4 Content Marketing KPIs to Measure for Success in 2022

Content Marketing KPIs are very important for your online business growth

One of the most important tools you as a content marketer should utilize is by tracking (and measuring) various KPIs (key performance indicators) to gauge the success of your content marketing campaigns. But with so many different metrics out there, it can be difficult to know which ones are the most important.

In this blog post, we’ll define what are content marketing KPIs, why it’s necessary to identify your most important KPIs, why content marketers need to use KPIs, and how SaturnOne Content Marketing Analytics can help you in this endeavor.

We’ll also go over some of the top content marketing KPIs that you should be tracking to measure success. By monitoring these metrics, you will be able to get a better understanding of what is working and what needs improvement in your content marketing strategy.

What are KPIs?

Content marketing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are data that can be measured and analyzed over a given period of time using specific methods. Based on the results, the company follows a direction and implements processes towards growth.

Depending on the results of the given metrics (KPIs), the company can just repeat the process and further improve methods and strategies  if the results are positive. If it’s negative, the company refines (or replaces) the methodology to acquire more leads and conversions. Download the FREE eBook on “How to Double Your Monthly Recurring Revenue”

Identifying KPIs before implementing a content marketing campaign

Content marketing KPIs allows you to measure progress and set a standard for a successful content marketing campaign. This also allows you to be flexible in your marketing campaigns and conduct split testing.

In order to increase your probability of a successful campaign, you need to follow the following steps:

  • Define clearly your marketing campaign objectives.
  • Set specific content marketing KPIs to help determine if campaign is successful or not
  • Collect only specific data that matters 
  • Custom -make a content marketing strategy and tactics required to meet your marketing objectives
  • Utilize your KPIs to measure performance and further improve using the data

Why the need to track KPIs

Monitoring content marketing KPIs provides you a tremendous advantage over others who don’t.

By tracking and monitoring your KPIs, it allows you to see clearly where you’re at and where you’re headed in your marketing campaigns. 

Also, it gives you an idea whether your target audience sees and engages with the content you’re creating and posting.

Lastly, monitoring KPIs enables you to have an idea if you’re utilizing the right channels.

KPIs to Track in Measuring Content Marketing Success

1. Conversions

One of the most basic yet important KPIs to track is customer conversion. This metric will give you an idea of how much conversions your website is getting from your content marketing efforts. 

There are a few different ways to measure customer conversions, but one of the simplest is by looking at your number of paid customers whether it be subscription to your online courses, coaching program, or subscription to your software. 

This metric measures the number of people who actually take action or make a purchase (or make a repeat purchase) on your website in a given period of time. 

By using conversions as your number one metric, it allows you to measure how your content influences your readers to respond to your calls-to-action (CTAs) on your website. 

Conversions can also be a visitor downloading an eBook or report, signing up for the free trial, contacting your sales department, or registering in your paid subscriptions. 

Assuming the product is awesome and useful, there are a variety of factors that pushes a customer to make a purchase based on content: 

  • Copywriting words are well-crafted and well-written (compelling)
  • Content is educational and informational (helpful)
  • Content is attention-getting and entertaining
  • Customer is able to relate to the story in the content (emotional)
  • Content is specifically targeted (tailor-made)  to the ideal customers 

When you are subscribed to SaturnOne, there are two ways to know if your visitors are converting:

  1. We process the forms and can get the data from there. 
  2. We use the SaturnOne API to interface with your website where we can extract the data in given ways. 

Download the FREE eBook on “How to Double Your Monthly Recurring Revenue”

2. Content Attribution

Content attribution is a hard subject for many companies. Most are not familiar with attribution terms such as first touch of content attribution or last touch of content attribution. Given that most B2B sales and even lead generation efforts today can take up to 6 to 8 website visits over many months, some strategies may not be helpful to you. What you need is to know what content is working and where to spend your marketing dollars and time. 

When visitors convert to leads or customers, you may ask, what category of content or specific pieces of content were they engaged with? How many pieces over how long?  How many visits? What about segmentations, can you identify customer types that buy from your campaigns? Can you drill down to individual conversions? Can you put a value on customers and therefore your content efforts?

At SaturnOne we help answer these questions with our powerful, yet easy to use tools.

3. Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is another important KPI for measuring content marketing success. This metric looks at how engaged users are with your content once they land on your site or blog post. 

