Tag Archives: KPI’s

12 most important KPIs of content marketing

12 important KPIs of content marketing

Increase in the number of unique visitors: An increase in the number of unique visitors means more people are able to find your content. A big reason why more people are finding your content is that there is more content to be found. Whereas, the possibility of people becoming your customers and clients is greater among your repeat visitors, the number of your repeat visitors will increase only when you have more unique visitors – after all, every existing visitor was once a unique visitor. The content marketing KPI for unique visitors may differ from action to action. For example, unique visitors subscribing to your newsletter or downloading your e-book are far more important in terms of KPIs than those who simply come to your website and then leave without doing anything.
Increase in the social media and social networking shares: Vibrant activities on social media and social networking websites are a great part of your overall content marketing effort. Only exciting, useful content is shared and promoted voluntarily on these channels. Nobody would like to put boring content on his or her timeline. If people are sharing your content with their friends, family and colleagues, it means they find your content useful.
Improvement in search engine rankings for important keywords: Content marketing also involves writing and publishing high quality content on your website and if you are persistent with quality and relevance, your search engine rankings for your important keywords begin to improve. It is an important KPI because the improvement in your search engine rankings doesn’t just reflect the quality of content on your own website, it also reflects the popularity of your content on social media and social networking websites, blogs and other websites.
Increase in the number of newsletter subscriptions:
Are more and more people subscribing to your newsletter and regular updates? This is a very good indicator of your key performance. When people subscribe to your newsletter it means that they are convinced that you are going to deliver quality. It also means that your content marketing is bringing targeted and focused visitors on your website, visitors who are actually interested in hearing from you on an ongoing basis rather than just stumbling upon your website mistakenly.
Increase in the number of people downloading your e-book or case study: For some businesses, an increase in the number of people downloading a particular e-book or a case study is one of the most important content marketing KPIs, because this is what they are targeting for. Content is created, published and disseminated in such a manner that it convinces people into downloading the e-book or the case study. Do you need to create special content for that? Certainly yes.
Increase in the number of people clicking your ads: If your website or blog revenue depends on more and more people clicking the ads that you have published on your blog or website, then more people clicking your ads is your most important KPI. It means getting highly targeted people to your blog or website – people who find the ads interesting and useful.
Increase in the number of incoming links to your website or blog: This is an obvious KPI. If more people are linking to your website or blog, it means that they find your content useful and relevant. How is it an important content marketing KPI? More incoming links means more direct traffic to your website without having to depend on the whims of search engines. Although many SEO experts deny this, incoming links still contribute towards improving your overall search engine rankings.
Increase in the number of people requesting guest blog posting on your blog: Nobody wants to waste time guest blogging for a blog not visited by many people. If your content marketing efforts are increasing the popularity of your blog this is an important key performance indicator. A popular blog means more people want to make use of it by writing content for it and then getting attributed for it.
Increase in the number of people submitting your contact form: This is quite obvious. Why do people submit your contact form? They want to reach out to you, whether it is for business queries, for lead generation, or simply to send their suggestions and greetings. Whatever, it means your content marketing effort is getting the right people to your website or blog.
Better response to your email campaigns: I have often written on my blog and website that email marketing is an important component of content marketing and its success and failure can give you a deep perspective of your KPIs. Content marketing doesn’t just mean publishing content on your website or blog and then distributing that content using various channels, it also means broadcasting your email newsletter at regular intervals and distributing your content via email marketing. When people begin to respond to your email marketing campaigns it means they appreciate your content and have faith in what you have to say.
A greater number of people spending more time on your website or blog: When do people spend more time on your website? One, they find what they are looking for, and two, they find more of what they are looking for. Having valuable content means people are not distracted away easily and there is enough compelling content to keep them on your website. The more they stay on your website, the more inclined they are to do business with you. One of the best KPIs of content marketing is reducing your bounce rate.
Decrease in the overall customer acquisition cost: Running a business also means accruing costs. Whether you are able to calculate or not, for every new customer in one way or another you are paying money. You are paying for your content. You are paying for your search engine rankings. If you are investing in a PPC campaign, you are also paying per click. When, by spending same amount of money, you are getting more customers and clients, you are reducing your customer acquisition cost and this is the ultimate KPI if you are able to achieve this by the strength of your content marketing.

I have listed above 12 most important KPIs of content marketing according to my own perception and your business may have totally different KPIs. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is, you know what you want your content marketing to achieve for you, and you know how to streamline your content marketing accordingly. This is the most important thing.

The importance of knowing your content marketing KPI

Why is it important to know your content marketing KPIs?

The problem with content marketing is most of the people don’t know exactly what they are trying to achieve. They know that it works. They know that it is working for other businesses. But all they know is, people are publishing one blog post after another, one article after another, and taking social media and social networking websites by storm with their “killer” content. Somehow they cannot figure out how to add method in the content marketing madness. Exactly what is happening? What sort of content gets you what? How does it actually get you more business?

As I mentioned in the above bullet, having a KPI like “Increase your revenue” is quite broad because by the end of the day, even if you have performed 1000 activities, you want to increase your revenue. Every for-profit business wants to get more revenue. This is an existential truth nobody can escape. So you can take “Increase your revenue” out of the bulleted list.

When you have figured out the KPIs of content marketing in your case, you don’t worry about other aspects of your business.

