B2B content marketing metrics that matter: How to justify spend & prove impact
A marketer’s dilemma is simple to state yet hard to solve: promote your business to the right audience at the right time and within a limited (or – ahem – nonexistent) budget, all without sounding like you are, in fact, promoting your business. While just one piece of the puzzle, the right content marketing strategy can lay the foundation for a sustainable, measurable marketing and sales function.
Why content marketing analytics are important
Good content is invaluable in business, especially for B2B companies. Content marketing serves numerous purposes:
It communicates the problem your products or solutions solve to the precise audience dealing with that problem
It drives organic search traffic to your website through relevant queries
It can be fed into sales cadences to educate and nurture leads
It’s the fuel behind any paid marketing tactic like paid search or paid social
It’s the fuel behind organic social media marketing
It can even be used for internal team training and education to get new hires up to speed on your industry and business
So, what’s the problem? Like most B2B marketers, you are tasked with not only rolling out and executing a rock-solid content marketing strategy, but also demonstrating clear success to be able to keep receiving the budget, support and resources you need to run the aforementioned strategy. And C-suite executives or a board of directors often want to see more than just leads generated from an ebook or webinar. They want to see content performance metrics that align with their sales and revenue targets, which isn’t always easy when most B2B buyers consume an average of 13 pieces of content before making a purchase.
While this conundrum can make you want to pull your hair out, it’s – for better or worse – not a new problem in this world. In this blog, we’ll guide you through top metrics to measure and report on when you need to show the value of a well-planned content marketing strategy.
How content marketing drives sales
Non-marketers may try to convince you content marketing is amongst the first things that can be dropped when looking to cut budget or save resources. Those not as close to the data may not understand, at a glance, how content literally fuels the sales journey and builds brand awareness from the ground up.
Make no mistake: Content marketing is a powerful tool that directly drives sales. Good content addresses customer needs, builds trust, and nurtures long-term relationships. An essential piece to this process is aligning content with stages of the buyer's journey to guide prospects toward a purchase decision more effectively (but that’s for another article).
Here’s a list of reasons why it helps drive sales:
Regular, high-quality content positions your brand as an expert in your industry, increasing customer trust and loyalty.
By addressing specific pain points or interests, content attracts leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers.
Content optimized for search engines improves your ranking, making it easier for potential customers to find you when they’re ready to buy.
Informative content helps customers understand their problems better and see how your product or service is the solution.
Consistently providing value through content keeps your audience engaged over time, which increases the chances they’ll choose you when they’re ready to make a purchase.
Content like case studies, testimonials, and demos can help answer customer questions faster, speeding up their decision-making process.
Running a solid content marketing strategy might be daunting when you don’t have the team or resources to do it right and show impact. Consider bringing on a B2B content marketing agency that can guide you through the development and execution of your content strategy…and deliver results you can show leadership.
Content marketing ROI: What is it & does it matter?
Let’s be honest – this is the big one most higher-ups want to know. What exactly is the return on investment for content marketing? Content marketing ROI is a percentage that shows how much revenue you gained from content marketing in comparison to what it cost to create and distribute. Here’s a simple formula to measure content marketing ROI:
(Return - Investment ÷ Investment) x 100 = ROI
Investment should include everything you paid that contributed to content marketing, including strategy, creation, software and distribution.
With that said, using ROI to measure success of a content marketing strategy is problematic. For example, a well-written blog that’s rich in keywords relevant to your industry but too high-level to drive good leads likely won’t deliver much in terms of ROI. But because it’s a top-funnel piece driving relevant search traffic to your website, it’s building domain authority and brand awareness – both of which are critical to building a business.
So now that we understand what content marketing ROI means, how to find it, and why it shouldn’t be a standalone metric of success, it’s time to talk about other metrics to include to prove the undeniable impact of content marketing.
Content marketing success metrics to show impact
Measuring the performance of your content should parallel the multi-phase buyer’s journey your content itself supports. In other words, include metrics that measure top-funnel performance (awareness stage), mid-funnel performance (consideration stage), and bottom-funnel performance (decision stage).
At FutureProof Content Co., we use this simple yet powerful content marketing scorecard to measure and analyze content performance for each phase of the journey:
Track these B2B content marketing metrics to demonstrate the value at each phase of the buyers’ journey.
Awareness stage metrics
Organic search users
This metric in Google Analytics measures the number of unique users (individuals) who land on your website via unpaid, organic search engine results. This is important because it gives you insight into your audience size based almost solely on SEO efforts.
Organic search sessions
By measuring organic search sessions – the number of visits to a website from unpaid search engine results – you can better understand whether your content is effectively attracting your target audience to your website through organic search and SEO.
Average position
Average position, measured through Google Search Console, gives you insight into where you appear (i.e., how high on the page) on search engine results pages (SERPs) for various search terms.
Number of organic keywords ranked
Keyword rankings demonstrate how many keywords or search queries your website is appearing for on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Consideration stage metrics
Return visitors
This is a strong metric of success when it comes to the consideration stage of a buyer’s journey. In essence, it tells you how much of your audience visited your site and came back at least one more time. It helps gauge user engagement, interest and content quality.
Time on site
Time on site shows the average amount of time a user spends on your site. This metric can vary drastically depending on the type of content on each page or even the industry your business serves. But once you have a benchmark, it’s a helpful tool to keep an eye on user engagement, content depth and quality.
User engagement (event count per active user)
This is another key indicator of content quality for mid-funnel. It shows you the average number of events – things like watch a video, submit a form, download a guide, subscribe to email – triggered by each user during a session. User engagement helps you determine how effectively your content is driving interactions through content.
Decision stage metrics
Conversions or key events
Conversions are the most important metric for the decision-making stage of the buyer’s journey. Lead generation captures whether users are ready to take the next step (e.g., providing their contact info or booking a sales call), which is a direct indicator of bottom-funnel effectiveness. Measuring lead generation also helps quantify the ROI of your content marketing efforts, as it directly ties content performance to revenue or potential revenue outcomes.
These key performance indicators can be pulled from a combination of Google Analytics, Google Search Console (both free), and an SEO tool (we prefer SEMrush).
FutureProof Content Co. — Your B2B content marketing agency partner
While it can be a bit complex, it’s essential to measure performance of your content marketing strategy in a regular cadence – think monthly or quarterly – to be able to get an accurate picture of where you lead in your industry, where you might need to beef up or improve content, and where there are clear gaps. Keeping a content marketing scorecard also helps you report and justify spend to your leadership team, showing the value and impact of your efforts and investment.
Download our content marketing scorecard to start tracking your content performance today. Simply make a copy, and start logging your own metrics.
FutureProof Content Co. is a hassle-free content marketing service for sustainability-driven companies. Whether you’re just starting out on your content strategy or you’re a seasoned professional, we have an offering to fit your needs. Sound interesting? Let’s chat.