There are a few different ways to measure engagement rate, but one common method is through time on page/site. This metric measures how long users stay on your site or blog post before leaving again.

If you are subscribed to SaturnOne, you get a single page view of everything that’s happening on your website for the last seven days such as:

  • Number of page views
  • Average page view time
  • Total unique visitors
  • Total forms viewed and filled out

4. Website Traffic

One of the most basic yet important KPIs to track is website traffic. This metric will give you an idea of how much traffic your website is getting from your content marketing efforts.

There are a few different ways to measure website traffic, but one of the simplest is by looking at unique visitors. This metric measures the number of people who visit your website in a given period of time.

Another way to measure website traffic is by looking at pageviews. This metric looks at the total number of pages that have been viewed on your website.

Both unique visitors and pageviews are important metrics to track, as they will give you an idea of how popular your website is among readers.

Why KPIs are So Important in Content Marketing Success

If you're like most content marketers, you're always looking for ways to improve your strategy. One of the best ways to do this is by using KPIs (key performance indicators).

KPIs can help you track progress, identify areas of improvement, and gauge the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. Later, we’ll show you how to use KPIs to improve your content marketing strategy and drive more leads and customers by harnessing the power of SaturnOne

How to Measure Your Content Marketing KPIs Using SaturnOne

There are three ways that SaturnOne can help you optimize for revenue by providing insights on your content marketing KPIs:

  1. Together, we can set your content marketing goals. Then we can help you define what you need to measure to achieve your goals, including data to get into our platform.
  2. We can also work with you to develop the right insight, reports, and how to interpret reports and data through measurements and analysis. 
  3. We can meet regularly (or monthly)  to review progress, make adjustments, and provide data-driven advice on how to interpret and analyze insights generated. You can schedule a free consultation here.

When you’re subscribed to SaturnOne, you can also view how your campaign page flows from referrers and from what countries visitors are coming from. 

Everything just flows smoothly inside SaturnOne for your ease of viewing on how your website is performing in terms of customer visits and customer behavior and demographics. 

You can also view forms that are being visited and filled-out by your leads including the conversion rate of all these forms. 

As a content marketer, you can easily see how many unique visitors have visited a specific page and blog and know exactly if your blog article is successful in driving traffic to your site by looking at the figures provided. Read the related blog article, “How to Optimize Your SaturnOne Web Funnel Analytics”

The Advantages of Using SaturnOne over Google Analytics for Your Content Marketing KPIs

Google Analytics is powerful and very detailed, but can be downright overwhelming at the same time if you're not a techie type of person. 

Because of this particular pain point, Greg Bardwell, the founder of SaturnOne, conceptualized and developed an app wherein a content marketer trying to optimize their website can seamlessly navigate and operate all under one dashboard.  

The end result? SaturnOne

Google Analytics provides accurate information such as where your visitors are coming from, how your visitors find your website, web browsers being used by your visitors, and what keywords were used by visitors in the search engines to get to your website. Google Analytics works a lot more complicated compared to SaturnOne.

With Google Analytics, you need to integrate all other related tools such as Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console, Google Web Optimizer, and many others plus it requires custom coding, and data experts to really understand what's happening on your website. 

Getting actionable insights is not easy with Google Analytics. Time and effort are wasted when you go through all these.

However with SaturnOne, you can interpret data much faster and smarter with SaturnOne thus allowing you to formulate and execute smarter marketing decisions and strategies and focus on other important tasks. 

Rather than employ a team of data analysts, or use a variety of tools, use SaturnOne, a tool that answers all your questions on how your customers are converting- all under one dashboard. Read the related article, “How SaturnOne Compares to Google Analytics”

Conclusion

There are a number of different content marketing KPIs that you can use to measure success. The most important thing is to choose the KPIs that are most relevant to your specific goals. Once you've collected your content marketing KPIs, you can use them to drive better results by making informed decisions about where to focus your efforts.

References:

  1. Your Guide to Setting Up Content Marketing KPIs In 2022 https://topagency.com/blog/content-marketing-kpis/
  2. SaturnOne Web Funnel Analytics: https://www.saturnone.io/
  3. 5 Content Marketing Metrics That Matter in 2022: https://blog.parse.ly/content-marketing-metrics/