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Content marketing is a strategic approach to connect with your audience and create an authentic narrative about your brand. Over the years, it has become embedded in every marketing strategy. 

With that in mind, every business must have a method of measuring the success of the content marketing effort. Otherwise, it will be impossible to tell what’s working, where you need to improve, and what your audience demands. 

One of the best ways of measuring the performance and success of your content is by using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs allow you to measure the success of all your marketing goals, in every step of the way.  

There are different metrics to choose from according to each of your objectives. But for this process to be successful, you must know how to pick the correct KPIs for your content marketing strategy.

In this article, we’ll dig into why KPIs are important and how to choose the proper marketing KPIs to measure the success of your content.

What are Content KPIs and Why are They Important 

Content marketing key performance indicators, or KPIs, are specific metrics and quantifiable values that businesses use to track and measure the success of their content over time. KPIs can help you evaluate how effectively you are achieving your content objectives. 

Measuring KPIs involve using the data you collect from your audience to evaluate how they are reacting to your content. Those insights will help you understand their needs and give ideas on how to improve your content. 

And that’s not all. By measuring your KPI, you can save money, reduce customer acquisition costs, and increase your content ROI. Additionally, you will be able to track content performance and make necessary adjustments to help you achieve your goals.

The most significant benefit of using content KPIs is getting a clear picture of your marketing strategy’s success. And to achieve this, you need to know the marketing KPIs to measure. When you measure the wrong KPIs, you get inaccurate results. And when you act on wrong results, you risk sabotaging your future content performance.

How To Choose Your Content Marketing KPIs

When it comes to content marketing, there are many KPIs to track. The key is to pick a good mix of the ones that align with your content objectives. By doing this, you will be able to choose KPIs that can measure progress and help you discover trends and inform your next steps. You don’t need to choose and track hundreds of KPIs to measure your content performance.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you choose the right marketing KPIs to measure your content success.

Consider Your Content Goals

The point of KPIs is to measure how well your content performs. And to do that, you need to have content goals and know what you want to achieve. The KPIs you choose should align with your content objectives. 

Simply put, you need to avoid general KPIs. For instance, the KPI metrics you use to measure the number of conversions your content brings will differ from those used to measure content reach. To measure conversions, you will track leads and qualified leads, whereas to measure reach, you’ll track metrics such as SEO performance and open rates of your emails.

Before measuring your content marketing KPIs, you must first establish your goals. To increase your brand awareness, you will need to track KPIs that will measure your reach and brand perception. That includes metrics such as social shares, brand mentions, and search and keyword rankings.

And if your goal is to increase engagements, track metrics that will measure how well your audience responds to your content. Track your bounce rate, organic traffic, time your customers spend on your page, and click-through rate (CTR). 

Your content marketing goals should inform the KPIs you choose to measure the success of your content. 

Use the Data to Choose Your KPIs

To run an effective content marketing campaign, you must know what your audience wants. By assessing your data, you can predict your customer’s content needs and discover new marketing KPIs you need to track. You can use your data to identify your weakness and strength, where you need to double down and where to improve.

Your data will tell you what your customer wants and how you can improve your content to satisfy them. For instance, if your goal is to increase engagement, but your content generates more sales, you can revise your conversion content to match what your customers want and change your content engagement tactics. 

The most significant benefit of using your data to pick KPIs is you’ll avoid choosing the wrong metrics and know when you do. This will ensure that you can track content performance metrics relevant to your goals and avoid undesired outcomes.

And when you get wrong results, you’ll know how to use them to your advantage in your next content campaign.

Ensure your Content Marketing KPIs are Realistic

KPIs, in their nature, should be quantifiable. They will tell you your progress or lack thereof. But just because you can measure them doesn’t mean you should set goals beyond your reach. You need to choose KPIs that are realistic. 

Saying you want to increase organic traffic by 70% in one month is a measurable goal but less realistic. When you set such a goal, you will be so obsessed with tracking SEO performance that you will forget about other metrics that could help you attain your goals.

So how do you make your marketing KPIs realistic?

You should separate your short and long-term goals. 

For instance, you need to improve some SEO metrics before you think of doubling your organic traffic. Your long-term goal can be to dominate search results for your keywords, and the short-term goal can be to increase your backlinks or improve the domain authority. 

When you set attainable and reasonable goals, you can collect more data and insights from how customers respond to your content. You will then use those to choose content KPIs to help you attain your business’s long-term goals.

Translate your Content Strategy Goals into KPIs

As a brand, you know that developing and distributing content alone is never enough. You need to know why you are doing it and aim to achieve it by having a well-thought-out content marketing strategy relevant to your business. And the main benefit of having a plan is it allows you to measure the impact of content marketing.

Your content strategy can help you identify the right marketing KPIs to measure. This is because a good content strategy has an end goal that you can translate to performance indicators. 

Since a content strategy is usually tailored for your business, the KPIs you choose using this method will go a long way in accurately measuring the success of your content and the growth of your brand.

Make Your KPIs Actionable

Before you choose any KPI, ask yourself if the results you will get can help you improve your business. 

If a KPI can’t inform a decision and be translated into actionable tasks that can solve a problem or identify an opportunity, it’s not worth tracking. In short, the KPIs you choose should impact your expectations for increasing success. 

Your chosen KPIs should be actionable and indicate a measurable task to steer you towards your goals. Actionable KPIs separate your vanity metrics from those that truly matter to your business. 

Some actionable KPIs your brand should track include customer acquisition, return customers, profits, side expenses (such as whether the processing fees of customers paying by credit card eat into your margins), and overall ROI. Tracking these conversion KPIs can give you the perfect insights you need to understand the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts. 

Review and Update Your KPIs

Choosing the right marketing KPIs to measure the success of your content might be overwhelming, but it’s the only way to ensure that you reap all the benefits of content marketing. You need to constantly review the KPIs you choose and adapt depending on your goals and audience needs.

Choosing the right KPIs to measure your content marketing success can save time, reduce costs, and grow your business. Therefore ensure that you pick strategies that align with your goals. Track only the metrics that matter, i.e., they’re actionable and can ensure you meet your short and long-term objectives. 

By Nahla Davies