A report from IDG Enterprise suggests that marketers using website content to build awareness and improve conversions on the web are expanding the metrics they use to determine the success of their campaigns. With content marketing, it’s difficult to assess the value of a strategy by solely measuring the number of products and services sold, so web traffic, lead generation and other metrics have become more important for marketers.
According to the study, 64 percent of companies using content marketing measure web traffic to determine the success of their campaigns, and 59 percent use page views or content downloads to gauge success. Many organizations rely on their website content to drive SEO as well, yet only one-quarter said steady improvement on search rankings are important to determine the value of certain content, suggesting organic traffic takes precedence. Additionally, 52 percent of marketers judge content success based on the quality of leads.
Brafton recently highlighted a report from the Content Marketing Institute that urged companies to create several different types of web content to offer a multichannel conversion funnel. As such, IDG’s findings that marketers have shifted the way they measure the success of strategies to include both hard numbers, such as conversions and lead generation, and web metrics, such as traffic and prospect engagement, shows many understand the value of content to improve awareness and visibility. While the figure was small, the study also found that about 5 percent of companies don’t measure their content marketing strategies.
Failing to determine which parts of a web campaign are successful and which need adjustments can result in wasted investment or an unoptimized web presence. As one-third of respondents said they work with external agencies to create content, marketers should remember to find partners who offer analytics reports, tracking their unique success metrics to ensure they’re getting maximum ROI.
