You probably already understand the importance of inbound marketing for lead generation, and as such, have put effort into promoting your blog, building your social media presence, and more.
But do you know how much value you’re really getting from these inbound marketing efforts?
An effective inbound marketing strategy is key to generating leads and conversions. And to ensure your marketing plan is working as intended, it’s important to learn how to measure content marketing ROI by tracking revealing metrics.
Let’s take a look at what your focus should be, along with the five content marketing metrics that matter most when measuring the impact of your inbound marketing campaign.
Increase Inbound Marketing ROI
Content marketing ROI allows you to see the results that are produced by your inbound marketing efforts, but these results aren’t always represented by dollar signs. Some may be focused on building brand awareness, while others’ efforts are dedicated to increasing direct sales.
Whatever your inbound marketing goals are, there are a few particularly important factors that you can look at to help improve your ROI:
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Conversion rates (purchases/sales)
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Consumption rates (pages visited, session length, etc.)
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Social engagement (likes, views, shares, etc.)
Content marketing metrics that relate specifically to these three categories should be your main focus when measuring the ROI of your inbound marketing strategy.
5 Key Content Marketing Metrics
When you open up Google Analytics, you’ll be greeted by countless stats and metrics relating to your website’s performance, user behavior, and more.
Not all of these analytics are essential, though. If you’re trying to determine the ROI of your inbound marketing efforts, here are the content marketing metrics that matter most.
1. Website Traffic
Your brand’s website is the key to your inbound marketing efforts. It’s where you house the content that draws in visitors and eventually converts them into customers.
One of the easiest ways to measure the effectiveness of your website is to monitor its traffic, including:
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Total visitors
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Traffic sources
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Session duration
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User engagement
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Changes in organic traffic
You can find where your visitors are coming from via Google Analytics by clicking Acquisitions > Overview.
Referral traffic, in particular, grants insight into which of your inbound marketing efforts generate the most value. Increases in referral traffic typically indicate that customers find value in your content and are interested in your brand.
Use this data to adjust your marketing efforts to focus on the channels that are generating the most high-value visitors to your website.
2. Social Media Engagement
Social media is a necessary and effective tool for building brand awareness, increasing web traffic, and generating conversions.
To determine whether or not your social media campaigns are impactful, focus on user engagement, such as likes, shares, comments, etc. Twitter, for instance, even lets you click on individual tweets to see more detailed information about impressions and clicks.
When reviewing this information, keep the following questions in mind:
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Which platforms are most effective at reaching your target audience?
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What times during the day see the most engagement?
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What type of content is encouraging engagement (i.e., microblogs, stories, videos, infographics, etc.)?
It’s important to carefully plan your social media content to achieve targeted results and direct certain users to the content they will get the most value out of. For example, you may want to redirect Twitter users to your brand’s blog to get more information, while you might send LinkedIn referrals directly to a sales page.
3. Conversion Rate and Sales Tracking
One of the most important and informative content marketing metrics for determining ROI is your conversion rate. How many visitors are turning into leads, and how many leads are turning into paying customers?
Comparing sales and revenue to total website visitors is an easy way to tell if your inbound marketing efforts provide real value to potential customers.
Google Analytics also lets you create custom goals, which you can use to set and track sales goals. By doing this, you’ll be able to see what percentage of website visitors actually make a purchase.
You can also take a look at the path these visitors took through your website to get to the point of purchase, giving you valuable insights into which pages are successfully nurturing leads.
4. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a simple content marketing metric for evaluating the effectiveness of your landing pages and website content. Bounces are single-page viewing sessions, and your bounce rate is the total number of bounces divided by total visits.
High bounce rates can be attributed to a variety of factors:
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Low-quality landing pages
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Poor site navigation
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Low-value content
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Poor loading times (per HubSpot, after five seconds of loading, conversion rates drop by over 4 percent for each additional second)
Generally, high bounce rates indicate a poor user experience, while multiple page visits during a single session signifies a high-quality lead. Reducing bounce rates can help increase conversions and your inbound marketing ROI.
5. Email Engagement Rates
Your email list is one of the most valuable marketing materials you possess. Anyone who has opted in to your email list is a potential customer and can be guided toward conversions. An email marketing campaign is a great way to deliver high-quality, relevant content directly to existing and potential customers.
You can track email opens and clicks to see what type of content your audience is most interested in, and you can utilize this information to create valuable content that guides readers toward the next step of the sales funnel.
