Welcome back to our two-part series on performance benchmarks! Now that you’ve launched your content marketing strategy and you’re generating new analytics, you may be faced with pressure to prove your marketing budget’s worth. Stakeholders will likely ask for information to quantify marketing expenditures. Are these initiatives working? Are they generating a positive impact on our brand awareness? Are we getting new leads? Are we expanding our thought leadership reach? These are challenging questions, but your performance metrics will help gain insights to answer these questions and plan for actionable next steps.
Touchpoints
Your marketing initiatives likely broadened your reach with new prospects, helping them become aware of your brand. Through your website, social media, advertising, or event-based marketing, new touchpoints present opportunities for business development growth. Successful conversions of new prospects – from partially interested to newly signed clients – requires multiple touchpoints throughout the marketing journey.
Consider the following performance metrics to determine whether there was return on investment (ROI):
- What initially sparked the interest of a new lead? This would likely show the effectiveness of your content marketing. Examples of lead-generating content include downloadable white papers, checklists and templates, reports, guides, online events, podcasts, and video presentations.
- How did you follow-up with new leads? Content marketing strategies require a proactive approach by developing a follow-up calendar. This may include an email drip campaign to determine level of interest or a customized email from a key stakeholder to provide a personalized touch.
- Were you able to gain brand awareness by extending your reach? Content marketing strategy requires varying tactics to gain exposure. Interested prospects will likely verify your brand’s thought leadership through social media and website searches. By increasing your performance metrics across these channels, your conversion from prospect–to–client will likely contribute to show whether there is a marketing ROI.
Numbers Don’t Always Tell the Whole Story
Performance metrics help visualize patterns in your most successful (or unsuccessful) pieces of content. An increase in metrics may seem like your content marketing strategy is working, but those numbers may be in fact “false positives.” There are other benchmarks you should be looking at, in addition to those mentioned in part one of this series.
Marketing qualified leads (MQLs), for example, show you which prospects are potentially interested in your company or product/service. They have a higher likelihood of engaging as a client because they’ve already taken a step to show interest. These actions may include:
- Downloading a white paper
- Filling out a contact form
- Sending you a direct email
- Clicking on a paid advertisement
Although your numbers may initially be high for the number of impressions on your social media or website, the number of MQLs may be a better signifier in those who took an affirmative action to show their interest. This begins to develop a “marketing funnel” with the number of conversions. Sales qualified leads (SQLs) take this a step further. Who from the MQL list is more likely to become a client based on our targeted audience research? These individuals are categorized as SQLs and should be followed up with targeted information.
Which Clients Bring the Most Value?
The number of clients that sign on as a result of a marketing campaign is important, but there are a couple of other factors that should be considered to determine your marketing ROI:
- What services are they signing on for?
- What is the longevity of this relationship? Are they signing on for a short-term engagement or will they be returning as a recurring client?
- Will they sing your praises? Client referrals are an excellent way to expand your network through a trusted source.
- How much did you originally invest in your marketing campaign? When compared to the revenue that you’re generating, are you profitable at the end of each month, quarter or fiscal year?
Developing a content marketing plan that brings ROI requires a well-planned strategy, effective tactics to drive momentum, and analytics to determine its effectiveness. Each piece of content needs to answer the question, “How will this help drive ROI momentum?” Whether it’s generating brand awareness or narrowing the new business pipeline with qualified leads, a targeted content marketing plan will help generate valuable insights on whether an ROI that satisfies stakeholders is achieved.
If you’re interested in learning more how Longview can help launch your content marketing plan, get in touch! We’ll guide you through strategy, content development, marketing implementation, and data benchmarking to create a customized marketing solution that helps generate ROI.
