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How can you know whether your content marketing ROI (return on investment) is achieving what you want? Content marketing efforts are difficult to track and measure because it’s not always clear which pieces of content inspire customers to convert. That said, the performance of your content should be monitored carefully. You simply can’t afford not to measure something that costs you so much time and energy. Use the following techniques to keep an eye on which pieces of content are performing better than others.
Your content could be attracting loads of traffic to your website, but if that traffic isn’t converting in one way or another, your content is failing to meet your needs. Therefore, the metric you should focus on is conversions. You might want your visitors to take a specific action, such as signing up for your email list, calling you on the phone, or purchasing a product on your website. The problem is, it is difficult to establish a link between the initial draw-in factor, content, and the final, hoped-for result, sales. That said, there are a few metrics you can measure that will complete the picture regarding how your content is performing financially. For more on my top content acceleration tips, head over to my recent Black Enterprise article covering the topic more in-depth.
Content Marketing ROI Metric No. 1: Purchasing Rate
To begin with, you’re probably creating content on your website with the aim of attracting visitors. Every visitor who engages with your website’s content is different regarding their purchasing habits. A single visitor who takes an action on your website is more valuable than multiple visitors who read your content and fail to take any action at all. Therefore, the prime metric is purchasing rate. To measure purchasing rate, calculate your sales for the past seven days and divide this number by the number of customers who have visited your website in the past year, even if they didn’t make any purchases. The equation will look something like this: weekly sales income divided by your overall number of customers equals annual customer value. Once you’ve got your solution, multiply this number by 52. The result is the equivalent of how much, in terms of averages, you can expect each one of your customers to purchase from you over a period of a year.
For example, if your company earns $5,200 a week, and you’ve identified 30 customers who have bought from you, simply divide $5,200 by 30 to end up with $173. Multiply this number by 52, and you have $9,013. This number, $9,013, is your annual customer lifetime value, otherwise known as the average amount of money you can expect a single customer to spend on your company over a year. Becoming aware of customer value will help you establish the return on investment you’re getting from your website. If your annual customer lifetime value is high, then it might be worth it to invest more heavily in content creation to attract those customers to your website.
Content Marketing ROI Metric No. 2: Page Views
The traditional method by which you can determine the ROI your content generates is to look at the number of page views your website gets as a whole. Using this metric, you can calculate revenue generated with regard to each page view you receive. To do this, take the number you’ve calculated above, your annual customer lifetime value, and then divide this number by 12 to figure out the average monthly customer value. Then, take this number and divide it by your monthly page view numbers, which can be found in Google Analytics. For example, say your annual customer value is $6,500. Divide this number by 12 to get $541. If your total monthly page views for your website are 4,560, for example, divide $541 by 4,560 to get 0.12, or 12 cents. This means that every page view you receive on your website is equal to $0.12 of profit for your company.
To go one step further, you can then take this number to figure out how much money each piece of content generates for your website. Begin with Google Analytics, which can help you determine the individual page performance on your website. Using Google Analytics, identify the page views each piece of content receives, and then multiply that number by the average revenue per page view, the number you calculated before. This will give you the average return per piece of content per month. For example, if Google Analytics suggests that you’ve gotten 90 views last month for a certain page, and your average revenue per page view is $0.12, then, multiplying these numbers together gives you a value of $10.80 per piece of content. This number can help you determine how much time and effort you should expend on each piece of content you create. You can also use this value to identify differences in revenue-generating effects of each piece of content.
For those visitors to your website who are looking to be informed and entertained, content marketing is a must. Nevertheless, your hard work is nothing without measurement. A deeper understanding of your content marketing return on investment will enable you to achieve a higher return.
Jeff Shuford
Jeff Shuford is a nationally syndicated columnist whose monthly column appears in more than 44 regional newspapers. Shuford is one of fewer than five millennial African-American syndicated columnists in the United States, and one of the country’s youngest syndicated columnists overall.
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