Posted by Ben Kniffen in Uncategorized
You’ve developed an awesome B2B content marketing strategy and are regularly producing valuable content for all your prospects to see.
But what metric(s) are you tracking to ensure that your efforts are ACTUALLY producing results?
You’ll to have to look at a few different metrics in order to determine the overall effectiveness of your content plan. Let’s look at a few of the big ones that you’ll definitely want to consider.
Reach
It’s great that you have a ton of awesome content to share with your prospects, but how much of that content is actually reaching them?
This metric allows you to determine how big your potential pool of prospects is. From there you’ll be able to see what social channels (Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/etc) are the most effective in reaching those prospects.
How to Measure
Tracking the reach of your content can be as simple as looking at how many connections you have on LinkedIn, likes on your Facebook page, Twitter followers, blog subscribers, etc.
You can manually keep track of this data or take advantage of the free analytics reports on the social networking sites.
Consumption
Consumption metrics track how many of your prospects consume your content. Whether it’s page views, downloads, unique visits, or bounce rates.
Establishing how often your prospects are consuming the content and what channel they used to find the content will go a long way in determining the VALUE of your marketing investment.
How to Measure
Google Analytics, or any similar web analytics program, can easily track and organize this information for you- allowing you to use the data to your advantage.
Once you have this data organized you will be able to easily determine if your content engages your prospects and has them coming back for more.
Sharing 
Sharing metrics are important when determining brand awareness and customer/prospect engagement.
It answers the question: How often are consumers of your content sharing it with others? This can include likes, shares, retweets, comments, etc.
How to Measure
All of your content should be easy to share and include share counters at the top and/or side of every piece of content. This will easily indicate how many times a piece of content has been shared on the various social platforms.
Tracking tools, like Google Analytics, can also help provide some more in-depth info that might be of use to your organization.
While sharing metrics are important to measure, don’t get too caught up on how many “likes” your last Facebook post has. It doesn’t determine the true value of your marketing investment.
Lead Generation
Lead Gen metrics measure how often your content consumers develop into quantifiable leads. Not all content will result in a direct lead…and that’s OK.
But it’s important to look at how your OVERALL content strategy contributes to lead generation behavior.
Use lead capture forms and set up Cookies on your site to track what pages your prospects viewed before they have filled out your lead gen form.
How to Measure
Again, Google Analytics is your friend here. It allows you to set up specific goals for your lead capture forms and can track what platform(s) the lead came from.
It helps to assign a specific dollar amount to actions that don’t yield immediate revenue. Google Analytics allows you to create customized reports that will clearly define the monetary goals for each piece of your content. You’ll easily be able to see whether or not you are reaching your target numbers.
To step your game up even more, consider marketing automation software and apps, such as Infusionsoft, Marketo, Hubspot, or Buzz Builder.
Sales
This metric allows you to determine how many of your content consumers are turning into clients.
Is your business actually making any money from this whole content marketing thing? I mean, that’s the entire point – to grow your business and meet your sales goals. #AmIRite
How to Measure
You should be tracking conversions rates AND close rates through your CRM system. Make sure your CRM system is able to track the ENTIRE sales process- starting with what path a prospect took to fill out a lead from.
If your current CRM system doesn’t do this, figure out a way to ensure that it does. This will help you see which kind of content is directly involved in closing a sale.
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Content marketing has proven to be an essential part to any B2B marketing strategy. By tracking these metrics, your business will have an effective and accurate measuring system for your content marketing strategy.
Is your company currently tracking any of these metrics? What other metrics would you add to the list?