Content marketing helps industrial marketers (or all marketers, for that matter) showcase their brand’s value and expertise while also building trust with their target audience.
As the name suggests, this type of marketing focuses on content and the content creation process to eventually drive traffic, build a client base, and further expand the business.
But how do you know if your content process is effective, and how do you eventually rate your content marketing success?
After all, it’s not a matter of simply trying everything and seeing what sticks. Since you’re likely working with a content marketing strategy in mind, you know what your ultimate goal is. But you also need to collect data to determine how effective your content campaigns are.
By rating your success and analyzing the data, you can more accurately determine the ROI of each type of content you’ve created, which will help you decide what to focus on in future.
In order to help you ascertain your content marketing success, I’ll be focusing on two main thoughts: brand awareness and revenue. This is because increasing brand awareness is often the main goal of content marketing, with an increase in revenue as a positive aftereffect.
But how do you measure your content marketing success in terms of brand awareness and revenue? Below, I’ll guide you through some of the top metrics to consider.
Brand awareness and brand recognition
While content marketing can play a role in every stage of the customer journey, it is particularly effective at increasing brand awareness — i.e., bringing new people to your company for the very first time.
There is definitely something to be said about returning users, which can help strengthen your brand recognition overall, but unless these turn into leads and move further down the sales funnel, they’ll still be counted as people just building an awareness of your brand.
So, how do you know if your content marketing efforts are proving successful, and you’re actually managing to build brand awareness?
Luckily, this is quite simple to determine by looking at key metrics within your Google Analytics setup, Google Search Console, and even your social media platforms.
Pay particular attention to the following metrics.
1. Views
The traffic on your website can indicate if your brand (or your site) is growing or not.
If you see your website traffic growing on a month-by-month basis, you can rest assured that your brand is being seen more often by more people.
You can see this data directly in GA4, but you can also rely on external website management tools.
2. Brand mentions
The frequency with which other websites or internet users mention your firm by name is often a good indicator of how popular your brand is — or, at least, how aware people are of it.
You’ll need access to a brand mentions tool or social listening platform like Awario or BrandMentions to help you keep track of this metric.
3. Social media followers
The great thing about social media is that the success of your profile is quite visible when you look at your total number of followers.
Social followers also act as great social proof, because they can indicate to other users (that is, potential new followers) that your brand can be trusted.
4. Email subscribers
The number of your email subscribers is also a great metric to keep on top of, as it can indicate the popularity of your brand, especially if you’re running an engineering blog and using your newsletter to keep readers aware of new postings.
5. Keyword rankings
The more keywords your website ranks for, the easier it is for people to discover it.
This is simply because great on-page SEO allows search engines to index your site and specific pages more easily, meaning you can appear in more search results.
And the more search results you appear in, the more people will be exposed to your brand name.
6. Backlinks
The number of websites linking back to your page (i.e., backlinks) is crucial in increasing your domain authority, but it’s also a valuable indicator of how popular your brand is.
If other sites link to yours, you can take this as proof that your content is being seen as authoritative, a sure sign that your brand is growing.
You can see backlinks on Google Analytics under “referrals,” but it’s also a good idea to look at SEO platforms like Ahrefs to help you analyze this data more effectively.
7. Engagement
Engagement matters on both your website and social media platforms.
I’ve looked at page views and social followers above, but sometimes it’s not enough to look at overall figures. After all, if you have 20,000 views or followers, but users aren’t actually looking at your content, then you’ll see less success.
So it’s worth looking at the percentage of people actually spending time with your content or leaving likes and comments on social media to assess how well your content is actually reaching your target audience.
For your website, Google Analytics determines engagement by considering any page view session that lasts for a minimum of 10 seconds, any session that triggers at least one conversion, or any session that includes 2 or more pages.
You can also look at the number of comments or interactions you have on your engineering blog, since these are a good indicator of how committed or engaged your audience is.
On social media, you’ll need to look at the number of likes, comments, shares, or saves a post has (depending on the social platform, of course).
Revenue
You won’t necessarily see direct revenue from your content marketing success, but great content can definitely motivate customers to take action, leading them further down the sales funnel.
So, in order to measure the revenue success of your content marketing, you can consider some of the following:
1. Leads
Lead generation is the first step in turning a mere visitor into a potential customer.
When someone chooses to give you their contact details, they become a lead for you to follow up on — someone you’re just one step closer to turning into a customer.
You can generate leads by offering website visitors (or social media followers) something they want in return for their email address.
This could include them signing up for your newsletter, wanting to download gated content like a free e-book, or even completing a contact us form because they have a specific query.
The total number of leads generated by your content marketing efforts is a good indication of how your content is succeeding in generating potential customers.
2. Conversion rate
Lead generation is definitely part of your overall conversion rate, but conversions reflect the proportion of visitors who take a certain step in the sales funnel after reading your content, as opposed to leads, which track a specific number of prospects.
In order to calculate your conversion rate, you have to divide your total audience figure by the number of users who performed an action, and multiply this by 100.
This gives you the percentage of people your content is converting.
You could, for example, notice that you “only” have 53 leads, which may seem quite low.
But if you calculate your conversions and realize you have a 91% conversion rate, you’ll know that your content is working in your favor.
Of course, the above scenario will also tell you that you need to work on increasing your overall number of website visitors in order to see greater content marketing success.
3. Cost of acquisition
While your content marketing efforts can certainly help you attract potential customers, you also need to keep track of the expenses of doing so.
If, for example, you gain $1000 in revenue from a new client but it costs you $10,000 to get the client, your content marketing efforts may be failing.
In order to calculate your average customer acquisition cost, you need to divide the cost of your marketing campaign by the number of customers it brings in.
If your average revenue per customer exceeds your cost, you’ll know that your content marketing strategy is successful.
4. Total revenue
Of course, total revenue is always worth calculating as well, and a successful content marketing strategy will generate more money than it costs.
To calculate total revenue, you need to divide net revenue by total expenditure.
It is worth remembering that content marketing usually takes longer than traditional marketing methods to deliver results. This is because it takes time to build up content and strong social media pages.
So don’t be discouraged if it feels like your content marketing strategy is failing at first — you may only reap the rewards a few months down the road.
Rating your content marketing success
By paying attention to the above metrics, you can better understand your content marketing successes and figure out what is and isn’t working for you.
And if you need help creating engineering content that will help you succeed, contact me to assist.
Content Marketing Success FAQs
While SEO is only one aspect of content marketing, it is a really important one and influences your total page views and overall keyword rankings significantly. These two metrics further influence most of the other metrics you’ll want to consider, including lead generation and conversion rates. So, focusing on SEO is vital for your content marketing success.
It’s worth looking at the metrics elaborated upon in this article quite regularly — at least once a quarter — to ensure you’re on track. If you’re noticing that your content marketing plan isn’t quite working as you’d hoped, you can then change course and try other ideas that may help you achieve success.
Metrics can give you a good indication of the success of your content, but it’s also worth listening to direct feedback. Do you have customers complimenting your work? Or are you getting some complaints or suggestions? It’s always worth listening to what your current customers are saying.
