ver get a hefty hotel bill after an amazing much-needed vacation? Seeing those numbers can rip you out of dreamland and back into reality pretty quick.
That’s kind of how marketers feel when they view their content marketing analytics. They create awesome content, talk to people on social and push out great stuff. But, when it comes time to analyze the results, they would rather find a hole in the ground and bury their heads instead. Math, percentages, ROI, calculations? I didn’t sign up for this!
Reviewing your content marketing analytics can be annoying. But an even bigger pain point is figuring out which metrics to track. So to help you sift through some of this stuff, and hopefully keep your head above the soil, here are some important content marketing analytics to focus on.
Consumption
Consumption metrics tell you who is consuming your content and how they are finding you. These metrics clue you into your largest traffic channels and which pages are getting the most love.
- Page views – Page views record how many times a particular page is viewed regardless of whether the same person viewed the page more than once. This is a good overall metric that gives you a broad overview of how many people are consuming your content.
- Unique page views – This is the metric that defines how many times a page was viewed at least once. If the page is viewed more than once, the count still remains at 1. Analyzing which pages get the most views and time on site (we’ll discuss this one later) can give you an idea of which pages your visitors like the most. This data can tell you what your audience likes to digest and also give you an opportunity to add lead-generating opportunities to highly-trafficked pages.
- Source of the traffic – Where is the traffic coming from? Social sites? Google? Referring sites? Analyze where the bulk of your traffic is coming from so you can ramp up the traffic coming from those outlets, if possible.
- Open rates and clicks – Review your email open rates and clicks to determine which emails perform the best. Split test different subject lines and add tracking to your email links so you can assess which links get the most love.
Social Shares and Interaction / Engagement
Social sharing analytics reveal how much your content is being shared, how often, from where and from whom. Engagement piggybacks off of sharing and identifies what type of action your content is producing and how often users are taking that action.
- Social shares – While social likes and comments are important metrics to track (definitely track them, especially comments!), people share content they feel passionate about. Share metrics tell you how invested in your content your audience is. And if you use social media regularly, using a tool to calculate your social media analytics is vital. We list some of our top social tools picks in this article.
- Bounce rate – The bounce rate measures the percentage of people who view your page and then “bounce” back to Google. A low bounce rate is synonymous with higher engagement because it means that people are staying on your page instead of going back to where they came from. A high bounce rate signals that they did not find what they were looking for.
- Time on page – In addition to bounce rate, time on site is a valuable engagement metric to measure. It shows how long people stay on your page without clicking elsewhere. Note that sometimes you may want a visitor to spend less time on a page. If your focus is to get people to opt-in and you did your job well, people will leave the page because they are opting in. In this case, a shorter time on the page is desirable.
Leads/Sales/Revenue
Analyzing your leads, sales and revenue are integral to sustaining business growth and they absolutely must be measured.
- Click-through rates – Before people become leads they must click on a link to get to your landing pages. If you are getting substantial traffic, but you aren’t getting enough people clicking on your links, review your calls to action to see if they can be improved.
- Lead/Sales conversion rate – Calculate the percentage of people who completed an action to become a lead or purchase vs. how many people visited your page and did not take action. Note that if you have a SaaS or services business, you should also track how many qualified leads came from your forms or content. Qualified leads are those interested in your service and they can be passed along to your sales team for follow-up. In addition, if you have complex funnels, calculate conversions at each stage.
- Revenue – This is the metric everyone wants to see grow over time. But, you need to track it if you want to know how well you are really doing and know how every piece of your content marketing translates to dollars in your bank account. Can you attribute a single or multiple pieces of content to a sale or increased revenue? You can, but you may need tools to do it. Take a look at our “Ultimate List of Content Marketing Analytics Tools” article for some top analytics tools picks.
Hopefully this list helped you make more sense of your analytics so you can compile a list together of what to start focusing on for your business. However, if you really do want to bury your head in the ground (I wouldn’t blame you), you can let us help you with your content and measure it for you. (Yup, we do that.) The cool thing is that you can try us out for free and also receive some awesome stuff like a free optimized article, engaging content ideas, promotion plan and free access to our platform. Sign up for free right here.