The Art and Science of Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

The Art and Science of

Measuring ROI: Content Marketing Defining the “R� in ROI

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

About IMI Internet Marketing Inc. is a full service, integrated digital marketing agency that exists to provide opportunities for everyone we encounter.

We are a business-minded organization that uses a datadriven approach to designing and optimizing the ideal marketing mix for each client.

As a full service agency we offer sophisticated Search Marketing strategies, Social Media, Content Marketing, Analytics, Email Marketing strategy, Web Design, consulting, and more. No matter what the marketing mix, our goal is to always achieve and exceed the goals and metrics we collectively set.

Contact us today to learn more about Content Marketing and other digital strategies we are performing for brands all over the world!

Request Consultation >

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

About the Author

Labeled Content Marketing Strategist, Becca has had the tropical experience of building IMI's Content Department from sea level. Invested in merging creativity and strategy, she also serves as the Chief Content Officer (CCO) at eCopywriters.com, a Content Creation Marketplace.

Speaking of content, some of the most highly authoritative publications have Becca James Content Marketing Strategist

picked up Becca's projects such as

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @beejaysays

and National Geographic.

CONNECT WITH ME ON LINKEDIN linkedin.com/in/beccajames ENGAGE WITH ME ON GOOGLE+ google.com/+BeccaJamesIMI

Forbes, PC Mag, CNN, New York Post,

How many times can she say content in one eBook? Let's take a look.

Editorial Team: Brent Gleeson, Justin Goodman, Devon DeMars, and Phong Chieng

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

About this eBook

As digital communication outlets evolve, message delivery systems may change, but the core principles of effective marketing remain the same. The relationship between consumer and brand still begins with one simple word: conversation.

If we sit down together with our target audience and engage in a two-way dialogue, we have the opportunity to gain a complex understanding of buyer needs, demands, goals, preferences, fears, motivations, and decision-making behaviors. As we listen, they share their stories. And if we respond with content that they find interesting and meaningful, a sense of trust is forged that benefits both parties.

In this digital age, manipulative one-directional advertising models are ineffective. Now, two-way marketing based on core principles and meaningful brand-consumer dialogue has an official name and is in need of a solid strategy: Content Marketing. This eBook can help marketers leverage modern digital tools to engage consumers using timeless brand development strategies. Find the tools you need to launch your first campaign or give your existing program a ground-level reboot.

Thank you for reading!

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

Table of Contents

1. Content Marketing: Find the Link Between Marketing Strategy and Financial Success. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1a. Leveraging Your Resources While Managing Risk 1b. Measuring the Value of Content Marketing 1c. The Challenges of Measuring ROI

8 9 10

2. Predicting ROI: How Much Should You Invest? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 3. Goal Setting and KPIs: Laying the Groundwork for Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 3a. Goal Setting: Begin with the End in Mind What does it mean to build your brand?

What does it mean to generate conversions?

3b. KPIs: Key Performance Indicators Brand KPIs Conversion KPIs

17 17 18 20 20 20

4. Measuring and Reporting ROI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 4a. Tools and the Use of Data Analytics 4b. Customize Reports Based on Your Audience Content Performance Reporting Channel Level Reporting Campaign Level Reporting

24 26 26 26 27

5. The Sweet Taste of Success: When Will You See Results? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 5a. Patience is a Virtue

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

1. Content Marketing: Find the Link Between Marketing Strategy and Financial Success

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

If you threw a hashtag before Content Marketing every time it was mentioned, it would compete with Justin Bieber on Twitter. In fact, the buzz surrounding this term can easily obscure meaningful messages about what content is, how it works, and how it can generate solid and measureable returns for your growing company.

