Marketing 8 min read

10 Content Marketing Metrics Every Marketer Should Measure

NicoElNino / Shutterstock.com

NicoElNino / Shutterstock.com

If there’s one issue that the majority of marketers face today, it’s tracking their content marketing metrics. Seasoned marketers know how vital tracking these metrics are, especially when precious time and money are involved.

The primary purpose of marketing is to drive traffic to a website and increase its sales. Thus, it is vital that when planning your marketing strategy, you can quantify the needed information at your disposal so you can make better decisions.

Measuring these metrics lets you track the progress of your marketing efforts. Without the data provided by these metrics, it’s difficult for marketers to monitor the factors that drive the growth of the website they are managing.

However, while tracking a website’s metrics is undeniably essential, marketers should only monitor the specific metrics that they need to identify what drives traffic, what boost conversions, or what contributes to the sales of their business.

That said, here are the ten content marketing metrics that all marketers should track and measure.

1. Demographics

One essential content marketing metric that you should consider if you want to keep track of your efforts is demographics. Keep in mind that knowing who your target audience is is a crucial part of your marketing strategy.

Ask yourself the following questions: who are your potential customers? How often do they visit your site?

If you want your marketing campaigns to succeed, always start with knowing and understanding your audience. Keeping track of your demographics will ensure that your content is reaching the right readers for your brand.

2. Bounce Rate

So, what is a bounce rate, and why should marketers keep an eye on this factor? Essentially, the bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who visit and leave your website without doing anything. These are people who just bounced off your site and have not contributed to the sales or growth of your business.

According to SEMrush, the bounce rate is the fourth most significant ranking factor in SERP. While some experts have contradicted this, the bounce rate is said to affect how RankBrain (Google’s third most crucial ranking factor) could perceive your site.

RankBrain is an algorithm developed by Google to help improve search results for users by analyzing search intent. Meaning, if your site’s bounce rate is high, RankBrain might categorize your website as irrelevant because it doesn’t match the intent of searchers. If that happens, your SERP ranking could potentially drop.

That said, make sure that you keep your bounce rate at bay by regularly monitoring it.

3. Unique Visitors

Unique visitors are the number of unduplicated online users who visited your website during a specific period. They are considered an invaluable tool for measuring, tracking, and understanding your site’s audience.

Monitoring your unique visitors’ number every month is an industry-standard if you want to know if your website is gaining or losing valuable traffic.

It also gives you insight into what content brings in new users and what keeps old users happy. Use this metric to find out the perfect balance between customer retention and user growth.

4. Pageviews per Visitor

Pageviews per visitor is a  metric used by marketers to define the total number of pages viewed in a given session by a visitor. Having a high ratio of page views means that your website successfully captures the interest of your audience.

Visitors who spend more time on your website to explore its content generate more page views than those who leave immediately after having a glance at your homepage.

Note that there’s no right value when it comes to the number of page views per visitor. Typically, it is used to compare and observe the traffic patterns over time — especially when you’re experimenting or redesigning your website.

5. Rate of Returning Visitors

The rate of returning visitors (RVR) is the metric that you should use if you want to know the number of repeating visitors to your website. Your site’s RVR could reveal just how effective your content marketing strategies are. They might also show if your attempt to communicate with your audience through campaigns is working or not.

Again, your most valuable asset is your existing and repeat customers. You need to value them not only to keep them but also to expand your visitor base. Returning visitors are more likely to refer your products and services to their friends and family members.

Remember that referral traffic is a whole lot easier to convert than new prospective clients. So, if you want to take advantage of the benefits that you can get from your returning visitors, make sure that you monitor them.

6. Session Duration

Session duration is defined as the time spent on a page by your visitors. This is one of the content marketing metrics that you should pay close attention to because it can give you valuable insight into what content your visitors are particularly interested in.

The longer visitors spend on your website, the more engaged they are with your content. However, if people spend less time reading a 2000-word-long article that you published or viewing a video you just uploaded, this could only mean two things. Either you are targeting the wrong audience, or you are not adding value to your visitors.

However, keep in mind that session duration will not tell you if your readers or visitors are ACTIVELY engaged with your content. Meaning, it won’t let you know if your site visitors stayed in one of your web pages because they are reading the material or if they got distracted by a phone call and had remained on the page without really doing anything.

If you want to make this metric relevant to your marketing efforts, you need to use tools that monitor people’s scroll, keyboard use, mouse movements, and clicks to know people’s engagement.

7. Social Following Growth

There is no doubt that social media is one of the most powerful tools in content marketing. There’s no better way to reach as many potential customers as you can, but through networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and many more.

Social media has indeed become a vital tool in promoting brands and enhancing the online presence of businesses. Therefore, you must monitor the growth of your website’s social media following. Social following growth is a metric that can help you understand how compelling your social media content is and if your brand is attracting the right audience.

8. Social Shares

Always remember; high-quality, informative content brings value to your audience. In general, people are on the Internet to seek answers to their questions. When creating content, our primary goal is to answer their queries and satisfy their intent. Once people become aware of your valuable content, it should only be a matter of time before they start sharing your posts.

Social shares pertain to the number of times your content has been shared across social media platforms. By monitoring this figure, you will be able to determine what sort of materials get the most attention from your visitors. It can also help you identify which articles are deemed necessary by your audience and which require improvement.

9. Comments

Regardless of whether it’s in your website’s social media account or page post, comments are reliable indicators if your content resonates with your audience. As one of the content marketing metrics that you should keep an eye on, you can take advantage of comments to know how your visitors and followers view your content.

The number of comments on your site or post shows how engaging your content could be for your target audience. Don’t forget to welcome any form of agreement, disagreement, compliments, and personal stories from your readers.

10. Leads Generated

Generating leads is one of the primary purposes of marketing. It is considered the backbone of any business. Leads generated is a metric that you should use to measure the leads that come directly from your content. By content, it could be from email signups, form completions, information requests, and others.

Measuring your leads is significant if you want to know if your marketing efforts drive real opportunities for your business or if there’s any chance of increasing your ROI.

Key Takeaways

Creating a successful marketing campaign is not just about creativity — there’s a lot of factors to consider. And, if you want to make sure that your efforts won’t go to waste, you need to track your campaign’s performance. You can do this by utilizing the right content marketing metrics that would help you better understand your audience.

Through the metrics that we provided in this article, you will be able to determine which content marketing strategies are useful and which are the ones that you should ditch. Not only will it save you time by letting you know your site’s areas of improvement, but it will also keep you from investing in the wrong initiatives.

Read More: How To Leverage AI To Boost Your B2B Content Marketing

First AI Web Content Optimization Platform Just for Writers

Found this article interesting?

Let Chelle Fuertes know how much you appreciate this article by clicking the heart icon and by sharing this article on social media.


Profile Image

Chelle Fuertes

Chelle is the Product Management Lead at INK. She's an experienced SEO professional as well as UX researcher and designer. She enjoys traveling and spending time anywhere near the sea with her family and friends.

Comments (0)
Most Recent most recent
You
share Scroll to top

Link Copied Successfully

Sign in

Sign in to access your personalized homepage, follow authors and topics you love, and clap for stories that matter to you.

Sign in with Google Sign in with Facebook

By using our site you agree to our privacy policy.