Suppose the most important KPI for you is, getting more newsletter subscribers. It doesn’t matter how your search engine rankings are. It doesn’t matter the level of engagement you can manifest on social media and social networking websites. Heck, it doesn’t even matter what sort of conversion rate your website enjoys. What matters is, if you were getting 5 newsletter subscribers per month previously, after you have set your content marketing ball rolling, and after it has been awhile since you set your content marketing ball rolling (for, it needs some time to show results) you should be getting 50 newsletter subscribers or 500 newsletter subscribers every month. If you set this as your KPI – getting more newsletter subscribers – then your content marketing is working for you. Once you have figured out that your content marketing is working for this particular KPI, if you want, you can put in more resources to get even better results. This is why it’s important to know the KPIs of your content marketing.

Some good examples of content marketing KPIs that you can set for your own business

People begin spending more time on your pages and blog posts: It means they’re finding what they’re looking for. It also means that they’re not being distracted by other things while they’re visiting your website. The more they stay on your website, the better will be the prospects of them turning into your customers and clients. If this is the KPI you have set for your content marketing, it can be good indicator of its success.
You’re getting more unique visitors to your website: Of course repeat visitors are good, but they will become repeat visitors if they come to your website for the first time, right? So the more unique visitors you have, the more repeat visitors you will get and repeat visitors are the ones who normally do business with you, the most. If you’re getting more unique visitors and if this is a KPI that you have set for your content marketing, you’re going in the right direction.
More people download your e-book, case study or report: Suppose the growth of your business depends on the number of people downloading your e-book, your case study or the report that you have prepared so that you are known as an expert in your field. If you have set this as your KPI, you will be publishing content accordingly.
You are getting more subscribers for your newsletter: Building your mailing list is a timeless piece of wisdom. The more people hear from you (without feeling annoyed) the more eager they will be to do business with you. This is why many businesses solely focus on building their mailing list and getting more subscribers for their newsletters. This sort of content marketing KPI would be perfect for those who are looking for long-term business development goals. They want to establish relationships and communication channels so that eventually these relationships and channels metamorphose into business partnerships.
You are getting more inbound links: There was a time when inbound links were extremely important for your search engine rankings. Although this no longer is the case, why solely depend on search engine traffic if you can get traffic from other websites? In fact there are many businesses that completely ignore search engines – something that I don’t advise – and completely focus on getting inbound links from high-traffic websites. Having this as your content marketing KPI will keep you focused on publishing highly useful and high-quality content so that people voluntarily link to it from their own websites and blogs.
Your search engine rankings are improving: Which business doesn’t want better search engine rankings? By the way having better search engine rankings as your primary content marketing KPI doesn’t always help because eventually it is the conversion rate on your website that matters. So, yes, aim at improving your search engine rankings but not at the cost of quality, meaningful content.
More people are engaging with you on social media and social networking websites: 82% people in the USA are engaging with their preferred brands on websites like Facebook and Twitter. I’m getting decent amount of work from LinkedIn. Some businesses are targeting Google+. No matter what social media or social networking channel you plan to target, eventually it is engagement that matters. If you’re simply posting content to fill your profile with information, it doesn’t help your business. People need to regularly interact with you, and this is a worth pursuing content marketing KPI.

Again, why haven’t I included things like “Increased revenue”, “more leads”, “more sales” and such terms as your KPIs? Because, no matter how important they are – in fact, the most important for any business – they are a by-product of the KPI attributes mentioned above. If your content marketing takes care of those KPI attributes, you naturally begin to get more revenue, more leads and more sales.

How do you measure the ROI of content marketing?

Content marketing is an ongoing process so ROI is indirect

It is difficult to find the ROI of a single blog post although websites with lots of traffic can do that. I often tell my clients that it may take them around 6 months to make sense of the ROI on content marketing or at least on the content I am writing for them. The reason is that when you are routinely publishing content on your website, on your blog, and elsewhere, every new blog post, every new article, every new eBook or white paper and every new social update, is a brick and you’re using multiple bricks to build the platform from which you promote your business. Yes, some bricks are more effective than other bricks (some of your blog posts and social updates may go viral beyond your imagination) but mostly it is the sum total of all the content you have published on your own website or blog and elsewhere, that eventually begins to give you an ROI.

In order to get a sense of your return on investment you need to be very clear about your KPI’s – key performance indicators. Not every content marketing strategy aims to increase your sales (fine, by the end of the day, what matters is how much you have sold). Every business has different key performance indicators. Some simply want to raise awareness. Some want to increase their email and blog subscribers. Some want to improve their search engine rankings. You may want to enhance your personal brand that in return will get you more business or opportunities. You may want to generate more leads. And so on.

One way of calculating the ROI of content marketing

If you want to use content marketing to improve your search engine rankings then make a list of keywords for which you aren’t ranking well but would like to rank well. Then initiate your content marketing strategy. Provided you are making the right moves you should see an improvement within a couple of months. You can compare the expense you have incurred getting your content written or produced and your search engine rankings to calculate your ROI.

Another method would be to note down your current sales and your current content marketing expense. Then start observing your sales performance while keeping the content marketing expense the same. As I have already mentioned above, you may not notice a difference for a few months, but eventually (provided you do everything right – that is VERY important) you will. Surely the ROI will be negative initially but soon it will improve with every month.

Is it important to know the ROI of content marketing?

Obviously. This is the only way to know whether your content marketing is working or not. There may not be a direct method of knowing the ROI specifically due to the nature of your business, but there has to be a point A and then a point B and you should be able to know that how much content marketing has helped you reach from point A to point B and preferably, more effectively compared to other means of marketing.