To rise above the noise and find real value in any Content Marketing costs 62% less marketing investment, than traditional marketing and CMOs can keep this simple generates about 3 times as message in mind: strong many leads. marketing strategies are (Kapost) built on a foundation of narrative, intuition, and smart financial allocation. By identifying your target audience’s online presence, values, and pain points, you can accurately leverage your content creation and distribution, making it easier for marketing and financial executives to work together in acquiring leads, closing deals, and creating conversions.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

1a. Leveraging Your Resources While Managing Risk

So you’ve accepted that Content Marketing is inevitable, now how can you get the most out of your Content Marketing strategy? CMOs and CFOs wouldn’t occupy their current positions if they took reckless risks—or no risks at all. A focused, strategic Content Marketing plan can be considered a manageable risk, one with a high potential for return. So what’s the secret behind a successful plan? Measurability.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

1b. Measuring the Value of Content Marketing

Meaningful investments begin with controlled ROI analysis. So before you formulate your content plan, clarify your campaign goals.

Are you looking for ways to generate: a) Leads b) Sales c) Traffic d) Brand Awareness These goals all have value, however, defining precise goals with complementary campaigns and realistic metrics help build a stronger link between budgeting resources and meaningful results.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

1c. The Challenges of Measuring ROI

ROI Measurement Challenges 79% Don't have the tools to measure effectiveness

23% 22%

37%

Companies are trying to break down internal silos to better coordinate and integrate marketing efforts

Are tracking true measures of engagement and behavior like time spent with content

Lack clear measurement strategy

(Source: Marketing TechBlog)

Measuring the impact of your Content Marketing strategy on revenue can be challenging. Some of the most common challenges that content marketers face are: 1.

A lack of proper tools to measure effectiveness: Can your software measure exactly how many visitors arrive at each page of your site and track how long they stay? Each time a page is rendered, you’ve created enough interest to generate a click. But what happens next?

Precision tools are necessary to determine consumer behavior and to track the rate of change in these behaviors over time. Guesses and coarse estimates won’t do the trick.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

2.

A communication gap between marketing and sales: A lack of cooperation between marketing and sales — also known as closed loop reporting — leaves each department operating in its own sphere with its own strategies and its own definitions of success. Marketing campaigns can’t reach their full potential if sales feedback is weak or non-existent (and vice versa). Remember that sales often communicates with the audience that you are trying to reach. Marketers tend to overlook real people's needs with figurative, target personas. Exploit the information the sales team has, and build a content strategy around it.

3.

Incorrect attribution of ROI to a specific content stream: If your campaign includes a webinar, an eBook, and a brand new blog, and your sales increase by 11 percent, which content stream is responsible for this growth? If you make the wrong assumption, you may miss an opportunity, misallocate future budget resources, or worse. But if you can clearly attribute your sales boost to just one of these streams, you can celebrate the win and forge ahead.

Quick tip: use Google Analytics to set up a page level or session level custom variable for the on-site content piece to award conversions to the right source.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

2. Predicting ROI: How Much Should You Invest?

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

92%

B2B marketers plan to increase spend on Content Marketing in 2014

58% marketers plan to spend 50% of their marketing budget on Content Marketing

74% 60%

of marketers plan to spend money on Content Marketing

planned increase in spend on Content Marketing

B2C marketers plan to increase spend on Content Marketing in 2014

20%

(Source: Marketing TechBlog)

Let’s take a few preliminary steps before you calculate an ideal balance between the cost of your Content Marketing plan and your estimated returns. Once you’ve taken these steps, you can use your resulting calculation to develop a plan that can fit your budget and grow your business. After all, Content Marketing is a long-term investment.

First, determine the cost of your current marketing program. Account for both tangible and intangible resources including time investments and opportunity costs. Then evaluate your current success metrics like traffic flow, bounce rates, new versus returning visits, behavior funnels, and most important—conversion rates. Lastly, compare your cost of customer acquisition (COCA) with customer lifetime value (LTV).

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

Once you’ve gathered this data, you’ll have the metrics you need to estimate returns on each of your potential Content Marketing options. Keep in mind that your COCA should never be higher than your LTV. In other words, the resources you invest in outreach, new client contacts, or entry into new market sectors should always fall below the lifetime value of each resulting relationship.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

3. Goal Setting and KPIs: Laying the Groundwork for Success

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

Your Content Marketing plan must be structured around your company’s specific goals. These bottom-line initiatives can be divided into two basic categories: brand building and conversion generation. Both of these categories are essential to growth and success, and for each campaign, you must begin by envisioning long-term, measurable results.

