns from it via our specialized packages.