Content marketing is created through blog posts (just like this one!), SEO friendly content on your website, white papers, social media content, and eBooks. By creating marketing content, you can effectively move people through a conversion funnel by building brand awareness, supporting consideration, and converting people into leads and customers, as well as products and brand promoters.
What I like to say is- "If you build it, they will come." (Yes, I am from Iowa). Anyway, don't you want to learn how to measure your content marketing and see if there is a strong ROI? Here are the 3 steps:
1. Awareness is exposing new people to a brand, product or service. Measuring awareness success includes keeping an eye on higher rankings in search engine result pages, growth in your website’s visitors, and social metrics, including likes, followers, +1s, retweets, etc. Awareness is vital since 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. With that being said, it is important for your business to create content to be found in a search engine. 75% of searchers never go past page 1 of Google search results. Creating quality content can increase the number of keywords that your web site will rank for.
The best way to distribute your content is..... SOCIAL MEDIA! It's a few clicks away, it's free (besides your time), and it can be seen by target audience. Over 15,000,000 online consumers say that they have researched social media before they have made a purchase. Your social media accounts better be in tip-top shape with great messaging and professional graphic design!
Again, what are you getting out of this content creation for your marketing efforts? Website traffic, increase in social media followers, and improved search engine rankings
2. Now that you have inspired potential customers to consider your brand, product, service by having them engage, read, share, download, comment, etc.
The following indicators measure consideration success: increased total page views, lower bounce rates from email marketing, and social metrics. How do you drive consideration? Some tactics include web page content, “long tail” blog posts, industry related articles, newsletters, and white papers.
Why is consideration important? Search engines rank content based on relevance: Time spent on site per user, amount and age of permanent, original content, people talking about you via social media, and a lot of indexed pages.
With custom content you put out there, 61% of consumers will feel better about your company. To beat that statistic, 65% of social media users learn about products and services via social media. Social media is important isn't it?
The outcome of the content creation consideration stage is: informed decision making, favorable impressions, brand trust, and referrals via social media.
3. Of course, conversion success is one of the most important objectives of content marketing. Increased conversion rate is measured by the end sale or a lead from a form submission.
Why does content marketing drive conversions? Search engines support specific products/services. Social media amplifies messaging. And you don't have to pay-per-click, instead you're growing organically.
After conversion (the delighting stage), people share their experiences with others by blogging and social media. These discussions reference content, which builds links and positively impacts search and social media awareness!
And that is how you measure content marketing. To learn ALL about generating qualified leads, download the free eBook below!
