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Insights

Measuring ROI in Your Content Marketing Plan (Part 1)

A strategic marketing plan requires an efficient thought process to determine operationally whether it’s worth the bang for the buck. With carefully curated content and a dashboard of metrics, companies can regularly track their marketing progress and ultimately the ROI on their investment. An understanding of how these elements connect will better position your company’s ability to meet specific business goals.  

Where do you start? How do you go about getting these metrics and how do you determine whether your content marketing spend leads to an ROI?  

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we’re focusing on performance benchmarks. What benchmarks should you be looking for? Where can they be found? What should you be considering?  

Performance Benchmarks 

Before you get started on any marketing strategy, determine which metrics you’re already following and which metrics you need to start including. Popular marketing tactics will require the following:  

  • Google Analytics: Integrated with your current website, Google Analytics provides information about your website visitors. The dashboard includes insights on: 
    • Visitor demographics: Where are they located? What type of device are they using? How are they finding your website?  
    • Number of sessions: How frequently are they visiting your site? 
    • Average time on page: How long they stay on your site? 
    • Bounce rate: How quickly do visitors leave the site? 
    • Pageviews: Which pages are most frequently viewed?  
  • Social Media Analytics: LinkedIn and Twitter offer separate data dashboards. Depending on the platform, you’ll need to determine whether you have access and whether the data has already been accruing.  
    • LinkedIn: You’ll need to have admin access to view your company’s dashboard. By signing into LinkedIn through your personal account, LinkedIn provides access to your company’s dashboard. If you do not have admin access, contact the individual at your company who started the LinkedIn page. They’ll be able to manage permission settings to give you the ability to view company metrics as an admin. Common insights from LinkedIn include:  
      • Pageviews: How much traffic are you getting on your LinkedIn page?  
      • Visitor demographics: What are their top job functions and where are they located?  
      • Followers: Who is following your page and what are the trends in follower count?  
      • Companies to track: How do your metrics compare to other companies that are similar?  
      • Engagement rate: At what rate are people liking, sharing, or commenting on your posts?  
    • Twitter: Analytics on Twitter need to be enabled to start calculating metrics. Once enabled, Twitter’s dashboard includes these five top insights:  
      • Number of tweets: How frequently are you posting content?  
      • Tweet impressions: How many eyes in the Twitterverse are seeing your posts?  
      • Profile visits: How many people are clicking through to view your Twitter profile?  
      • Mentions: How many times are you being mentioned in other people’s posts?  
      • Followers: How many people are following you to stay in-the-know with your content?  
  • Email Analytics: From industry insights to newsletter updates, email marketing provides a convenient and trackable way of engaging with your subscribers. Depending on the platform type (MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Salesforce are most commonly used), you should have access to key metrics on whether email is the right content marketing tactic. Common insights include:  
    • Open rate: How many people are opening your email in their inbox? 
    • Clickthrough rate: How many people are clicking links in each email?  
    • Conversion rate: How many people clicked on a link and completed an action? Common actions including signing up on a form to download a free resource.  
    • Bounce rate: How many emails were not successfully sent? This may indicate incorrect or outdated emails that are no longer valid.  
  • New business metrics: Marketing is too often separated from company financials, leading to “marketing for marketing’s sake.”  Tying the pipeline and profitability to marketing activities creates a much clearer picture of success. Draw connections between:  
    • Client retention: What is the average length of engagement? Are clients and customers staying for long-term relationships?   
    • Client volume: What is the average client spend? Are you cross-selling services to increase this average? Does your revenue break down to a multitude of clients or do you have a handful of larger clients that generate our largest revenue stream? How can marketing help diversify your income stream? 

 These performance metrics will help provide the “before” comparison. After launching your content marketing campaign, metrics will help assess how your campaign is doing, whether you’re gaining traction, and at the end, whether there was a return on investment. In next week’s Part 2, we’ll be diving into how to assess your content marketing strategy after a campaign concludes. Analytics are powerful to provide key stakeholders the valuable information they need to determine your marketing budget’s ROI.