Content marketing has changed the entire marketing game in recent years, but marketers still measure its effectiveness through sales. Leads, sales, page views, and social metrics; there are many ways to measure the effectiveness of your content, but are they really effective? Do they really inform you about what’s going on behind the scenes? Your social reach and page views can give valuable insights as well, but they are not enough to accomplish your content marketing goals.
If you want to achieve your marketing with your goals, having a content marketing analytics strategy is a must-have. As a marketer, you might already be using Google Analytics but that’s quite technical.
Luckily, from the most popular Google Analytics, to paid tools like HubSpot, Buffer, Semrush, All-in-one SEO, and Moz, there are plenty of good content marketing analytic tools to choose from. They can do much more than just reporting page views, likes, and shares. Which of these tools you should use to gain insights into your content marketing might vary depending on your strategies and campaigns.
Why are content marketing analytics considered a content marketer’s oxygen?
The Content Marketing Institute recently conducted a survey in which 90% of the respondents, who were from top content marketing firms, admitted that they regularly measure the performance of their content, and that this helped them maximise their positive outcomes.
As a content marketer, data and analytics should drive decisions about how your content marketing campaigns and strategies will be structured. What is the data more specifically?
- Web traffic
- Traffic sources
- Organic traffic
- Sessions
- Bounce rate
- Engagement
- Social media engagement & interaction
- Post engagement (likes & comments)
- SERP ranking
- Leads and conversion
There is an abundance of data that you can collect from analytics tools, but what is the use of this data? These insights can answer several questions such as:
- Are your current marketing efforts working?
- What type of content does your audience like the most?
- What type of content is not relevant to your readers?
- What are the flaws in your ongoing content marketing strategy?
- What blogs/pages are most effective and generate most traffic?
- Which posts/creatives are generating the most conversions?
The answers to these questions will help you build a sound strategy for your long-term content marketing plans. Content marketing analytics help you measure the effectiveness of your content and its effect on meeting your organisational goals.
However, to make the most of the data and simplify your analysis, you’ll have to set your content Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are directly linked to your goals. Add them to your content marketing analytic reports to measure the impact of your content marketing strategy.
Take a sneak peek inside the realm of the content marketing game
According to an EY report, the Indian media and entertainment sector stood at Rs. 1.61 trillion in 2021 and is estimated to reach Rs. 2.32 trillion in 2024. While most marketers go for paid marketing because content marketing requires consistency, some brands have nailed it and made content marketing look absolutely effortless. In recent years, the way consumers used to access and share information has changed. So brands need to design a content marketing strategy that drives conversion, engages, inspires and enhances brand value.
Heard about Airbnb? In February 2022, Airbnb released a video campaign named “made possible by hosts”. The company initiated this campaign to highlight the magical experiences that Airbnb hosts brought to guests. Further, the company invested next to nothing for the execution of this campaign. They just took real videos and photographs from guests and put them in a video named “Sense of Nostalgia”. This campaign engaged over 3 million people worldwide and just a single video have over 3.5 million views.There are many other famous brands like Dominos, Dunkin Donuts, Rezdy, Nike, etc. that are driving huge success through content marketing only. What made these brands’ content so successful? The idea of liquid and linked content.
Liquid ideas refer to those campaigns that are creative, engaging and contagious., allowing these brands to create their own identity. At the same time, brands link this content to a company’s business objectives, goals and consumers’ interests. This revolutionary marketing approach is termed as liquid and linked – a win-win for both consumers and brands.
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Smart ways to use content marketing analytics tools to ace your content marketing game
When it comes to publishing effective content with far reaching impact, R&D alone is not enough. Your content needs to be strategic. In today’s evolving marketplace, you need content that is purposeful, accurate, and smoothly meets the users’ needs. Moreover, actual content marketing is no longer just sales-oriented. The primary goal of content today is engagement and entertainment. Therefore, it is important to set goals and analyse your content to set and then keep it on the right track.
Start by setting up conversion goals
For any brand, utilizing content marketing analytics tools is the top priority to ensure that its content reaches and engages the maximum audience. Though most content marketers are measuring conversion through metrics like sales and subscription, that is just the tip of the iceberg. By using content marketing analytics tools, you can track your consumers’ journeys and align it with your content marketing strategy. When you start mapping out the consumer journey with the help of content marketing analytics tools, you’ll find multiple conversion points that you can track.
