person at computer monitoring content marketing engagement

Feb 17, 2023

4 Content Marketing KPIs That Enhance Stakeholder Buy-In

by Joseph Wells

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Developing an effective content marketing strategy is a challenging process, but it's made even more difficult when you don't know what to measure.

You can't improve what you don't measure.

In this post, we will highlight four fundamental key performance indicators (KPIs) that are essential to emphasize and prioritize in order to obtain stakeholder buy-in. Buy-in provides necessary support, resources, and commitment required to ensure that the plan is executed successfully.

As such, we will discuss how each of these KPIs can be utilized to ensure that the organization's goals and objectives are fully aligned with the content marketing plan, ultimately leading to increased engagement, conversion, lead generation, and revenue growth.

But first, let’s refresh on what content marketing is, who it is for, and how to extract value for your business. In the process, we will identify who your stakeholders are and how to best serve them.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Content marketing strategy can include various media, assets, and channels including:

Blogging
Social Media
Video Marketing
Email Marketing
Webinars
Podcasts
Infographics
Case Studies
eBooks
Whitepapers
Newsletters

When executed properly, content marketing can effectively connect your business with your target audience by catering to their needs. Through crafting content that is both valuable and relevant, you can resonate with your audience and provide them with solutions, ultimately increasing their receptiveness to your brand's messaging.

By strategically optimizing and distributing this content across various channels like organic search, social media, and email, you can build multi-touchpoint campaigns that maximize your reach and engagement.

Who benefits from your content?

image-showing-business-stakeholders-in-content-marketing

As an integral component of the content marketing approach, achieving stakeholder buy-in is pivotal to any successful strategy. Thus, when devising a content marketing plan, it is crucial to take into account the various stakeholders involved.

Stakeholders of a company are individuals who have a vested interest in the success and operations of the business. These stakeholders can include employees, customers, suppliers, investors, community members, and other relevant parties.

Putting forethought into who your content is intended for will direct what content you will produce. This process will guide the content marketing KPIs that matter most to your business.

The 4 content marketing KPIs that matter most

If you want to know how effective your content marketing efforts are, you need to measure the right metrics. The use of a

content gap analysis

can help to explore the competitive landscape and echo content themes relevant to your audience. It’s a great place to start topic prospecting when building a content marketing plan.

Every business is unique, but that doesn’t mean that marketing objectives and performance indicators change. For B2B businesses, there are four common content marketing KPIs your team should be tracking:

Website Traffic:

One of the most important KPIs for content marketing is website traffic. By measuring the number of visitors to your website, you can gauge the effectiveness of your content in attracting and engaging your audience.

Some questions to consider:

Where does traffic come from?
What keywords do users search when they find your site?
What's the bounce rate of visitors who find your site through search engines?
Does more traffic mean more leads and sales?

Engagement Metrics:

Engagement metrics are another key indicator of the success of your content marketing efforts. These metrics include the number of likes, comments, shares, and retweets on social media, as well as the number of clicks and time spent on your website.

Some questions to consider:

Are users engaging with your content?
How far are they scrolling?
How long do they spend on each page?
How often do people share, comment, or click on your content?
How often do they return to your site after leaving it?

Conversion Rate:

Conversion rate is a critical KPI that measures how many visitors to your website become customers. By tracking this metric, you can assess the effectiveness of your content in driving leads and sales.

Some questions to consider:

What path are users taking to convert?
What device is the audience primarily converting through? What channel?

Return on Investment (ROI):

ROI is a critical KPI for content marketing because it measures the financial impact of your efforts. By calculating the ROI of your content marketing campaigns, you can determine the profitability of your investments and make data-driven decisions about future content strategies.

Some questions to consider:

Are people buying things from you after clicking an ad or reading an article on your site?
Are they signing up for demos or calls with sales reps?

Content Marketing KPIs: website traffic

Have you ever wondered why your website isn't as successful as you'd like it to be?

It might be because you don't have enough data about how people use your site.

Behavioral analytics

lets you better understand how many people are interacting with your site and the pages that bring them to the site in the first place. It also enables you to learn which pages they engage with the most. These also play a part in how search engines match your page relevancy to a search query.

Metrics for behavioral analytics include:

Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who click on a link within your content.
Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page.
Time on site: The average amount of time that visitors spend on your site.
Pages per session: The number of pages that visitors view during a single session.
Social media engagement: The number of likes, shares, and comments on your content across social media channels.
Email open rate: The percentage of people who open your marketing emails.
Conversion rate: The percentage of people who take a desired action after engaging with your content.
Customer retention rate: The percentage of customers who continue to use your product or service after their initial purchase.

