How to Track the Right Content Marketing KPIs for Your Marketing Goals [Infographic]

Most businesses today have a content marketing strategy in place. Done right, content marketing can help you increase brand awareness, generate leads, boost sales, and elevate your business.

Is your content marketing strategy really working? You won’t know until you measure the results of your campaign. Tracking the right KPIs (key performance indicators) allows you to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what can be altered.

Start by Defining Your Content Marketing Goals

Oftentimes, marketers post content and jump to measurement without being clear about what they wish to accomplish. This can lead to a waste of resources and skewed results. To make the most of your content marketing strategy, you should identify your goals and then tie them with relevant KPIs. Here are two goals content marketing can help you accomplish.

1. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness represents how familiar your target audience is with your brand. An engaging content marketing strategy can increase brand awareness, subsequently leading more people to buy from you. If this is one of your goals, here are several KPIs you can track.

• Article views: In addition to looking at the number of article views, you can also understand traffic source, average session duration, and bounce rate for each article.
• Audience engagement: If people share or leave a comment, it means they genuinely like your content. The more they engage, the more likely they’ll remember your brand.
• Inbound links: Gaining high-quality backlinks can help you climb up the SERPs faster. Good quality content will be more likely to gain backlinks.

2. Boost Sales

The end goal of most content marketing strategies is to improve the brand’s bottom line. If you want to track your campaign’s success in this regard, you can track the following KPIs:

• Conversion rates: Quality content can build trust, educate your target audience, and subsequently convert leads into customers. In addition to your content’s conversation rate, you can take a look at which pieces of content are driving more sales.
• Length of the sales cycle: The goal is not just to increase revenue but also to do this as quickly as possible. A good idea is to identify channels that help close sales faster.

3. Lead Generation

Lead generation aims to capture potential customers’ information to nurture them through the sales funnel. It involves offering valuable content in exchange for contact details. To generate leads, consider the following metrics.

• Form Submissions: The number of users filling out lead generation forms on your website. More form submissions indicate higher interest.
• Gated Content Downloads: The number of users downloading valuable content that requires them to provide their contact information. Higher downloads mean more potential leads.
• Newsletter Sign-ups: The growth in subscribers to your email newsletter. Subscribers are interested in receiving updates, indicating potential leads.

4. Drive Website Traffic

Increasing website traffic involves attracting more visitors to your website. It’s a foundational goal that contributes to achieving other objectives. If you want to increase web traffic, track the following KPIs.

• Organic Search Traffic: The number of users visiting your website through search engines. Higher organic traffic suggests effective SEO efforts.
• Referral Traffic: Visitors coming from external websites and backlinks. Referral traffic indicates your content’s appeal to other authoritative sources.
• Click-through Rate (CTR): The CTR is the percentage of users who click on your paid ads. A higher CTR indicates that your email or ad content is effective.

 5. Boost Engagement

Engagement refers to how much your audience interacts with your content. Higher engagement indicates that your content resonates well with your audience. For higher engagement keep an eye on the following KPIs.

• Time on Page: The average amount of time users spend on your content pages. Longer time on page suggests that users are actively consuming your content.
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who leave your site after viewing only one page. A lower bounce rate indicates content relevance.
• Social Shares: The frequency at which your content is shared on social media platforms can indicate its value and shareability. The more shares it receives, the more likely it is that others find it worth sharing.

6. Enhance Thought Leadership

Thought leadership involves establishing your brand or key team members as authoritative voices in your industry. It builds trust and credibility. To increase your brand’s authority track the following KPIs.

• Guest Posts/Contributions: The number of guest posts you publish on authoritative platforms. Guest posting indicates your expertise is recognized by others.
• Speaking Engagements: The number of times your team members speak at industry events. Speaking engagements demonstrate your industry knowledge.
• Influencer Engagement: Interactions with industry influencers on social media. Engaging with influencers showcases your engagement in relevant conversations.

7. Improve Customer Retention

Customer retention focuses on retaining existing customers by providing ongoing value and maintaining positive relationships.

• Repeat Visits: How often users return to your website within a specific time frame. Frequent return visits suggest satisfied customers.
• Email Open Rates: The percentage of users who open your email campaigns. Higher open rates indicate continued interest from customers.
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score: Satisfaction levels of existing customers through surveys. A high CSAT score indicates strong customer relationships.

Be Creative — Don’t Restrict Yourself to the Common KPIs

The KPIs you must track largely depend on your goals and your strategy. While the above-mentioned KPIs are a great place to start, you shouldn’t limit yourself to those. Some of the hard-to-track KPIs could be hoarding some of the most insightful information.

Keep Updating Your KPIs

Establishing content marketing KPIs is not a one-time event. Every time your goals or your strategies change, the KPIs must be updated, too. Besides, the world of content is changing every day, so revisiting the KPIs you once established is always a good idea. All that being said, creating good content is not as simple as it seems. If you find yourself struggling to curate content that converts, know that you’re not alone.

You can always leverage a content marketing platform and improve your strategy. To learn more about content marketing KPIs, check out the infographic below.

Written by Shane Barker