Whatever your conversion events are, content marketing analytics tools should be used to track them in line with your content, to touch the most impactful areas of your growth. Your conversion goals might vary depending on the nature of your business and industry. For example, if you’re a Youtube content creator, using content marketing analytics tools to track video open rate and views could be considered conversion metrics. By leveraging content marketing analytics tools, you can get a better understanding of your audience, their behaviors, and what content resonates with them. This information is invaluable for creating a content marketing strategy that is both effective and efficient. Content marketing analytics tools can help you identify gaps in your content strategy and optimize it to drive better results. In summary, using content marketing analytics tools is essential for any brand looking to maximize the reach and engagement of their content, and ultimately drive growth.
Get insights from all your marketing platforms
Do you know Coca Cola sells and markets its products and services in over 200 nations, but despite having a diverse consumer base it creates and delivers relevant content every time? Reports have stated that Coca Cola and many giant content players in the marketers leverage Artificial Intelligence and ML-powered analytics tools to get insights into customer behaviour that help them deliver tailored content.
If your marketing is spanned across multiple platforms, you can bring it all together using analytics and tracking tools.
A/B test your content before it takes off
A/B testing is just another technique to determine whether or not your efforts are going in vain. Also termed as split testing, it offers a preview of your content to real users in a manner that helps you extract valuable insights and feedback. It helps avoid hit-and-miss content publication and makes one-size-fits-all solutions.
A/B testing is pretty straightforward as long as you have clear goals and a plan of action. Here’s how to perform it with minimum stress and hassle.
- Choose one variable from titles, layouts, images or the content itself.
- Before you put any plan into action, you must have a clear idea of your goals.
- Create equal random testing groups to ensure tests are relevant.
- Determine the metrics you’ve been looking for.
- Test per campaign and simultaneously.
Suppose you picked headings as a variable because that’s how the reader’s journey starts. Once you brainstorm and create 5-6 headlines, it’s time to close the two best ones. The best way to test the effectiveness of these is to share both with different sets of your live audience.Once you are sure about your goals, you can pick a tool to AB test your content. Yoast SEO, Google Search Console, SEMRush and Aherfs are the quickest and simplest ways to conduct AB testing of your content. While tools can help with A/B testing, the truth is that this can also be done manually.
Use UTM parameters
Analysing the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is way easier with Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMs) than you’ve ever thought before. These are customizable tracking parameters you can simply add to the end of a link. It helps you track the consumer journey like where they are coming from, what campaigns they are seeing and what sorts of content they are liking.
This is perhaps the easiest way to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. For instance, if an average site visitor converts at 3% but visitors coming from a UTM link are converting at 6%, you know that your campaign is working out.
Take accounting into social metrics while analysing your content growth
If you are mainly focused on social media then it becomes even more essential to have a social media content marketing analytics tool. Tools like Hootsuite, Google Analytics, UTM Parameters, Brandwatch etc, can help you create and share performance reports with anyone to figure out what is working and what’s not. It helps you strengthen your content marketing strategy at the macro and micro levels.
Social media content marketing analysis can answer the following questions:
- Is it worth it to keep posting on Pinterest?
- What were your top LinkedIn Posts this year?
- What should your next month’s Instagram schedule be like?
- Which platform drives the most traffic to your website
- What types of posts generate the highest engagement rate
It’s a lot to do… So what content marketing analytics tools can do this maths for you?
Content marketing analysis is crucial to the success of any content marketing campaign. By understanding the analytics behind your strategies, you can make informed decisions about how to improve your content and maximize its impact. Fortunately, there are many content marketing analysis tools available to help you achieve this.
HubSpot, Moz, and Google Analytics are all-in-one content marketing analysis tools that can provide you with insights into a wide range of metrics. From your blog posts, landing pages, and emails to your social media accounts, call-to-action, and more, these tools can help you understand how your content is performing and where you need to make improvements.
One of the key benefits of these tools is that they can help you identify the hot keywords that are driving traffic to your site. By analyzing your search engine rankings, you can see which keywords are performing well and which ones need more attention.
SERMrush, Ahrefs, Hootsuite, Clicky, Varvy, and Atomic Search are other content marketing analysis tools that can provide you with valuable insights. These tools can help you with everything from keyword research and SEO to lead management and advertising.
Overall, content marketing analysis is essential to the success of your content marketing campaign. By using the right tools and analyzing your data, you can make informed decisions about how to improve your content and drive more traffic to your site. So if you want to achieve your content marketing goals, be sure to invest in the right content marketing analysis tools.
