Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

According to AdAge, 93% of CMO’s (so…basically all of them) are under more pressure to deliver measurable ROI (Return On Investment).

Additionally, 81% of marketers would increase spending across channels if they could better track ROI.
 
At content marketing analyst Rebecca Lieb‘s Content Marketing World 2015 session: “Less-than-obvious Content Metrics You Need to Pay Attention To,” she argues that just using sales to justify ROI is measuring content marketing ROI far too narrowly. 

She says part of this is due to the fact that content marketing ROI analytics in the space are still incredibly nascent. There are no standards for measuring content marketing ROI and since over 50% of brands lack a defined content marketing strategy, it’s difficult to know what they’re trying to achieve and how to measure that success. 

As metrics and KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) evolve in tandem, the result is an excess of volume metrics (like, shares, traffic, etc.) that don’t reveal true business impact and content marketing ROI. According to Lieb, 43% of marketers feel they have unmet needs in measuring content ROI. Through careful and extensive research, she has formulated six tenets to developing a more holistic content marketing ROI measurement strategy....

Simply put, if you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing.

In fact, if you’re whipping up blog posts and infographics without business objectives, you’re basically partaking in a very expensive version of arts and crafts.

Your job as a content marketer is to show your boss the money — not traffic, not links — mon-naay.

Let’s talk about how to get started effectively measuring your content marketing efforts....

There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. But that doesn't mean these facts and figures are useless for content marketers.

More often than not, they shed some light on changes in the digital landscape and the ever-changing practice of content marketing. At the very least, you can leverage them to help you sell others on future marketing decisions and tactics.

So here's a list I've curated of relevant, eye-opening content marketing statistics and findings from the most recent industry surveys and marketing research conducted in 2014....

Executives want to know a marketing strategy’s expected ROI before they commit money and resources to it. But content is a different animal than other marketing initiatives. It doesn’t produce impressive short-term results; it bolsters long-term profits. Once a content marketing strategy proves its worth, executives feel more confident investing in it. The challenge is convincing them to take the initial plunge.

Here are six selling points you can use to persuade your company leaders that content marketing will go the distance for your brand

A much-ballyhooed Gallup study uncovered some ugly “truths” about social media, including a reputed inability to influence purchasing decisions. According to the study, 62 percent of Americans say Facebook, Twitter and their ilk have no influence on whether they purchase a product.

Although asking consumers to accurately recount the advertising methods that ultimately drove them to purchase is likely a fool’s errand, many marketers who have attempted to correlate standard social metrics to sales and other conversions have struggled to make a connection.

As a result, in many marketing shops the number of likes, shares and retweets a brand receives daily is lessening in importance. But that doesn’t mean social media offers nothing of value — advanced marketers are leveraging social data for reasons beyond direct marketing tactics....

Nine out of ten in-house marketers say that content marketing will become more important, but just 38 percent has a content strategy.

There’s a gap to bridge. The infographic by Pardot.com shows interesting data points, among others the four content marketing metrics categories.

The four types of content marketing metrics can be divided in:

• consumption
• Sharing
• lead generation
• sales.

As shown in another point made in the infographic (most popular metrics), the research behind it shows that marketers are focusing on Consumption and Sharing metrics but by also taking into account Lead generation and Sales it keeps the content aligned with business objectives....

We're going back to the basics. Expert content marketers with defined and working strategies can skip this article. For the other 90 percent of you, use these 3 building blocks to start developing one...

I average about three speeches a week revolving around the topic of content marketing. At every one of those events I ask, “How many of you have a documented content marketing strategy?” That answer has never been more than 20 percent, and usually just a few hands are raised. Think about that for a minute. Content creation and distribution is booming. We’ve never seen brands more active in developing content to attract and retain customers. Our latest research tells us that more than one in every four marketing dollars is spent on a content marketing initiative.

Yet, almost no one has a concrete strategy for the deployment of those content assets. (I’m virtually shaking my head.)...