You just ran what you think is a brilliant content marketing campaign.
People loved it. Traffic was up. Maybe you even made a few sales off the back of it.
But how do you quantify its success?
The results of a paid media or organic search campaign are relatively easy to determine. Typically, the numbers speak for themselves.
It’s a little more difficult with content. There are so many variables.
We’re going to explain how to measure the success of your content.
What Were the Goals of Your Campaign?
Your goals will determine your content marketing strategy – as we recently talked about in another blog.
They’ll also determine your success.
Before your campaign kicks-off, you need to set out some KPIs that can be boiled down to actual figures.
How much organic traffic do you want to generate? How many links are you looking to earn? What about social engagements?
Having actual targets will make measuring success much easier.
Measuring the Success of a Scientific Content Campaign
The Goal – Generating Organic Traffic
So you’ve created a piece of content designed to earn leads through organic traffic.
The first thing to measure is how many visitors that piece of content had. This is easily done through Google Analytics.
You wanted traffic, right? So job done?
Not quite. You wanted organic traffic. So you need to check how many visits came through organic search (Google, Bing etc.).
After that, we’d recommend taking a look at whether the organic traffic came from keywords you were specifically targeting.
It’s good to have detailed information on why your content was working.
Now, for the most important part. You wanted qualified organic traffic. That means visits from people likely to convert.
So, did they convert? How many?
Again, you should break down conversions by organic traffic. Then you’ll know exactly how many people found your page through organic search, and converted into a customer.
And that’s exactly what the goal was.
Measuring the Success of a Creative Content Campaign
The Goal – Generating Brand Awareness
Now you’ve created a piece of content designed to increase brand awareness.
A bit more difficult. But achievable nonetheless.
Take a look at how many people visited the page, and discount those who came through organic and paid search.
If the content has been a success, it will be because it has generated traction on social media, and other websites.
So let’s focus on social media. There are countless tools out there that allow you to track how many times your content was shared on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and other platforms.
This number will give you an idea of how much brand awareness has been generated.
In addition, you can share the content yourself, on your company’s social media accounts, and look at the social analytics to see how many people your posts have reached.
These people might not have engaged with your content – but they’ve been made aware of it, at least. And isn’t that the goal?
Measuring the Success of an Educational Content Campaign
The Goal – Earning High-Authority Backlinks
This time you’ve created a piece of content designed to earn high-authority backlinks.
It’s quite easy to measure if you’ve set out a target beforehand.
First, determine what a high-authority backlink is to you. Is it a link from a website with a Domain Authority of at least 40? 50? 60?
(You can use the Moz toolbar to see the Domain Authority of a website. Links from a website with a high Domain Authority are more valuable.)
Then think about how many you want to achieve.
Most good comprehensive SEO tools will inform you of how many backlinks your content has earned. Here at The Source, we use SEMrush.
The format of an education piece of content can often be an ebook, or a whitepaper.
If that’s the case, and you make it available for people to download, then the number of times is does get downloaded is also a good measure of success.
Just remember to have a target in mind.
As you might have guessed, the goals you decide on before launching your campaign are crucial. Without them, how do you know if you’ve met targets, or under/over achieved?
Again, here is our blog on How Your Goals Determine Your Content Marketing Strategy.
Give it a read, and tell us what you think!
