Effective content marketing takes a lot of time and effort to achieve the results you desire. Although you may have a plan in place, have developed a content calendar, written a number of pieces and met your distribution goals, making sure your content has fulfilled its overall purpose will determine whether or not the time and dollars spent should be increased based on performance. The right marketing measurement tools can help you determine the true ROI you’ve achieved to make effective business decisions.
Why should you measure ROI?
Knowing the costs associated with your content marketing plan can assist in making sure the investment is in alignment with your business goals, key performance indicators, and budgeted costs.
What metrics should you measure?
The metrics you measure should be based on what you need to know to make the most impact with allocated resources. Some of the most common metrics are:
- Content consumption
Page and video views, downloads, bounce and crawl rate, and how long visitors were on your site.
- Content sharing
Inbound links, and the likes, shares and retweets you receive from your social media channels.
- Lead Generation metrics
Contact forms, subscriptions, and registrations to help you develop content that can provide a positive return on investment.
- Qualitative data
Knowing what types of customers visit your site and their interests is important. The comments you receive can give you a good idea of whether or not your content is viewed positively or negatively. Keeping the feedback flowing is a sure sign of customer engagement.
What kinds of tools are most effective for marketing measurement?
There are a number of tools on the market that can provide a detailed analysis of your content based on your needs and budget. They all serve different purposes, but can work together to help assess where you are, where you want to be, and implement the steps to get there.
One of the most popular measurement tools on the market, this platform measures your social media. It also shows the mobile impact your content has on website traffic and measures conversion rates.
Kissmetrics tracks, analyzes and optimizes your digital marketing performance by evaluating your customers and their behavior to help you increase conversions.
This tool measures content ROI by tracking audience activity and interests.
This tools measures social media posts and provides comprehensive reports, including competitor comparison analysis metrics across nine different social media platforms.
This tool gathers information on your competitors across every social media platform in a comprehensive report.
The ultimate goal of measuring your ROI is to develop insight and act on it to improve your tactics, grow sales and increase profits. To be effective, you must be prepared to influence decisions with the data you receive and have a clear plan for implementing the results. The real ROI is how well you’ve developed relationships with your audience.
Allaire W is a professional writer with a love for the written word and a sweet tooth that turned a hobby into a business. You can find her “cooking” up assignments while covered in flour or cake batter.
