Every year, the Content Marketing Institute asks marketers what they find most difficult in content marketing.
And every year, “measurement” is routinely one of the biggest challenges for B2B and B2C marketers alike. Fifty percent reported challenges in measurement last year—and that’s just the honest ones!
But if you want to justify your investment in content marketing, optimize your buyer’s journey and—most importantly—improve your sales, you’ve got to get the measurement part figured out.
Even if you’ve only used static content up to this point, you already have access to a huge array of data on visitors that can help point to effectiveness, including…
• Unique visitors
• Bounce rates
• Time spent
• Exit rate
• Open rates
• Conversions
And much, much more.
• A visitor either downloaded your ebook, or they didn’t.
• A customer either opened your email, or they didn’t.
• A lead either converted, or they didn’t.
Once a lead has downloaded a white paper, for example, there’s a big “black box” where you can’t be sure exactly how they engaged with that information. This leaves huge holes in the picture we’re trying to paint of our customers and their individual journey.
With interactive content, you can collect data from inside of the “black box." For example, with interactive content, you can see:
And if you’ve collected an email throughout the engagement, you can tie all of that information into your CRM and get a thorough understanding of your prospects on an individual level. Suddenly, you’ve got marketing insights that can help your sales team deliver a more tailored pitch.
If you’re unsure whether or not you’re measuring the right things, or if want a clear picture of where the gaps in your measurement might be, here’s a simple exercise you can go through to bring clarity to your measurement. Ask yourself whether or not you are currently measuring any of the questions below. As with other exercises, the more answers you have in the red (or answered "no" to)—the more measurement needs to become an area of focus for your business.
What percentage of people leave your content immediately after entering?
How long are they spending on your content?
How are users navigating through your content? What do they find most compelling?
How much of your resource is a lead consuming? What are they clicking on?
How many people are taking your desired action—whether that’s buying a product, downloading a resource, submitting their email, etc.?
Who is the customer, and what do they care about? What prices did they configure—or how did they score on an assessment? How interested or qualified are they, really?
DON’T just measure these numbers in aggregate. Look at them on a campaign by campaign basis, or compare traffic sources! Which channels are sending the most engaged leads? Which types of visitors are most likely to bounce?
In addition to the kinds of things you can measure with Google Analytics, here are two easy ways to get some deeper insights from your content that will inform your sales team:
Within your interactive content, assign a “+1” to any action that indicates that a lead was actively engaging—whether that’s a click on a link, opening a new section of the content, scrolling through a slider or completing a question inside of a quiz.
For example, if a lead clicked on five areas of your content, they might receive an aggregate engagement score of “+5."
These aggregate scores can be used in two ways:
With behavioral tagging, you can use “tags” on the different areas of the content that describe the types or topics of the information being consumed. As a lead interacts with your content, that data is being compiled behind the scenes, showing you not only where they were most engaged, but which topics they found most interesting.
Feeding this information over to sales arms them for their call and gives them an idea of the questions they should anticipate.
To wrap up our learning, we’ll give you a quick comparison assessment you can use to weigh your interactive content against best practices and be certain you’re executing the right way.