Content marketing has come a long way from “just post it,” and we’ll see what happens. Today, content marketers are more deliberate in planning, targeting, and tracking marketing campaigns.
However, not all companies are clear on how to measure their content marketing strategy’s return on investment (ROI).
Read on to find out how to measure content marketing ROI.
What Is Content Marketing ROI?
Content marketing ROI is expressed as a percentage and refers to the revenue you gain from content marketing compared to your expenditure.
The formula looks like this:
(Return – Investment ÷ Investment) x 100 = ROI
Content Marketing Metrics for Measuring ROI
To accurately measure the success of your content, you need to identify the right metrics.
Here is a list of key metrics to follow when measuring content ROI:
That said, your metrics are bound to change depending on your content type. Here are some common content marketing goals and their associated metrics you can consider:
- Brand awareness: Website traffic, video clip views, page views, number of downloads, social chatter, and referral links
- Engagement: Comments on blog articles, number of likes, shares, reposts on social media posts, number of website material forwarded, and inbound links
- Lead generation: Form completions and downloads, blog subscriptions, email subscriptions, and conversion rates.
- Sales: Offline and online sales, manual reporting, and anecdotes
- Customer retention: Percentage of content consumed by current customers and the rate of subscription renewals
- Upsells: Sale of new products and services to existing customers
Why Is ROI Tracking Difficult in Content Marketing?
While the introduction of tracking URLs and other tools can help determine the success of content marketing, most marketing teams consider ROI from a long-term perspective and also include non-financial results like audience growth.
Here are three reasons why you find it hard to track content marketing ROI:
Costs for a multi-functional team are complex
If your business outsources its content marketing to a content marketing agency or uses your in-house team, the cost is retainer fees or salaries. However, if you have a multipolar team of freelancers, agencies, or employees contributing to your content, arriving at an accurate figure can be challenging.
It’s difficult to figure out the value of content
The obvious benefit of content marketing is the increased website traffic. With correct tracking, you can determine the website visits and sales conversions brought about by your marketing campaign. However, what’s less obvious is the money you’re saving on customer support, brand recognition, page performance, and other factors.
Working out the role content plays in a sale is difficult
It’s also known as “attribution,” and as its name suggests, accurately allocating a cost to user interaction with your content is nearly impossible. Imagine figuring out whether conversions are because of an article or despite it. While there are different ways of measuring attribution, none of the methods are perfect.
How to Calculate Content Marketing ROI: 3 Ways That Work
Now that we know some of the challenges of accurately measuring content marketing ROI let’s try to calculate it.
The formula for calculating content ROI is ((Return from content − cost of content) / cost of content) * 100.
But how can we work out the value you get from your content?
Here are three practical methods for calculating your return on content marketing.
Conversion Analysis
Let’s assume you know exactly how much money each blog post generated for your website. To calculate the return from content, you will use the following formula:
Return from content marketing = (New customers from content * (Average customer value (ACV))
Working it out requires you to figure out the number of new customers generated by your material within a given period. You can use Google Analytics to track the number of users completing a specific action on our blog (like sharing a message on the contact page).
Lifetime Traffic Value
Unlike conversion analysis, which focuses on how much revenue you are generating from content, this method calculates how much money is saved by ranking organically for keywords rather than paying for advertising.
Return from content marketing = (monthly traffic value * content lifetime in months)
Using a tool like Ahrefs, you can estimate the Traffic value of any article on our blog, which is the amount it will cost to generate the same traffic through Google Ads instead of SEO.
This method is useful if your business switched from paid ads to content marketing. You can assign a dollar value to your content and see how much money you are saving.
Customer Sign-ups Attribution
What if all your customers were required to respond to this question: Where did you hear about us?
Well, this information is useful in calculating content marketing ROI. If, for example, 40% of all your customer sign-ups came from your LinkedIn posts, then 40% of our revenue should be attributed to our LinkedIn marketing efforts.
Now, let’s assume our monthly revenue is $200,000 and that 1,600 of the total 4,000 sign-ups can be attributed to LinkedIn. We can add the figures to the following formula:
Return from content = (% of signups attributed to content * total signup revenue)
Your return on content will be as follows:
(40% of signups attributed to content * $200,000) = $80,000
Why Is Measuring Content Marketing ROI Important?
Tracking your content marketing ROI is important for a variety of reasons. These include the following:
- Determine the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy: Calculating the return on your content will help you understand which campaign is successful, where you are losing money, and where you need to make changes to improve your ROI.
- Proof of outcome: You can show your decision-makers that your content marketing activities achieve tangible results and warrant the allocated resources (or more :).
- Identify the best content types: By analyzing your content ROI, you can determine which types of content, distribution channels, and strategies are successful and which ones don’t need further investment.
Need Help With Content Marketing? Talk to Us!
If you are looking to spend money on content marketing, reach out to us. We will create a personalized content marketing strategy that will help you acquire more customers. Contact us today!
