Content marketing is something that can be used in many creative ways to lure in your audience, and the key to effective content marketing is to have the perfect strategy that aligns with your business and, equally, attracts customers and converts.
When a content marketing strategy is executed perfectly, your business’s brand will grow and you will begin to establish yourself as a leader in your industry – which is the ultimate goal for any business or new brand.
But, to be able to do this effectively, you will need to be able to use and understand content marketing metrics to measure the effectiveness of your strategy. As a digital content marketing agency, Assisted is here to guide you in understanding these content marketing metrics.
Contact us today to find out more, or follow us on LinkedIn for more expert advice.
Before we go into the details of content marketing metrics, we need to understand what content marketing is first.
Content marketing, in its simplest form, is any content-whether it is written or visual-that is published online with the hope of generating more leads and revenue for the business. The focus needs to be on your target market, and the content needs to be tailored accordingly. This is also known as inbound marketing.
By utilising inbound marketing, you create meaningful relationships with your potential customers by valuing them and creating a space where they can reach their own personal goals. The benefits of inbound marketing are that it is a more cost-effective way of marketing, more than one marketing channel can be used, it results in better-qualified conversion rates and leads and there will be an increase in trust and brand awareness.
According to Hubspot, 70% of companies used content marketing in 2022, which means, the vast majority of companies understand the importance of content marketing.
By using this mechanism of marketing your brand will grow in awareness, conversions will rise and you will be able to build meaningful relationships with your customers, resulting in increased loyalty. Also, your customers will be educated on how your brand will be able to help them reach their full potential.
Now that we understand what content marketing is and how beneficial it is for your business, we can take a look at the different types of content marketing strategies that you can use (or all at once).
When we think of online content marketing, we refer to any material that is published online in the form of your web pages. If your web pages are created in the right way, they will rank highly in the search engine results pages (SERPS). When you rank higher, you stand a better chance of being noticed by the right people.
The use of blogs as a form of content marketing is a creative way of writing about topics that are trending and relevant. With blogs, you can promote internal and external blog articles with the use of links to create more awareness.
Using words has always been a way in which to create stories and spark imagination – which can still be used within blog content marketing.
Paid ad content marketing, also known as pay-per-click or PPC advertising, allows you to pay money to have your website on the SERP when a specific keyword or phrase is typed into the search engine.
The SERP will then display the ads created to direct traffic to your site.
It is difficult to exist in the digital world today without the use of social media, and the same goes for content marketing. Social media and its vast array of platforms can be used in many ways to market a brand.
You can be extremely creative with social media, too, using content formats such as posts, images, videos (either live or pre-recorded) and stories. The options are endless.
There are many other types of content marketing that can be used, other than the ones mentioned above. The type that you choose will depend on your brand and target audience.
Allow us here at Assisted to help you find the right strategy for your brand!
Once you have chosen the route that you want to go with your content marketing (or every route possible), you will need to understand the metrics that can be used to measure how well your strategy is working-how much return on investment (ROI) is made with your marketing efforts.
By understanding the different content marketing metrics, you will know if your strategy is working, or what you need to do to improve on it.
By creating engaging and relevant content, you will be able to lure in customers who are willing to stay. Once you have created this content and noticed an increase in traffic, understanding where your traffic comes from is the next important step in measuring your content marketing strategy.
At Assisted, we specialise in using Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to create reports to help businesses understand their website traffic, identify trends, and make relevant decisions about marketing campaigns.
So, you’ve created content that converts, but how do you know how many impressions that content has received?
If Google can pick up that you are answering the questions of your audience, your impressions will increase and the higher your impressions are, the more people you have reached.
Knowing your click-through rate will help you understand how effective your content actually is. When people read your content, do they progress to your website? If so, then you know that your content marketing is working well.
Google will find your content trustworthy and solution-focused the more your content gets shared. You can also increase the trustworthiness of your content by using backlinks to other sites that are related to your site.
For example, if your website is property-focused, then you can reach out to bloggers who write specifically about property and incorporate ‘do-follow’ links into the content. This will ensure that readers have easy access to your website.
If you have readers who have not yet committed to buying anything from your website but have given you their contact information, you can then utilise that to send them more information about your products or services, facilitating potential future commitment.
The more opt-ins from potential customers you have, the better your strategy is working.
Bounce rate refers to the amount of time that a person spends on your website. You want people to stay on your website for as long as possible. If you notice a high bounce rate, it means that people have moved off of your website quickly because of things such as poor user experience, slow loading time or coming across different content than what they expected.
When you understand the bounce rate of your site and the reason for it, you can implement strategies to fix the issue.
Implementing keywords into your content is a great way to attract more traffic to your website. By knowing what your target audience is searching for on Google, you know which keywords to include in your content.
One thing to remember with keywords is that keyword rankings change over time, so doing keyword research is imperative to the success of this metric.
Feeling overwhelmed? No need to worry. We’re here to simplify the process and craft customised solutions for you and your company. With our experience spanning various industries, we specialise in developing advertising strategies that precisely align with your goals.