The Most Important Content Marketing KPIs – And The Ones That Don’t Matter

You might feel confident about your content marketing strategy, but do you know how well it’s working for your business?

Setting content marketing KPIs, or key performance indicators, is an essential component of a smart content marketing strategy. They enable you to measure growth, track progress, and see how close you are to your content marketing objectives.

Without KPIs, you might end up wasting a bunch of money, time, and resources on developing an ineffective strategy. That being said, we’d like to declare (from a digital mountaintop) that they’re essential for building a smart strategy.

But you shouldn’t set just any KPIs. Certain indicators are more effective in measuring growth as you work towards achieving your objectives, while others are not. How can you tell which is which? We’ve broken them down for you — let’s explore:

The Most Important Content Marketing KPIs

Number of Organic Visitors

One of the primary goals for content marketing specialists is boosting website traffic. This makes sense, considering that 35% of all website traffic comes from organic search. That’s why it can be extremely effective to measure the number of organic visitors (people who find your site through a search engine), as it will tell you how well you’re generating exposure for your business.

Leads

This KPI tells you how many visitors come to your website over a certain period. Using this metric, you can track your growth rate and see how much your company develops over time. That can give you insight into how well your strategy works, and whether it’s time to call your content marketing strategists to change something. 

You should also find out which platforms or sources your leads come from. Are a lot of them finding you through social media or are they mostly subscribed customers? Information like that can give you insight on where you’re kicking butt and what you may need to work on.

Time on Page

While measuring the number of visitors is effective for determining the level of exposure and interest, that metric doesn’t tell you how valuable your visitors find your content. However, the amount of time they spend on your page does. The longer your visitors stay on your website, the more valuable they’ll find your content to be. And considering that 71% of B2B buyers view blog content while making a purchase, that’s a great sign for your business.

Conversion Rate

Another one of the most useful content marketing KPIs is the conversion rate. This tells you how many visitors take the action that you want them to take. Considering you have a CTA at the bottom of your content page (which you should), you’ll want to know how well it’s working. Are visitors being convinced to take action? Or are they just skimming through your content? Now you can find out.

Retention Rate

It’s nice to generate exposure and attract leads. It’s even nicer to attract loyal leads that later turn into long-term visitors and profitable customers. But to get there, you need to focus on building relationships with consumers. So how can you tell if efforts to charm your audience are working? 

Measuring your retention rate is one of the best content marketing KPIs because it tells you how many visitors found value in your content to visit again, and how often they visit. This helps you alter your strategy to develop long-term relationships with profitable customers.

Social Media Metrics

With so many consumers active on social media, measuring your level of engagement through social media metrics is a great way to determine how interested consumers are in your content. As many as 73% of marketers have rated their social media marketing efforts anywhere between “somewhat” to “very” effective — which shows you too can achieve results!

Measuring growth through social media metrics is also very simple. If your visitors are interested in your content and would like to see more, they can simply follow or subscribe to more of it. If they’re very interested, they might like your posts or comment on them. Shares are also possible for website and social media content. These are all indicators of levels of engagement for your company.

Content Marketing KPIs That Don’t Matter

Now that we’ve covered a few valuable content marketing KPIs, let’s discuss a few that you might not want to spend much time on:

Overly General Metrics

Measuring KPIs is a great strategy for determining your progress when they’re correlated with a certain objective. For example, if you want to measure changes in exposure, you can track your leads or number of monthly visitors. However, when you set a KPI that’s too broad to pinpoint, that might not be worth your time.

An example of this would be looking at your number of monthly sales. While an increase means you must be doing something right, it can be difficult to tell what that is. Sales can be affected by a variety of different factors, so measuring that alone can make it difficult to pinpoint.

Metrics Unrelated to Goals

Speaking of setting objectives, your KPIs should be directly related to your goals. After all, the whole point is to determine whether your efforts work towards achieving those objectives. If you’re setting unrelated KPIs, you might find that information interesting to know but doesn’t really provide value.

KPIs That Can’t be Changed

Content marketing KPIs are set to help you determine the effectiveness of your current strategy. That means that if a certain component isn’t working, you need to alter your strategy. But if nothing can be changed to alter a KPI anyways, why set it? Choose ones that you can control.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, measuring the right KPIs will help determine your growth and whether or not you’re on a path to success. Your KPIs should be measurable and specific to the goals your content marketing specialists are trying to accomplish with your strategy.

If you’re looking for help establishing your key performance indicators and measuring the success of your strategy, contact us. Our content marketing specialists will measure your success using effective KPIs and help you establish a strategy that will make it possible to achieve your goals.