If you want to maximize the impact of your content, you need to track the right KPIs. With the appropriate metrics and measurement practices in place, you can monitor outcomes across the entire lifecycle of a campaign.
Here are a few metrics you might be missing:
One of the best ways to understand your sales cycle is to gather data on how and when marketing qualified leads (MQLs) become sales qualified leads (SQLs).
As long as your organization has agreed upon the criteria used to define MQLs and SQLs, you should be able to track the specific moment the conversion occurs. Advanced CRM and marketing automation systems can help.
It’s important to remember that not every channel or piece of content is meant to serve the explicit purpose of capturing contacts or converting leads. Some tactics and content will be used to educate prospects or nurture leads at the top of the funnel, but will rarely serve as the spark that converts a MQL to a SQL. That’s not a problem, as long as top of the funnel content and tactics lead to more in-depth or actionable content that will help make that conversion. Tracking MQL to SQL conversion is meant to help you understand what role different channels and content pieces play in the sales funnel, and whether certain aspects of your campaign are performing up to par.
To determine whether your efforts on each channel are worth the investment, track the amount you spend on each acquisition, conversion or desired action. Decide which actions are important to your team on each channel. For content pieces such as webinars or white papers, you might be tracking the number of direct sales contacts or email list sign-ups. For social media channels, you may instead focus on an action earlier in the sales funnel, such as page engagement or website click-throughs. Regardless, note what costs went into each action and whether they had the desired effect. If you’re using an advanced marketing automation and CRM system, you can even set up formulas to track attribution and the total cost of acquisition for each new client or customer, from their first interaction to their last.
Remember to consider all of the variables that can be included in the cost of each acquisition, including the time that your employees spend creating, promoting and optimizing content.
To get a more comprehensive picture of how people engage with your content across channels, track how, when and where content helps to move leads across platforms and through the sales funnel. For example, gather data on not only how email marketing recipients interact with your email content, but also the pages they investigate on your site once they click through to it. Within your site, watch the behavior flow of visitors across various content pieces and key pages. The clearer picture you can develop of how leads engage with multiple styles of content throughout their buying cycle, the better you will understand their needs and whether your content solves them.
Want more insights on creating and tracking the impact of your content across channels? Download our white paper, The 5 new laws of content:
Photo by Sebastiaan ter Burg via Flickr Creative Commons
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