After the first step — goal setting — emphasize the identification of KPIs, or key performance indicators that will allow you to realistically measure the success of a targeted Content Marketing effort.

Organizational Goals for B2B Content Marketing Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness

82%

Lead Generation

Engagement

68%

Engagement

71%

Customer Retention Loyalty 65%

71%

Thought Leadership

79%

Customer Acquisition

74%

Customer Acquisition

0

Organizational Goals for B2C Content Marketing

64%

Website Traffic

64%

62%

Customer Retention/ Loyalty 57%

Sales

51%

Website Traffic

Lead Generation

50%

57%

Lead Management/ Nurturing 47%

Thought Leadership 33%

Sales

Lead Management /Nurturing 28%

10

45% 20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90 100

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

(Source: Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs)

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90 100

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

3a. Goal Setting: Begin with the End in Mind

What does it mean to build your brand?

For most companies, a strong brand begins with: 1. Awareness: Customers should recognize your business in the larger marketplace.

2. Loyalty: Customers should return to your business after initial contact or transaction.

3. Engagement: Customers should develop a positive personal relationship with your brand and product experience.

All three of these goals start with contact and are followed by trust. Both contact and trust begin with effective content. When visitors find your content interesting and valuable, a strong relationship begins. Build credibility and likability, and your audience will begin to align your brand with their values.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

What does it mean to generate conversions?

This equation is a simple, concrete result of strong brand building. Excellent conversions begin with great Content Marketing and will eventually generate: 1. Leads: Encourage content downloads, social media sharing, blog conversations, and positive online buzz (organic ORM).

2. Opportunity: Expand reach into existing markets and attract new audiences.

3. Sales: Turn interest into revenue by turning clicks, visits and curiosity into hard sales.

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(Source: Eloqua Blog)

Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

3b. KPIs: Key Performance Indicators

Once you’ve clarified your Content Marketing goals, how can you set a course, move forward, and measure your progress along the way? KPIs will let you know how close you are to your targets, and if you go off course, keeping a close eye on your performance metrics can allow you to hit reset and make necessary changes to your long term plan.

Brand KPIs Brand indicators include mentions, mentions as compared with those of competitors, key-phrase mentions, sentiment, views, shares, likes, and re-tweets.

Conversion KPIs Conversion KPIs are granular numbers based on hard dollar amounts. These include purchases, purchases minus returns, and revenue increases across product lines.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

Category

Goal

Description

KPIs

BRAND

Awareness

Customers recognize your business in the larger marketplace.

•

Growth in overall traffic to website across multiple channels

•

Time spent on individual pieces of content

•

Pages per visit

•

Return visits

•

Social media shares, likes, retweets across channels

•

Subscriber count

Customers develop a positive personal relationship with your brand and product experience.

•

Return visits

•

Social media shares, likes, retweets across channels

•

Content Downloads

Encourage content downloads, social media sharing, blog conversations, and positive online buzz.

•

Subscriber count

•

Aggregate growth of leads

•

New signups/landing page conversions

Expand reach into existing markets and attract new audiences.

•

Funnel progression rate

•

% drop-off

Turn interest into revenue by turning clicks, visits and curiosity into hard sales.

•

Deals closed

•

Monthly recurring revenue

•

Customer lifetime value

Loyalty

Engagement

CO N V E R S I O NS

Leads

Opportunity

Sales

Customers return to your business after an initial contact or transaction.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

4. Measuring and Reporting ROI

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

Now that you understand the 41% of marketers confirm basics of goal setting and using key Content Marketing’s performance indictors to measure positive ROI. your current success and future (Kapost) growth, it’s time to start weighing your investments against your results. And of course, a calculated ROI won’t take your business very far until you report your analysis and its outcome to C-level decision makers.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

4a. Tools and the Use of Data Analytics

Identify the right tool to measure each one of your chosen KPIs. For example, which approach or data analysis can help you accurately measure retweets? Or bounce rates? How about that behavior funnel that illustrates how viewers are engaging with your content? Which CRM software platform can show you the overlap between site visits and sales? In other words, which visitors stayed to make a purchase, and which ones weren’t captivated enough to seal the deal?

