When it comes to content marketing, there is a long list of metrics that marketing professionals pay attention to in order to determine the best course of action moving forward, but often times different metrics take precedent depending on the business. That being the case, when asking marketers what the most important metrics are concerning content marketing, you’ll receive a variety of answers. This is all well and good. Different product and service avenues are going to be more focused on different metrics, but despite that there are three content marketing metrics that underscore every business and are the topic of discussion in today’s blog. That shouldn’t imply that we should track just these metrics exclusively, but focusing on these will provide a foundation for you to draw conclusions from more advanced metrics and achieve tangible results.
Monthly Sessions
This marketing metric is one of the simplest to understand which indicates how well your business is doing at the top of the funnel concerning things such as social media, PPC, and other things that drive traffic to your website. Stemming from this metric are plenty of other specific metrics that measure more detailed facets of website traffic such as number of organic sessions vs. referenced sessions, session length, landing pages and time spend on these pages, etc., but highlighting and understanding monthly sessions in general provides a quick overview of your website traffic and insight into potential leads.
Conversion Rate
This is the bread and butter of any digital marketing campaign: converting complete strangers into devoted customers. The number of conversions is the end all be all metric when it comes to determining success. Therefore, tracking this number is crucial when is comes to reaching a concrete target such as a goal number of leads or customers and for determining trends in your marketing performance. When you track the conversion rate you’re able to compare sessions and conversions more objectively.
The One Metric That Matters
The first two metrics covered are like the bumpers in a bowling alley, guiding every marketer to their objective goal and making the process easier. They clearly indicate if you’re on track to hit business goals like monthly recurring revenue or customer growth. This third metric, the one metric that matters, is how you improve the first two metrics. Granted, it’s more of a concept than a concrete metric but it’s important to include because as was previously mentioned, metrics vary from marketer to marketer according to the business and transform over time.
The concept of the One Metric That Matters, coined by Alistair Croll, means focusing on the most important metric at a given moment. In his original explanation of the term, he presents it in the context of a company as a whole, but the idea can be tailored to fit marketing specifically very easily. If you take a look at your website’s metrics right now what would you see that needs work? Does any one metric stand out more than another in the context of needing to be modified or having its game upped? Generally speaking, the metric that matters at a given moment should be one that fits the following three criteria:
1. It will have the most impact on your overall company objective
2. It has the most potential for improvement
3. You have means to improve it now.