Top 100 Content Marketing Question: How can you measure the value of content marketing in helping achieve your marketing goals?
First, write down your marketing goals
Content marketing can achieve many different marketing goals. To measure the value of content marketing, spell out your goals in writing, in advance.
In other words, write down your content marketing mission and content marketing strategy.
Even better, involve internal stakeholders in co-creating your mission and strategy. Build a big tent to attain buy-in from the get-go.
- If you haven’t written down your content marketing mission yet, here’s how. Write down your content marketing mission to leapfrog ahead of the 4 out of 5 marketers who have not written down their content missions.
- If you haven’t written down your content marketing strategy yet, here’s how. A written strategy vaults you ahead of 2 out of 3 marketers who have not written down their content marketing strategies.
Next, consider the goals that content marketing can achieve
To measure the value of content marketing, study the goals that other marketers already achieve with content marketing.
The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and Marketing Profs do annual studies to show what business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) marketers achieve with content marketing.
The top 3 content marketing goals of B2C and B2B marketers overlap: to create brand awareness, build credibility and trust and educate audiences. In other words, use content marketing to teach before you sell — building awareness and credibility.
Goals B2C marketers achieve successfully
B2C marketers report successfully achieving 10 different goals with content, in the 2019 study.
Over half of consumer marketers achieved success by meeting these marketing goals:
#1: Create brand awareness, which 4 out of 5 marketers cite (79%).
#2: Build credibility and trust, which 2 out of 3 marketers cite (67%).
#3: Educate audiences, which 2 out of 3 marketers cite (65%).
#4: Build loyalty with existing clients and customers, which 2 out of 3 marketers cite (63%).
#5: Generate demand and leads, cited by more than half of marketers (57%).
#6: Generate sales and revenues, cited by more than half of marketers (52%).
To measure the value of content marketing, consider other goals achieved by B2C marketers:
- Build a subscribed audience (45%)
- Nurture subscribers, audiences and leads (42%)
- Support a new product launch (40%)
- Drive attendance to in-person events (33%).
This chart shows all 10 goals that B2C marketers report they achieved with content marketing:
Goals B2B marketers achieve successfully
B2B marketers achieve different goals, says the CMI/Marketing Profs study. Goals achieved by more than half of business marketers included these:
#1: Create brand awareness, which 4 out of 5 marketers cite (81%).
#2: Educate audiences, which 3 out of 4 marketers cite (73%).
#3: Build credibility and trust, which 2 out of 3 marketers cite (68%).
#4: Generate demand and leads, which 2 out of 3 marketers cite (68%).
#5: Nurture subscribers, audiences and leads, which more than half of marketers cite (58%).
#6: Build loyalty with existing clients and customers, cited by more than half of marketers (54%).
To measure the value of content marketing, consider the goals achieved by B2B marketers:
- Drive attendance to in-person events (49%)
- Generate sales and revenue (45%)
- Build a subscribed audience (43%)
- Launch a new product (40%).
Compared with business marketers, consumer marketers place more emphasis on building loyalty, and on generating demand, leads, sales and revenue.
How to measure the value of content marketing?
Here are more blogs to help you measure the value of content marketing:
- Blog: How to measure content marketing success?
- Blog: How important is tracking content marketing analytics to success?
- Blog: How to measure good content?
- Blog: How do you measure effective copy?
“How can you measure the value of content marketing in helping achieve your marketing goals?” is one of marketers’ Top 100 Questions about #contentmarketing. Here are the answers.