This knowledge will also lead to opportunities in creating appropriate content for each step in the sales cycle.

Apply the right tool to each metric, and you’ll see the tangible results of your efforts materializing in the form of graphs that reveal changes quarter by quarter.

It is also important to choose tools that complement your existing systems. For example, does your existing CRM software integrate seamlessly with your new marketing software? You’ll want to ensure that your tools can synchronize to measure the same data points.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

KPI

Measurement

Tool

Reach

Unique Visits

•

Google Analytics

Geography

•

Google Analytics

Mobile Readership

•

Google Analytics

Bounce Rates/Time On Site

•

Google Analytics

Heat Maps/Click Patterns

•

CrazyEgg

Page Views

•

Google Analytics

Comments

•

Geckoboard

Social Sharing

•

Geckoboard

Engagement

Sentiment

Keep in mind that traditional ROI analysis differs greatly from Content Marketing ROI. Content Marketing is long game: results are organic and multi-dimensional.

Social engagement, page views, average time spent on each page, and general traffic volume are all factors that can influence brand awareness and conversions.

Accept that some of your Content Marketing ROI material is happening off the defined metric stage, at times offline, and that if you engage in the process, it will eventually arrive in unforeseeable success funnels.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

4b. Customize Reports Based on Your Audience

Once your tools are identified and raw data starts flowing your way, how can you present your analysis to your company’s CMO? How about your CFO? Presenting your ROI reports for each audience will require a different area of focus and a different level of granularity - broad trends versus highly specific micro-data.

Content Performance Reporting Identify the content that brings the best results. Then examine this content for tone, style, CTA and approach. Break the results down by channel or by campaign.

Channel Level Reporting Channel level reporting will help you find your most effective channels (blog, Twitter feed, etc), ultimately providing direction as to where your audience lives online and where you should allocate budget for the next quarter.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

Campaign Level Reporting You can also break down your top performers by specific campaign or rollout.

In the end, your ROI and reporting strategy will help you craft your content for maximum effect. As you move forward, keep an eye on your goals (lead generation, sales, branding, and traffic) and KPIs, and recognize that each stream of content should have a specific tone, objective, CTA, and core message that relate back to your original brand identity. When you break each content stream down into monthly and yearly editorial calendars, you’ll transform a series of distinct deliverables into a fluid narrative woven tightly around your brand.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

5. The Sweet Taste of Success: When Will You See Results?

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

Launching your new Content Marketing plan can be an exciting moment, but keep in mind that marketing through content channels can be considered a strategy, not a campaign. The impact of your efforts and ideas will be realized over the long-term, not after a short, predictable Cost-per-lead for paid search over sprint. time was nearly 3.5 times that of

cost-per-lead for Content Marketing

A one-and-done campaign will typically include a clear before and after, and post mortems and lessons learned can lay the foundation for the next launch. But a long-term strategy doesn’t work this way. Instead, sound Content Marketing generates data on a rolling basis, so as a business continues to publish, measure, publish again, and measure again, a steadily rising ROI will begin to manifest.

(Kapost and Eloqua)

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

5a. Patience is a Virtue COST PER LEAD Long-term yield of Content Marketing

$25,000 $20,000 larger-sized

$20,000 mid-sized

$10,000 $5,000 Month

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

In first 5 months costs/lead drop

80%

8

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10

11

12

13

14

15

16

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18

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20

21

22

23

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The long-term yield of Content Marketing is illustrated in the chart above, which shows the cumulative cost per lead over 24 months, or how much has been spent divided by how many leads have been generated over time.

(Source: Kapost and Eloqua)

In a modern, organic marketing landscape, instant advertising metrics are out. Ads and instant gratification have given way to long-term success based on planning, tracking, and consistency. As you identify growth and accumulate an increase in conversions, you’ll compare your numbers to industry averages to determine where you stand. And when this happens, you’ll start reaping the rewards that come from quality content, consistent publishing, and constant contact built around the needs and behaviors of your target audience.

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Measuring ROI: Content Marketing

Hope you enjoyed reading.

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