Measuring Content Marketing Is More Than Traffic Numbers
Content marketing has become a buzzword, often associated with increasing website traffic, social media followers, and other measurable metrics. But is there more to it than “make numbers on the dashboard go up?” Of course there is. You’re reading an article written by a content marketer. What did you expect?
When people hire a content marketer (or a content marketing agency like us), they want to go into Google Analytics and see increases in domain authority, click through rate (CTR), average time on page, backlinks, and keyword rankings. All good stuff, for sure, but bigger numbers don’t always mean better brand awareness or value. Furthermore, if the business isn’t orienting itself around these metrics, then what’s the point?
Content marketing builds real connections
Content marketing is a strategic initiative for building brand awareness, generating leads, and accomplishing real business goals. Most of our leads come to us asking us to write blogs, ebooks, and run social media, but discover in our first meeting that they’re thinking too small and tactically. Yeah, we like writing, but we truly live to see our clients succeed.
For example, one of our clients went to a major data and analytics conference. They’re relatively unknown (for now) and have a product that we think is going to be huge. They hosted a networking event with the intention of increasing their brand awareness. They planned on having 85 people show up, but our social media efforts were able to get 250 people to the event, hundreds of people coming to their booth, and contact info for some very compelling leads.
That’s success way beyond the analytics dashboard.
In another instance, I ghostwrote some technical articles that were published in Towards Data Science, a leading data analytics publication. The articles made their way to execs at a larger data company, which led to discussions that resulted in my client's acquisition.
These successes illustrate that content marketing is about reaching the right people, not just more people. As I like to tell our clients: It’s way more important to have the right 50 people visit your site than it is to have 500 or 5,000 people per month.
Content marketing uncovers hidden opportunities
Content marketing can also uncover hidden opportunities within a company. When we research and write about a client’s products and services, we often find knowledge gaps in between different teams. For example, the product, sales, and customer experience teams might be totally disconnected. They don’t have a shared understanding of what their customers are dealing with, what problems they are solving, or what they actually need from the product.
Usually when I find these gaps, I ask a few stakeholders, “Hey, did you know the product team is saying one thing and the sales team is saying another?” Then we’ll bring these people together to discuss and clarify the mixed messages, which leads to unified messaging.
I recently wrote some sales enablement materials because a sales team literally had no idea what they were selling. They knew the terminology, they could find the right leads, but they were almost entirely ineffective without a sales engineer on the call. I was able to write up a handful of documents that explained the product, why it exists, what features are most important, what prospects care about, and what keeps them up at night. The sales team was stunned to learn so much about their product!
Often our process involves running a half-day key message workshop that brings together stakeholders to discuss customer personas and pain points. You’d be shocked at how impactful these workshops are—our clients always tell us this after it’s over. Most executives don’t sit down for a few hours to discuss who their ideal customers are, what pain points they have, and how their product’s value helps relieve those pains.
Again, the process and the discipline of content marketing do much more than what you'd expect to see on a traditional dashboard.
Content marketing is a comprehensive discipline
Content marketing involves much more than writing blog articles and social media posts. It includes:
Developing a content strategy around business goals
Researching keywords
Assessing competitors and industry trends
Building a multi-channel content calendar (and then creating the content for that calendar)
Integrating messaging into all content
Giving a purpose to every piece
Optimizing content to meet business goals
A good content marketing team will help grow your business, not just deliver words (hence the slogan “beyond words” in our logo). Like, yeah, we write words all day long. But that’s not the point. The point is to grow your business.
Some content marketers will give you articles, and that’s great. A lot of companies need that. That’s not what we do.
How to work with a content marketing agency
Many clients don't fully understand content marketing when they start working with us. One of the most common questions we hear is, “What is a key message workshop? How does that work? What comes out of it?” It’s not the workshop concept that’s eluding them, but the “key message” part.
Most people just don’t know what a key message is. Once they do, they start talking about it all the time. Suddenly, I start hearing about key messages from C-levels who, at the beginning of our relationship, just thought of me as a blogger.
I’m lucky to work with such a smart and experienced marketer who’s taught me so much about this stuff. Now that I know what a key message is and how to tell a good one from a bad one, it’s all I can think about when I visit a website.
Education is key, and successful clients are those who understand content marketing. This includes aligning stakeholders and executive teams around the importance and purpose of content.
Think beyond traditional content marketing metrics
To truly understand the value of content marketing, you must think beyond simple metrics like, “12 articles per month” or “10 new followers per week.” It’s essential to think about the purpose of content and how it contributes to an overall strategy. Content can be just as important and performance-oriented as a feature in an app.
Apart from elevating brand awareness, content marketing provides several other intangible but business-crucial benefits:
Fosters customer trust by providing them with valuable information that they can use.
Strengthens relationships with clients by showing them that you are invested in their success.
Builds a loyal customer base by providing them with content that they find valuable and engaging.
Increases client retention and satisfaction by providing them with the information they need to be successful.
Demonstrates your expertise by providing readers with authoritative, useful, and entertaining information.
Improves employee morale by featuring them as thought leaders and subject matter experts on your website.
High-quality, engaging content shows your commitment to providing value beyond your products or services. This can help to reinforce clients’ decisions to choose your company over competitors.
Well-crafted content can alleviate readers’ confusion and help them make informed decisions. It can also reinforce a decision they’ve already made by addressing common questions or concerns, offering solutions to problems, or providing compelling proof of your products’ effectiveness.
Reaching content maturity
Content maturity varies among companies. Some companies are what I’d call “content-immature,” meaning they publish stuff… sometimes… kinda. You go to their blog and they had three posts last month, then there’s an eight-month gap, then they did a few articles in a batch, then nothing for another few months. They’re not really invested, they’re not taking it seriously, and they’re probably just putting stuff up when they feel like it.
Other companies are what I’d call “content-mature,” meaning they see how content contributes to their overall business goals, but it’s somewhere between the back burner and the front one. These companies have inconsistent messaging, but they’re publishing regularly. They’re not getting a lot of engagement, but they are getting some organic search benefits and other forms of growth. Content is working for them. Good on them.
“Content-expert” companies are rare. They’re the ones leading their respective industries. Two companies that come to mind are Fivetran (I’m thrilled to call them a client) and Hubspot. When clients ask me who “does this content stuff” really well, I always bring Fivetran up. They are constantly publishing helpful, thorough, high-quality articles. They speak to their audience. They don’t mess around. Their tone is exactly what their readers expect. They just do it all right.
Any company can become content-expert, but it requires hard work, discipline, and three easy payments of $99 (plus shipping and handling)—BUY NOW! In all seriousness, you typically do have to pay for high-quality content creation. It’s usually not something companies learn (or want) to do in-house, which is another reason why we exist.
Content marketing is more than just numbers
Yes, content marketing increases numbers and makes dashboards look more impressive. But it does a whole helluva lot more than that, too.
It's a multifaceted discipline that can build real connections, uncover hidden opportunities, educate clients, and contribute to overall business goals. Think beyond the numbers and focus on the deeper value of content. Content can lead to success in ways that would never show up on a dashboard.
Understanding this, it's important for businesses to invest thoughtfully in their content marketing strategies. Tailoring content to resonate with the target audience is a fundamental aspect of this approach. From creating educational pieces that answer common customer queries, to thought leadership articles that showcase industry expertise, each piece of content should serve a specific purpose.
Remember, the ultimate success of content marketing lies not only in reaching a wide audience but also in influencing and building meaningful relationships with them. In the end, it's about nurturing an audience that values your content, trusts your brand, and remains loyal in the long term.