Tools used to measure behavioral analytics:

Not sure where to start or how to use behavior analytics tools?

Let’s chat!

Content Marketing KPIs: engagement metrics

Content engagement metrics are the most important when looking at the effectiveness of your content marketing campaigns and overall strategy. The engagement metrics reflect how much you connect with your audience, so they're essential to track. These metrics can be used for social media content and blog content.

Metrics to measure content engagement are:

Likes: The number of people who have interacted positively with the content by clicking the "like" or "favorite" button.
Shares/Retweets: The number of times the content has been shared on social media platforms.
Comments/Replies: The number of comments or replies left by users on the content.
Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked on a link included in the content.
Impressions: The number of times the content has been seen by users.
Reach: The total number of unique users who have seen the content.
Engagement rate: The percentage of people who engaged with the content out of the total number of people who saw it.
Conversion rate: The percentage of people who took a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase, after interacting with the content.
Followers/subscribers: The number of people who have chosen to follow or subscribe to the content creator's account or page.
Brand mentions: The number of times the brand name has been mentioned in user-generated content.

Tools to measure content engagement metrics:

If you're looking for ways to increase your content engagement rate, make sure that your posts are relevant to the audience. Don't be afraid to try new things! If something works, keep doing it. And use call-to-actions in your content and encourage readers to share their experiences with others on social media.

Hey, did you know that Hubspot is a powerful marketing and sales tool beyond metrics?

READ MORE

Content Marketing KPIs: conversion

Conversion events happen all the time, usually across multiple channels and marketing touchpoints. KPIs that focus on conversion are essential to measure the effectiveness of a content marketing strategy.

These metrics can provide insights into how well the content is engaging and persuading the audience to take the desired action. Conversion rate, one of the most crucial KPIs, indicates the percentage of website visitors who take a specific action, such as filling out a form or making a purchase.

It is important to set up the events you want to track prior to beginning a content marketing strategy so you can monitor conversion during the strategy execution phase.

These metrics include:

Conversion rate: The percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as filling out a form or making a purchase.
Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who leave a website after only viewing one page, indicating a lack of engagement or relevance.
Time on page: The amount of time visitors spend on a particular page, which can indicate the level of interest and engagement with the content.
Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who click on a link or call-to-action (CTA), indicating the effectiveness of the copy and design of the CTA.
Cost per acquisition (CPA): The amount of money spent to acquire a new customer or lead, which can help determine the ROI of the content marketing strategy.

Tools to use for SEO outcomes metrics:

Content Marketing KPIs: return on investment

You can drive traffic and engage your target audience by delivering engaging, exciting content. And as you deliver this compelling content over time, it also enables you to build relationships that lead to revenue opportunities.

While sales may not always be directly applicable to the content, there are several financial metrics you should be tracking.

Content marketing revenue metrics are as follows:

Cost per lead: The cost associated with generating one lead, which can be calculated by dividing the total cost of a campaign by the number of leads generated.
Customer lifetime value (CLV): The predicted revenue a customer will generate over the course of their relationship with your business, which can help determine the value of each new customer acquisition.

Tools to use for content marketing revenue:

Now What?

Determine how to make the right measures visible, then set up a reporting system that helps you communicate results.

Once you've identified the right metrics to track and report on, it's important to ensure that everyone on your team is on the same page.

Make sure the KPIs are relevant, measurable, and accessible to stakeholders. They must also be time-bound so that you can track progress over time and make adjustments as needed.

Finally, they should be actionable so that each stakeholder knows how they can help achieve those goals.

An effective reporting system is key to communicating results and building stakeholder buy-in. When you set up a reporting system, you'll be able to show progress toward achieving your goals. You can also use the data to identify areas where you need improvement or additional resources to reach those goals.

Conclusion

Metrics are essential tools that help measure the success of your content marketing strategy. KPIs serve as a bridge between actions and outcomes. While they may not be the most critical aspect of measurement for every stakeholder, they provide a tangible means of demonstrating the amount of work being done in this area and its relevance to organizational goals.

It's important to choose KPIs that are both relevant and significant to your team, ensuring that they're not arbitrarily set up.

Not sure where to start? Let’s set up a Discovery Call where we will discuss your current content marketing strategy and provide custom solutions.

4 Content Marketing KPIs That Enhance Stakeholder Buy-In

What is content marketing?

Who benefits from your content?