How Do You Measure Content Marketing ROI?

Anyone running a content marketing campaign should be aware of its return of investment (ROI). It is necessary to know what is working and what is not to have a more fruitful platform. This leads to greater audience interactions and company revenue. The way to measure ROI is a mathematical equation. The first step is return minus investment, divided by investment, and the answer will be a percentage. In this article, you will learn how to calculate content marketing ROI, the metrics to measure it, and what your results mean.

how to measure roi

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing technique that aims to create and share relevant, quality work in order to attract and keep a targeted audience. The intention of content marketing is to drive up profitability and customer action. The reason content marketing works so well is that it is constantly evolving to create desirable information tailored for the demographic at hand. Another quality of content marketing is that it promotes brand awareness and company competence. 

Marketing tactics have to be able to keep up with changing algorithms and market trends. This is where content marketing comes into play as an effective means of communicating with consumer wants. That is an extremely important aspect of marketing in the current environment because people want to feel special and catered to. Rather than a company attempting to sell its product or services to a mass audience, consumers expect businesses to know what they want. The former would be defined as traditional marketing which is not as useful anymore. Meanwhile, content marketing generates higher profits in the current marketing landscape.

The key to content marketing is producing high-quality work that users interact with and want to see. That is important because it is the kind of work search engines reward with good SEO. It is not just that the content itself has to be of good quality, but that the content itself brings in sales and revenue. Quality content marketing leads to better SEO, which in turn generates higher revenue and finally a good ROI.

What is Content Marketing ROI?

Content marketing ROI is a percentage that depicts the amount of money (revenue) earned from content marketing in comparison to the money spent. Essentially, content marketing ROI is a mathematical way to measure the success and effectiveness of your content marketing. In our data-driven marketing world, content marketing ROI is a great tool to demonstrate the strength of a company’s content marketing campaigns by using hard numbers. All businesses want a positive return of investment and as a growing field, content marketing can prove its efficiency through high ROI. The bottom line of businesses is that they want to see their efforts and money pay off. Content marketing ROI shows what campaigns are working online, what is not, and what needs to be fixed to improve this percentage.

what is content marketing roi

What is ROI in Marketing?

It is important to know that your marketing campaigns are working and not just pouring money down the drain. That is where ROI comes into play – to demonstrate the success of a company’s marketing initiatives, set baselines, and measure growth over time. 

Marketing ROI also assists with budgeting decisions and allocations for current and future marketing projects. In order for the money to be spent on marketing campaigns to be justified, they have to prove themselves as an effective means of revenue for a business. Essentially, ROI in marketing is a helpful tool that measures success and how to allocate resources. The ROI of a company helps compare their marketing success to other businesses which instill competition to stay ahead

Steps to Measure ROI

  • Configure how much money it costs to produce content: This involves determining the payment of the content creator, other departments, and other external work.
  • Determine the costs of how much it is to distribute content: These costs include advertising and other media promotions. 
  • Calculate the amount of sales made directly from your content: If you have quality content that appeals to your desired audience, then this should lead to sales. The total number of sales from your content will be your return value.
  • Use the equation for Content Marketing ROI
    • Content marketing ROI (%) = ((return – investment)/ investment) x 100
  • Your ROI result will be a percentage: A good content marketing ROI is one that yields a higher profit than the cost of producing content.

what is roi in marketing

Measuring Content Marketing ROI Success and How Google Analytics Can Help

As a platform, Google Analytics helps users oversee engagement, bounce rates, sales, and website traffic. Google Analytics is an excellent tool to measure content marketing effectiveness and you can set it up to ensure accurate, specific data with filters. It is relatively easy to apply these filters once you are familiar with Google Analytics. The qualities that help produce a positive content marketing ROI goes as follows.

Quality Content

The most important factor of content marketing is relevant, high-quality work that attracts and retains a company’s desired audience. When your business produces good content for its target demographic, this should lead to increased sales. The content should include leads and calls to action in order to promote customer interaction and profitability. If your website has a high bounce rate, then that would show that your content quality is low or just not what users are looking for. On Google Analytics, you can view the pages of your company’s website that promotes leads. To capitalize on this, you need to set goals on Google Analytics and view what part of your content initiates a purchase of goods or services.

Sales

The amount of sales is key to the content marketing ROI equation. The ability to measure sales on Google Analytics helps assess the value of what content pages lead to transactions and revenue for the company. These values will allow you to plug in the numbers when calculating content marketing ROI. High sales demonstrate that your content marketing is working to lead to desirable results. Sales is one of the most important metrics when discussing content marketing ROI because it leads to revenue for the company. 

Website Traffic

The bottom line is that without website traffic, there is no content interaction and therefore no sales. Website traffic is an effective measurement tool to see how much attention your content is receiving. Google Analytics lets you see what parts of your website are gaining traction, which can indicate the pages that provide quality, desirable content for your audience. It helps to know where people access your website and what part of your marketing strategy is leading them to you.

content marketing roi

Website Engagement

If people are visiting your website but not engaging, that indicates that your content is not attractive to your target audience. If website engagement is low, that generally means your content marketing ROI is not a positive metric. A good sign of website engagement is a low bounce rate, which means that users are staying on your website. The longer they stay, the more likely they are to interact with your page. If customers are leaving your website rather quickly, then that is a negative sign that something is wrong with your website or that the content is poor. Google Analytics can track your website engagement and let you see what pages are attracting users and leading to sales.

SEO

In order to track any of the metrics mentioned, your website will need to show up in search results. This happens when you have effective SEO, which connects to quality content. Proper SEO involves long-term investment, keywords, and specialization which is necessary to remain in good standing with search engines. When your website shows up in search results and you have consistent and desirable content with leads, web traffic, and high engagement, it facilitates a good ROI percentage. Google Analytics helps measure SEO effectiveness by monitoring keywords and organic website traffic. Where your content shows up in search results is a good indicator of your content quality and therefore its ROI.

Why Should You Measure Your Content Marketing ROI?

Your business should evaluate your content marketing ROI because it demonstrates the effectiveness of your content. Without measuring content marketing ROI, your company will have little insight into what marketing strategies are working in your favor. It is easy to calculate your content marketing ROI with the formula provided above and does not require advanced mathematical knowledge to improve your business. Google Analytics makes it simple and is user-friendly so you can track content marketing ROI metrics which provides valuable observations of your content marketing campaign effectiveness.

FAQ:

  • What metrics are used to measure content marketing ROI?
  • How do you measure content quality?
  • How to calculate content marketing ROI?
  • What is the role of content marketing?
  • How do I set up Google Analytics to measure content marketing ROI?

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