9 Metrics to Measure the Success of Your Content Marketing Strategy

There is genuinely no escaping a company budget. For many companies, including law firms, it is essential to ensure that money isn’t being wasted. This is generally easy to track through receipts and company cards or other tangible objects or results. However, some expenses are a bit more difficult to keep track of. Content marketing is one such expense. Though digital and content marketing strategies often bring in a significant amount of business, it can be hard to tell precisely how well a campaign is doing, especially if you don’t know what to look for.

Though content marketing isn’t as straightforward as office expenses or write-offs, there are ways to track its success so that you can be sure that it’s working. This can help you to stay on course with your marketing goals and ensure that your investments are giving you an appropriate ROI.

The Importance of Regular Review

Before we consider which metrics you should use, it is important to understand that a large part of the process is simply reviewing your marketing strategy regularly. What works in SEO and marketing, in general, is constantly changing and updating. Though Google has larger rollouts from time to time, the company is developing and updating its algorithm at all times. To keep up, you need to check your strategy frequently to be sure it’s yielding consistent or improving results.

Key Metrics to Follow

There are several metrics to keep track of that will give you a good indication of how well your content marketing strategy is working. Regularly checking these allows you to adjust in real-time and ensure that your efforts are always working at maximum capacity.

1  Website Traffic

Your website traffic is one of the most straightforward methods for tracking your marketing success. You can do this through Google Analytics or through a private or paid service as well. As you engage in marketing campaigns and efforts, watch the effect of the website traffic for that hour, day, and week. If there is an increase in traffic, it’s a sign that your campaign has drawn people into your pages.

2  Time Spent on Page

Google Analytics can tell you how much time, on average, users are spending on your page. If the number is low, it’s a sign that something within your site needs improving. This could be loading speeds, content, contact information, etc. This also could be an indication that you are marketing to the wrong demographic. If you engage people who ultimately visit your website and don’t want what you are offering, you may want to assess your demographic strategy.

3  Bounce Rate

Your website’s bounce rate is similar to the average time spent on your page. The distinction is that bounce rate reflects people who go to your site and leave without even trying to browse or click on any further pages within your site. This gives you a similar indication to the above. High bounce rates mean that you don’t have what your customers are looking for, your page is slow or clunky, or you’re advertising to the wrong group of people.

4  Impressions

The impressions that your ads make represent the number of people who see your ads. By tracking impressions, you can see how widespread your campaign actually is and if you’re marketing to the right people.

5  Click-Through Rate

Click-through rates are similar to an impression, but they rely on an action (a click) rather than simply viewing the ad. A high click-through rate means that a large percentage of your audience sees your ads and clicks on a link within the ad or email.

6  Lead Generation

Track your marketing efforts side by side with how many new leads you’ve acquired. If the graphs have similar trajectories, that’s a sign that your efforts are leading directly to leads. If they don’t seem correlated, you may want to assess your strategy and try something different. Leads are really the ultimate goal because they bring in the money. If your ad campaign isn’t bringing in leads, something needs to change.

7  Shares on Social Media

If your social media content is receiving a lot of shares, it’s an indication that your social media content is in the right place. Most people don’t share basic ads but rather share important or interesting information that they believe others would benefit from. If people are sharing your posts, it is a sign that your content is doing well.

8  Backlinks From Other Sites

Backlinks are one of the most significant accomplishments of a marketing campaign. These occur when another site embeds a link to your site within its page. This indicates to others and to the Google algorithm that you are an industry expert on a given matter. This can boost your search engine ranking and drive clients to your site. Plus, your content has to be good for other people to want to reference it, so it is a vote of confidence there too.

9  Keyword Rankings

This is a fairly basic concept in SEO, but it remains a good indicator of website and marketing strength. Websites with a high keyword ranking come up at the top of the list of search engine results based on their integration of popular keywords. The goal is to become the first page in the list of results because most people will opt to click on that option. If your keyword ranking is doing well, and if you are on the first page of results, your keyword research and SEO have paid off.

Consult an Expert

It’s important to remember that you are not alone when you create and maintain a content marketing strategy. This is a lot to incorporate into your website, and tracking these metrics can be time-consuming and confusing. Here at RizeUp Media, we have been creating and maintaining digital marketing strategies for law firms for many years. We understand these metrics inside and out and know how to read them so that we are constantly optimizing and updating your content. Don’t leave your ROI to chance; contact RizeUp Media today.