Content Marketing Analytics can be defined as the process of gathering and interpreting digital data by companies to establish the performance of their content.
The analytics helps companies evaluate their content marketing efforts and analyse the effectiveness of their campaigns. They are able to gauge how their target audience is receiving and interacting with the content.
The companies also learn about the types of content that are working and driving conversions.
Based on the Content Marketing Analytics the companies tweak their existing content strategy. This may include a relook at the type of content that they produce, the distribution platforms and channels where the content is published, audience targeting, and publishing frequency, time and days.
The Content Marketing Analytics can be broadly classified under five heads:
1. Engagement metrics
These metrics indicate how visitors, who are customers or potential customers, interact with content published on the company’s website, app or social media handle. They provide the following information:
Unique visitors: The number of unduplicated visitors that arrive at a website during a specific period of time. Let’s say that during a time span of 24 hours, Visitor A comes twice, Visitor B comes thrice and Visitor C comes four times. They will be counted as three unique visitors only.
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Average time spent on a page: The average time that customers spend on a page establishes the stickiness or relevance of that piece of content. Marketers use this metric to review the usability of content. Pages with low stickiness may either be trashed or rebuilt.
Pages per session: These are the number of pages that a visitor visits during a single session. A high page-per-session rate indicates that the visitors find the content helpful and engaging. A low rate, in contrast, is a red flag. The content team needs to rethink its strategy and realign it with the Content Marketing goals.
Bounce Rate: Bounce Rate indicates the percentage of customers who exit the website after viewing only one page. A high Bounce Rate is a cause of concern because it shows that the visitors did not find the content interesting or exciting enough and chose to leave the website instead of exploring more pages. A low Bounce Rate, on the contrary, indicates visitor interest, and companies need to build more such pages.
Engagement Session: An engagement or engaged session is a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds and has at least two pageviews or screen views. The session can also be called an engaged session if the visitor fulfils a conversion requirement such as signup form.
Engagement Rate: It is the percentage of engaged sessions that happen on a website or a mobile app and where a meaningful engagement happens. The Engagement Rate is considered zero if the session is less than 10 seconds.
Social Media Engagement metrics: Social Media platforms display engagement metrics with every post. These metrics are:
i. Likes: Likes are the first level of engagement and reflect user involvement. Each like is counted and shown against the post. Posts that get more likes are obviously better than posts with fewer likes.
ii. Comments: Comments left behind by customers show how a post was received. The comments can reflect customer approval or disapproval; or they can highlight gaps or inaccuracies in the post. For the content team these constitute valuable insights to tweak existing content or create fresh content.
iii. Shares: Shares are the most powerful indicator of customer engagement. Customers share a post with their network only when they find it worthy of sharing. This is a huge thumbs up for the content team. For the company, the shares are like earned media. They provide extra visibility to the content created by the company and extend the reach of the company.
2. Conversion metrics
These metrics help companies learn the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action on a website, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading an ebook, or making a purchase. A low conversion rate can mean that the content is not convincing, compelling, or clear enough, or that the offer is not attractive or relevant enough.
Companies analyse conversion metrics to learn which calls to action have the highest clickthrough rate; which pieces of content generate maximum leads; and what kind of content has the highest lead-to-conversion rate. Such an understanding helps marketers create more high-performance content.
Conversion rate can be calculated by using the formula given below:
Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) * 100%
For instance, if a company attracts 5,000 visitors during the course of a month and 500 of these visitors complete a desired action then the conversion rate is 10%:
500 / 5000 x 100 = 10%
Here are some of the conversion metrics:
Clickthrough rate: Click-through rate (CTR) is a term used in online marketing. It is the ratio of clicks made on an advertisement to the number of times the advertisement is shown. The higher the CTR, the more successful is the campaign.
CTR is also used to evaluate the success of newsletter campaigns. In this case, the CTR is the ratio of subscribers who click on a hyperlink in an email campaign to the number of subscribers to whom the newsletter went.
Newsletter signup conversion rate: This is the percentage of visitors who subscribe to a company newsletter to the total number of visitors who arrive on the landing page.
E-books lead generation rate: This is the percentage of visitors who fill up the data capture form to download a free e-book to the total number of visitors who arrive on the landing page.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC): This metric tells a company how much it spent to acquire one paying customer. Companies monitor this metric carefully because a high CAC can impact the bottom line negatively.
3. Search engine ranking
Technically speaking, search engine ranking cannot be called a metric. It is a rank assigned by Google or any other search engine to web content for a keyword. The posts that appear high on the search pages reflect their popularity. They indicate that the content is mapped correctly to the needs of potential customers. Such content generates handsome traffic for companies. That is why marketers need to monitor how the search engines rank their content.
Any dip in search engine ranking should send the alarm bells ringing. The content must be reviewed and beefed up to rank high.
4. Optimum publishing time
This is not a very exact science but a good indicator. By analysing content metrics marketers can track the days when engagement is high or the time of the day when engagement is more than average. They can then schedule the publication of their content to drive the best results.
5. Traffic Sources
There can be no customer engagement or conversion if there is no traffic. Also, when we talk of traffic, we should not forget the source of this traffic. Is it free traffic triggered by quality content or is it the result of targeted advertising? A detailed analysis can tell marketers where the traffic is coming from and how they should tweak their strategy.
Organic Traffic: There is no greater satisfaction for content marketers than to see their content rank high in search engine results. When this happens, they experience a high flow of traffic from the search engines. Such traffic is called Organic Traffic. It is free of cost, and brings in potential customers who had not interacted with the company earlier.
Direct Traffic: Customers who are familiar with domain names being used by companies enter the domain name directly to open the site. These may be regular customers who are familiar with the site name or customers who have learnt the site name from an advertisement. This is why companies publish the domain name and the app name prominently in all their advertisements. Such traffic is called Direct Traffic.
Referral Traffic: The traffic that arises from social media posts is called referral traffic. Social media users click on the content and reach the website or landing page of the company. Like search engine traffic, this traffic is also free of cost and can bring in new customers.
Newsletter Traffic: Companies embed call to action in their newsletters, inviting customers to click on them and reach their website.
Paid Traffic: The paid traffic is the traffic that clicks on digital advertisements and reaches the web property of the company.
Read: 8 key elements of actionable Content Marketing Strategy