How to analyse data from content marketing

As a content marketer, it’s not sufficient to simply research, write, publish, and repeat. It is vital for you to constantly measure the impact which your content marketing is having on your company.  In order to ensure that your content marketing is making the impact that you want it to have, you must have the correct content marketing strategy.

Content marketing goals are highly individualised. Your digital marketing priorities are heavily influenced by the size of your business, budget, available resources, previous tests and outcomes, plus many other factors that vary from business to business. In order to attain the most out of your content marketing strategy, you need to establish what your specific goals as well as tie them to the correct KPIs.

Setting The Right Goals To Meet Your Objectives

Whether you are working on your overall content marketing plan, or a particular part within it, it’s vital that you have clear objectives as well as objectives for each element in your strategy. These goals should be distinctly defined as well as realistic. In addition, you should be able to reach them within an acceptable time frame.

SMART objectives are simple as well as quick to learn. The objective is the beginning point of the marketing plan. Objectives which are SMART should seek to answer the question ‘Where do we want to go?’.

The purpose of SMART objectives include:

• To enable an organisation to control its content marketing plan.
• To assist with motivating individuals as well as teams to reach a common goal.
• To provide an agreed, consistent focus for all functions of a company.

Here’s what S.M.A.R.T is short for:

• Specific – Your goals should be clearly set out.
• Measurable – Your goals should be ascertainable so that you know when you’ve reached them or, alternatively, how far away from them you are.
• Achievable – You should be able to actually achieve your goals. They shouldn’t be unattainable ‘hopes’.
• Relevant/Realistic – Your content marketing goals should be relevant to your overall business goals.
• Time-sensitive – Your goals should be able to be achieved within a reasonable time period.

KPIs And Metrics To Measure Your Goals

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organisations use KPIs in order to evaluate their success at reaching targets.

Selecting the correct KPIs will depend on your industry and which part of the business you are looking to track. Each department will use different KPI types to measure success based on specific business goals and targets.

How To Write And Develop KPIs

When writing or developing a KPI, you need to consider how that KPI relates to a specific business outcome or objective. KPIs need to be customised to your business situation and should be developed to help you achieve your goals. Follow these steps when writing a KPI:

• Write a clear objective for your KPI
• Share your KPI with stakeholders
• Review the KPI on a weekly or monthly basis
• Make sure the KPI is actionable
• Evolve your KPI to fit the changing needs of the business
• Check to see that the KPI is attainable
• Update your KPI objectives as needed

Common Marketing Objectives

These help you to set content marketing objectives in order to provide the right direction to meet your goals.

Typically, your content marketing objectives could include some or all of the following:

• Increasing sales
• Building brand awareness
• Growing market share
• Launching new products or services
• Targeting new customers
• Entering new markets internationally or locally
• Improving stakeholder relations
• Enhancing customer relationships
• Improving internal communications
• Increasing profit

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you’re a writer and want to branch out into content marketing, you should really do a content marketing course such as the one that we offer. For more information about this, please follow this link.