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4 min read
Opinion

How to measure content success.

As a key business activity, content marketing involves the creation of all written and designed content published online to promote your brand. This includes everything from your website pages and blogs to social media posts, videos and infographics.

Content marketing is a strategic approach to building brand awareness and encouraging customers to engage with and invest in your business. As such, your content marketing should account for the different journeys and goals your customers have, and accommodate these to ensure content success.

How do you define content success?

There are several metrics to measure content success. We’ve run through them individually below, but the TLDR definition is that your content builds brand awareness and offers expertise, whilst being helpful and engaging to users.

What are the most important factors in creating great content?

In marketing, the most important factors in creating great content are awareness, expertise, helpfulness, and engagement. Let’s take a look at these in more detail.

Awareness

Your audience should always learn something from your content. This doesn’t mean you should only ever share content that covers important industry updates or ‘how to’ guides. You can also help them learn more about your business through company updates and employee spotlights that build audience understanding of your brand and industry.

Expertise

Distinguish your brand through thought leadership pieces that build authority. Providing original perspectives and professional insights helps to build your brand’s expertise. It also aids search engine marketing by meeting a key principle of Google’s EEAT update. Go beyond creating the same content as your competitors and distinguish your brand voice, creating a reputation as a thought leader at the forefront of innovation.

Helpfulness

Customers don’t just want to be sold a product or service. They want to feel seen and understood, and part of that involves addressing their pain points. Helpful content will answer important customer questions [sometimes even before they’ve thought of them]. Be sure to include clear calls to action (CTAs) to signpost the next steps too and support the user journey.

Engagement

Boring and uninspiring content doesn’t make an impact on your audience. This doesn’t mean you need to be creating trending memes or sassy campaigns like Monzo and SURREAL. But you should aim to engage your audience with pithy copy, enticing graphics and well-crafted headlines tailored to your unique tone of voice.

How to measure content marketing success

The success of your marketing is determined by several factors and the overall aim of your campaign. Here’s how to measure content performance and the success of your marketing, both with metrics and qualitative measures.

Engagement

  • Likes

What’s the benchmark number of likes you’d like to hit on your post?

  • Time spent on the page

Are your page visitors staying long enough to read and engage with your content?

Traffic

  • Traffic from related sources

How many high-quality backlinks are you receiving? It’s better to have one backlink from a relevant, high-quality page, rather than dozens from a low-quality, irrelevant site.

  • Traffic from related users

How many valuable leads are you receiving from users [actually] looking for your product or service?

Conversions

  • Purchases

How many sales have you made? Are your sales increasing or stagnating? Keep drawing on new keywords and trends to maintain website visibility and increase the likelihood of sales.

  • Enquiries

Are you receiving genuine and relevant enquiries? Are these leading to successful sales?

SEO/paid search performance

  • Enhanced search ranking

Have you increased your ranking for target keywords? Are you actively performing and actioning research on keywords and customer needs?

  • Good landing page content

Are your PPC ads converting? Is your cost per conversion reducing? Is your CTA visible and clear? If not, you may not be providing customers with the answers and solutions they’re seeking.

Brand perception

  • Improved online visibility

Has your social following increased? Is your brand deemed trustworthy by website users? Are you showcasing [positive] customer reviews that reflect positively on your brand?

Does your content marketing strategy need a boost?

Now that we’ve helped you better understand how to measure content success, we’re also on hand to advance your content strategy.

We’ve helped dozens of ambitious brands to create content that elevates their brand – just look at some of our case studies.