You have, by now, learnt the related stats about Content marketing, which costs 62% less than traditional marketing. So you have done everything you could to build an efficient strategy for your business and now you are waiting for the results. But, how do you know whether your content plan is working in favor of your company or not? This is precisely where the content marketing metrics come into the picture.
Here are 10 metrics that you must use to track your content marketing strategy!
1) Social Shares
The number of people using social media worldwide in 2024 is 3.196 billion, and therefore it comes as no surprise that in today’s world, social media can be counted as one of the most influencing tools for content marketing. You already know that the best way to reach your potential customers is through Facebook, Instagram and likewise. Now how do you track your online presence and influence? You can keep track of how many times your content has been shared. The number of social shares will show you how useful your post was. Also, you must consider the number of followers and subscribers your company has. If you see a decline in your followers, you will know that your content needs to be written with more finesse and you may want to consider using a plagiarism checker too.
2) Back-links and Inbound Links
Backlinks add more SEO value, and therefore backlinks should be considered an indispensable metric. Make sure you check which sites are linked with your web pages or blogs or other forms of content. To do this all you need to do is go to the Google Search Console and select the option Search Traffic and then select the Links to Your Site. Also, check whether your content has been plagiarised in the post that has used your post as a backlink. Use professional editing and proofreading tools to ensure.
3) Leads Generation
As a marketer or as an entrepreneur, you are already aware of the fact how leads support your business. This makes lead generation an important metric that you must track to check whether your marketing goals are being optimized or not. However, when you calculate lead generation, do take email signups, form submissions into account along with blogs. Make it a point to track the number of leads that are generated by the conversion of subscribers or followers into buyers. Remember that the leads generated from organic search traffic are more cost-effective and therefore more important than the paid versions. The more the percentage of leads from an organic source, the better for you as that indicates the success rate of your marketing strategy.
4) Traffic Drive
The traffic on your website proves how engaging your content is. Also, when you track the footfall on your pages, you get to understand the source of the traffic. For example, two similar services sites like Myassignmenthelp and Allessaywriter can have related content on it, but one gets traffic for all kinds of assignments, but the other gets it for essays only. You get an insight into what type of content works for your users and what does not. Traffic calculation is an important metric, and you can use several tools that you can use to view the traffic and its sources. While Google Analytics should be your primary choice, you can check out the internet for other traffic tracking tools as well.
5) Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of the users who visit your website and leave. Every marketer dreads a bounce-off of visitors without contributing to the sales of your business. RankBrain is the Google algorithm that was developed to improve search results for users by analysing search intent and content relevancy. Tophomeworkhelper has been affected by bounce rate and its business down, RankBrain pushes down the websites that have a high bounce rate and considers them irrelevant. Now would you want that for your business website? To avoid having a poor SERP, you must keep track of the bounce rate for the content on your site. You can check the bounce rate per page of your website to see exactly which pages are making visitors hit the BACK button and you can alter them accordingly. A higher bounce rate will tell you about the quality and the relevancy of your content.
6) Page Views
Higher the rate of page views, higher is the chance of conversion of buyers. It is, therefore, crucial to calculate the number of views a page on your website has got from the visitors in a given session. When your page has a high ratio of views, you understand that your site successfully is engaging and informative enough. Page views can give you an insight into the traffic patterns for a specific point of time. You can also consider the unique visitors who have visited your website during a particular period so that you are certain that your content is being viewed and is bringing in new prospective users.
7) Session Duration
According to Hubspot, more than 50% of website users spend less than 15 seconds on a website, which does not generate a strong lead. The time spent on the pages of content on your website is what Session duration is all about. It is quite simple to understand – the longer a user spends on your site, the better will you know that he or she has found relevant and engaging content on your website. When the traffic for a page falls, you can take the hint here and make changes to your content strategies. At the same time, you should not rely on this metric a lot, as at times it may fail to reflect the exact figure. For instance, a user can land on a page in your website and then take a coffee break. The session duration will show as, but that will not be the actual case.
8) Comments and Engagement
Say, for example, one of your pictures on Facebook has more comments than another. What does that tell you? It is quite clear that the image with more comments is better received by the friends in your profile. The same goes for content on your site. Be it your official webpage or your company’s social media handle – the comments below on each post or link helps you to understand whether your content is likeable or not. The positive comments will tell you that you are going the right way, but the negative comments on your links will indicate that you should implement changes in your strategy. A reader who leaves a comment on your post has gone through your content and has found it useful.
9) Customer Retention Metric
Customer retention is a metric that reflects the loyalty of your customer. It shows how many visitors have come back to your website. Receiving new users of your content is important. However, it is more important to see whether you can retain your old users too. If the retention rate for your content is low, you will take the cue and understand that there is something wrong with your content that has stopped users from coming back to you. This metric helps you maintain a relationship with both your existing as well as new visitors. This also helps you in constructing a marketing campaign that is more beneficial for your business.
10) Click-Through Rate
The Click-through rate or more commonly known as CTR is a metric that tells you the difference in the impression that your blog or published content has created and the final click-throughs that it got. To calculate CTR, you can simply use the Search Analytics feature in Google Search Console. Just go to the option of Search Console Dashboard. From here, select the option Search Analytics and check in the Clicks, Impressions and the CTR boxes and the result will be shown clearly in a CTR report. CTR has a vital role to play in this list because it helps in determining leads generation too.
Content marketing offers a myriad of metrics that you can track to determine the success rate of your content marketing strategy. Out of all the options, make sure you use the ten parameters mentioned above to create a robust marketing strategy for your business. Tracking these performance indicators will help you optimise your content marketing strategy for better conversion.
