How Do You Measure ROI in Content Marketing?

As you may have noticed, you can’t turn on the TV or open up your social media feeds without being inundated with content marketing messages these days. From commercials touting new book releases to sponsored posts about ways to improve your life, content marketing has hit the mainstream in a big way, and it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. But how do you measure return on investment (ROI) in this space? And if you do measure ROI, what does it look like? Let’s discuss the basics of measuring ROI in content marketing.

Return on Investment

Every marketer knows that content marketing is critical to their success, but for every hundred marketers who say they’re using it, there are still just as many who can’t tell you what it is. For some marketers, even understanding what content marketing is can be tricky. The term gets thrown around so often, and its definition has changed so dramatically over time that even defining it succinctly could take an entire day (or week or month). But here’s my attempt: Content marketing is a marketing technique based on creating and distributing valuable content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and then giving them a reason to buy from you. Some people call content marketing inbound marketing because it focuses on bringing customers inbound to your business rather than trying to force your message onto people.

Return on Influence

Companies’ biggest mistake when gauging social media ROI is focusing on vanity metrics—like followers and fans. The reality is that it’s not just about how many people are listening to your message, but who is listening. If you don’t have an influencer strategy, you should develop one ASAP. Influencers are critical for organic discovery, which directly impacts SEO and increases conversion rates. Before investing any money into paid advertising or content creation, look for ways to gain exposure through earned channels like blogs and influencers—this will help minimize risk while maximizing ROI.

Return on Engagement

When evaluating whether or not your content marketing efforts are working, it’s essential to consider Return on Engagement (ROE). If you spend 10 hours creating a video with thousands of views, but no shares or interaction, your content marketing efforts aren’t producing results. What you want is high levels of engagement—likes, shares, retweets, comments—as well as traffic. When combining traffic and engagement metrics with conversion data from sales channels like Shopify, you have a complete picture of how your content drives customers to become paying customers. With that information at hand, you can adjust tactics accordingly.

Return on Audience

When you measure return on audience or social media ROI, you’re evaluating your investment in various social channels to determine whether it’s delivering any meaningful business results. This can include building a follower base on Twitter and Facebook, ranking well for your target keyword terms on Google, and establishing a LinkedIn presence to attract potential hires. It might also mean offering a content library on your website so that visitors have a reason to come back again and again. Any effort you make towards increasing reach should be considered part of your social media ROI strategy.

So what next?

If you’ve established your goals, know your audience, and have created engaging content, it’s time to measure your results. How you measure ROI will depend on how you conduct content marketing. If you’re creating videos or images posted on social media or made available via email campaigns, then engagement is a great metric to use when measuring success. Look at likes, comments, and shares. But don’t rely too heavily on any one metric—you want to look at them all together to find what works best for your brand and audience. You may also want to create dedicated landing pages with specific calls-to-action designed around one piece of content. This content can link back to an email list to collect leads—another way of measuring direct responses related to your new content.