According to the latest stats, 70% of marketers dedicate quite a portion of their overall marketing budget to their content marketing strategy.

And it’s no wonder they choose to do so - 85% of B2B marketing specialists confirm content marketing brought them some fantastic results in 2020.

Content helps you build authority and trust. But how can you make sure your content is on point and helpful to your readers? Some marketers claim they struggle with finding the best tools and identifying KPIs to measure content success efficiently, and if you’re among them, don’t worry.

This article will provide you with a simple, four-step process for effortlessly tracking your content’s success.

Setting Goals

Nothing can be tracked and measured unless we know why we’re doing something and what we’re looking to achieve.

You may see how many social shares your newest blog post has, but what does that data tell you? What do you do with it if you haven’t set goals? That’s why the first step in measuring content success is setting goals.

Your goals may depend largely on your industry. For example, an e-commerce business will track metrics that have to do with direct sales and conversions. If you’re in SaaS, you may measure the lifetime value of your customers.

You can set goals on different levels: for your overall content marketing strategy, a specific campaign, an individual blog post, or another piece of content.

Setting KPIs for Your Goals

Once you know your goals, it’s time to determine what KPIs you’ll be using to measure your progress towards these goals.

If you’re looking to increase user engagement on your website, you may find it helpful to track metrics such as bounce rate, pages per session, or average time on page.

Although different goals will require you to track different KPIs, experts recommend focusing on these categories: website user behavior, SEO impact, and engagement on social media.

Determine How to Measure the KPIs

When you choose suitable KPIs to track, the next step is to find what tools you will use to measure the data. Some KPIs are straightforward, and you can easily locate them, but other important metrics you want to follow may need some digging.

In many cases, you’ll need to combine different data sources to find out what you want to know.

For instance, if you’re running a campaign on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google simultaneously, you may need to track and measure CPC across all three. Some of the most popular tools to measure your KPIs are Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMrush, and others.

Measure and Adjust as Needed

Most marketers opt for daily, weekly, or monthly monitoring, depending on what the goals and KPIs are. Reviews are essential if you want to pinpoint exactly what caused growth or drops in your website traffic, engagement, or session duration.

Based on the data you get from this monitoring, you can react timely and fix potential issues before they cause more trouble on your website or social media. Also, you can identify tactics that work and bring you more traffic so you can replicate them in the future to reach your goals more quickly.

Four Steps Towards Success

These four simple steps are exactly what a marketer needs to take to track and measure progress towards content marketing goals effectively.

Is your content successful? You’ll find out by setting precisely defined goals, determining which KPIs will tell you if you’re doing it right, identifying the ways you’ll track these KPIs, and then measuring them and analyzing your data.

This straightforward process will help you create and implement successful strategies and maximize your content marketing efforts without wasting your time or budget on tactics that don’t generate results.