Content Marketing KPIs: An Introduction

The first step to ensuring that your marketing efforts are successful is understanding content marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and how they can help you assess your progress towards business goals. In this series, Seven Oaks Consulting’s writing team will help newcomers to content marketing KPIs better understand:

What content marketing key performance indicators are, and how can they be used
Metrics to measure for specific content types
Specific metrics for blog posts, social media posts and more
How to assess the significance of your metrics against KPIs

What Are Content Marketing KPIs?

Content marketing KPIs are measurable data that indicate the success of your content marketing strategy. If you have an effective campaign, it will populate positive data, which means you can replicate and scale that strategy.

But what if your content marketing campaign is not working? The negative data will help you understand where it is falling short so that you can fix the problem and improve ROI.

Key Performance Indicators Explained

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a quanitfiable measure that businesses use to gauge the success of your content marketing efforts. KPIs can be specific and narrow, like “increase conversion rates,” or broad and wide, like “generate leads.”

As you’re defining KPIs, keep in mind that some are better than others. While it’s important to have goals, they should be realistic and measurable, so they can tell you whether your content strategy is working.

Measure performance at different scales: micro-level (keywords), macro-level (posting cadence), competitive level (benchmarks for competitors), as well as intermediate levels between these three extremes. This allows for a more granular analysis of how different types of content perform under different circumstances based on your audience size and industry type (B2B vs B2C).

How to Create Good KPIs

To come up with solid KPIs, businesses must determine and decide:

The goals of your content marketing campaign.
What success looks like.
Which metrics to measure.
A frequency for measurement (i.e., daily, weekly).
A period for measurement (i.e., monthly, quarterly).
The source of data and how often you will update it (i.e. social media channels).

The Different Types of Metrics

Metrics are a powerful way to measure the performance of your content marketing. There are two distinct metrics:

Attribute Metrics measure the power and authority for specific actions. These include click-through rates, bounce rates, conversion rates, and more.
Outcome Metrics measure how well your content has performed against its goals. They can be used to determine if it was successful or not, which is useful for determining future actions based on that information.

How to Pick Which KPIs to Measure

As you begin to measure the success of your content marketing efforts, it is crucial to choose KPIs that are appropriate for your business and audience.

These tips will help you decide which KPIs are right for your business:

Be sure the KPI is relevant to your content strategy. For example, if you are focusing on converting visitors into leads and/or customers, then conversion rate as a KPI isn’t right for you because it doesn’t measure this. Instead, consider analyzing page views or click-through rates as KPIs.
Focus on what matters most to customers—not just what matters most internally at a company (i.e. revenue). If visitors are not finding value in what they are seeing online, they will not convert even if a company sells its products at a discount price point!

Determine KPIs Before Starting a Marketing Campaign

Before you can set up a content marketing campaign, identify your business goals and how they align with those of your target audience. Then, decide which KPIs will help

you gauge whether you have achieved these objectives. Without these metrics in place and organized by category—for example, social media engagement and lead generation—you will not be able to determine what is working in each area of your marketing strategy.

The first step is determining which metrics are important for measuring success (and failure). Determining this requires some structuring and evaluation of the following:

What is the desired result from running a content marketing campaign?
How much traffic should we get?
How many leads should we aim for?
What kind of customers do we want?
What content tactics do we need to achieve our marketing goals?
Which content marketing statistics should we focus on and why?

These answers should come from research before starting a new campaign, so there is no guesswork later when it is time for analysis.

Why Content Marketing KPIs are Necessary

Content Marketing KPIs are necessary for every business because they clearly show whether campaign goals are successful over time. Businesses can track if they are getting their desired results. This measure also lets you know if your target audience is seeing, engaging, and resonating with what you are putting out there. Finally, content marketing KPIs help brands understand if they are using the right channels to reach people.

Content Marketing KPIs are Integral to Business Growth

Many businesses are still hesitant to invest in content marketing. Without any kind of metric on which to base the success or failure of a campaign, it is tough to justify the investment.

But the truth is that content marketing KPIs can be extremely beneficial for businesses of all sizes and industries. They provide an understanding of what consumers want from you and how they perceive your brand. By showing what is and is not working, content marketing KPIs guide future marketing efforts so you are not operating in the dark.

With various content marketing KPIs available, it is essential to choose the ones that are right for your business objectives. Not sure where to start? Seven Oaks Consulting is here to help. Contact us to talk about your goals and how we can assist you with content marketing needs.