7 Content Marketing KPIs to Track
A key performance indicator (KPI) is any measurable value that helps you determine whether you are on course to achieve your objectives. Like any other business strategy, a content marketing strategy needs to have clearly defined goals. But it’s not easy to track those goals without well-established content marketing KPIs. For example, let’s say you want to increase your organic traffic. It’s difficult to monitor that if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
7 Content Marketing KPIs to Monitor
Image via Unsplash by Myriam Jessier
A good KPI is one that gives you a direct and measurable value of your content marketing progress. But knowing which ones to track often depends on your main goals and objectives. Here are seven common key-performance indicators to pay close attention to:
1. Unique Website Visitors
It might seem like an obvious place to start, but websites place so much emphasis on visitor numbers for a good reason — it’s a good content marketing KPI for measuring lead generation. Lead generation involves attracting people from your target audience to your site. After all, if your content isn’t reaching new people, then it doesn’t matter how good that content is. Most common web analytics tools, including Google Analytics, can track unique page visits.
But a challenge with this KPI is that it’s difficult to get 100% accurate data. For example, one person might visit the same blog post using two different devices. Most analytics tools regard this as two unique visits, which isn’t exactly accurate. It’s difficult to gauge the potential for inaccuracy in determining unique visitors, but you should realize that such a potential exists. However, as a basic measure of how well you generate leads with your content, unique page visits is an important KPI.
2. Social Media Engagement
Social media engagement is an important part of any modern website’s content marketing strategy. The particular social media metrics that give an indicator of how much people engage with your posts are likes, shares, clicks, and comments. Low social media engagement means that not very many people pay attention to your messages, which can say a lot about your content marketing strategy.
You need to compel people to become interested in what you have to say, encouraging them to engage with it. But that’s often easier said than done. It’s challenging to figure out exactly what your audience wants to see. Not to mention finding new ways to get it in front of their face. Luckily, you don’t have to do it all by yourself.
CopyPress has a team of content marketing experts who can analyze your target audience and help you create content that attracts them to your site. With our network of over 2,757 writers and editors, we can help you create content, no matter the size of the campaign. Schedule a call with us today to see how we can increase your organic traffic and boost your marketing efforts. You can publish the content we write to your website, a particular landing page for a campaign, or your social media channels for increased interest in your brand.
3. Device Visits
Website visits organized by the type of device which viewed them are very useful. That’s because it can help you see if you’ve optimized your content for mobile and desktop browsing. For example, let’s say your email sign-up form doesn’t look great on mobile devices. You might see that more of your desktop visitors sign up for your newsletter compared to your mobile visitors.
Google Analytics, or any other web analytics tool, can break down the visitors to your site according to the device they use. From there, you can search for disparities across devices. In the case of the above example, you can figure out how to update your mobile sign-up form and improve your conversion rate.
4. Time on Page
Tracking the average amount of time users spend on different pages of your site is another useful way to measure content engagement. Unique visits alone don’t tell you enough information about the content, particularly if your audience believes it’s high quality. A detailed 20-page white paper you write might get 30,000 unique visits, but if people only spend an average of 15 seconds browsing that white paper, then it’s not an effective piece of content. The truth is that highly engaged people take the time to read through content because they are interested in what you have to say.
Tracking time spent per page can give you the information you need to improve your content. In the above example, you could shorten the white paper so that people are more inclined to read it in full. That could improve the content marketing KPI for your white paper. An alternative corrective action might be to write a better introduction to the white paper that draws more people in. Whatever the case, tracking this KPI is important in understanding the level of engagement people show with the content you produce.
5. Total Traffic by Channel
Total traffic is a useful content marketing KPI to track because it helps to identify areas where your content performs the best. You can then devote more of your content marketing efforts to these areas to see even better conversions. For example, let’s say you spend a significant portion of your content marketing budget on paid advertising, but most of your visits come from organic searches. You can update your strategy to reflect these results and spend less on advertisements.
6. Keyword Rankings
When you write content, you normally do so with certain keywords in mind. Choosing keywords is an important aspect of optimizing your website for search engines. Sometimes, the content you write will rank well in search engines for your chosen keywords, and sometimes it might not. Your content might even rank for phrases that are different from those you intended it to rank for in the first place.
It’s a good idea to track the keywords that drive the most engagement to your website’s pages. It’s also helpful to understand if you’re currently experiencing any gaps in your content marketing strategy. A great way to do that is through a content analysis. CopyPress now offers a content analysis tool that compares your website with your top three competitors. Request your analysis today to find new keyword opportunities you can rank for.
“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”
Kevin Doory
Director of SEO at Auto Revo
7. Email Click-Through Rate
Email marketing is an important part of any company’s content marketing strategy. The click-through rate is an effective KPI because it allows you to check whether people engage with your emails by clicking on the links within them.
Whereas open rates only tell you if people open your emails, the click-through rate gives more accurate information on engagement. After all, people who click links in emails tend to do so because the email has engaged them enough to take further action. There are many email marketing services available online, and most of them provide a measurement of click-through rates.
If you want to implement an effective content marketing strategy, you need to find good ways of measuring the progress of your goals. Key-performance indicators provide direct feedback on your content marketing efforts. Not all KPIs are created equally, though. It’s important for you to identify the measurements worth tracking and focus on them, disregarding measurements that don’t directly relate to your marketing objectives.
CopyPress writer
More from the author:
