Measuring the success of your content

One thing you’ll want to remember as you make your content marketing plans, is that you need to set some targets and success goals up front. Otherwise, how will you know if it is worth doing again?

Think about what your intention is for each piece of content you’re using. Where does it sit in the funnel? It would be unrealistic to expect a piece of content at the top of a funnel like a blog post, to immediately convert someone to buy. Equally, you might feel that if a free trial doesn’t convert someone, that is a fairer measure of its success.

At the start of this course, we asked “why do content marketing?” and came up with many answers, from generating leads to education. From creating awareness to sales.

The best success metrics are realistic.

Some metrics you might wish to track include:

Top of Funnel (Awareness & Engagement)

• Traffic; page views; video views; downloads; referral links
• Comments; likes; shares; retweets; forwards; inbound links

Middle of Funnel (Consideration)

• Lead generation (completing forms, downloads)
• Email subscriptions; blog subscriptions

Bottom of funnel (Purchase)

• Conversions; online sales; offline sales
• Cross-selling; up-selling
• Loyalty; frequency of purchase; value of purchase

What do you think will work for you? Which are the most important? Let us know!