9 Important Content Marketing KPIs That Can Predict the Success of Your Campaign in 2024

Companies are spending one third of their marketing budgets on valuable content. Many successful brands invest as much as 40% of their marketing budgets into producing and distributing content. And these numbers are predicted to continue to rise. Why?

Content marketing costs 62% less than other forms of marketing and it generates 3 times more leads for every dollar you spend.

However, these statistics may not hold true for everyone. But they do show that content marketing efforts deliver results and other marketers are making good money from it.

But the question is, are you getting enough results from your content marketing efforts? Is your content marketing strategy a success?

Measuring the success of your content marketing campaigns is not simple. You need to track and measure the metrics that serve as key performance indicators (KPIs) for your content marketing campaign.

In this article, I’ll guide you on how to choose the most important content marketing KPIs for your campaign. You can use these KPIs to measure your content metrics success and optimize your content marketing strategy for better results on search engines.

But before that, let us take a look at why you should track and measure KPIs.

Why is It Important to Measure Content Marketing KPIs in 2024?

If you want to optimize your marketing spend, it is important that you measure relevant content marketing KPIs. Measuring the right KPIs can help you analyze which tactics are working and which aren’t.

This data can enable you to make more informed decisions during your content marketing campaign. You can then make relevant changes and adjust your tactics to improve your campaign ROI.

But how can you measure them?

For doing this effectively, you can leverage various content marketing platforms. These can not only help you improve the quality of your content and its distribution but can also help you measure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy.

Using the insights gained from these valuable content marketing tools, you can find out your ROI. However, before you can start measuring your KPIs, you need to know which kinds of content metrics to measure. So, let’s take a look at how you can choose which KPIs you need to track.

How to Choose the Right Content Marketing KPIs for Your Campaign

There is no magic formula to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you should measure to predict your campaign success.

If you want to track relevant content marketing KPIs, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from your campaign. Once you set specific content marketing goals, you can match those goals with the right content metrics and KPIs.

Let’s take a look at some important content marketing goals and appropriate KPIs for each one of them.

Goal: Increase Brand Awareness

Want to increase brand awareness?

You should focus on content creation that can help you reach and engage a lot of people. This means you should create highly relevant and interesting content that people will love to read and share.

Want a tip?

Leverage content writing tools to produce well-researched content that is interesting and also grammatically correct.

These tools can make the task of content creation easier for you. However, evaluating the effectiveness of the content is your job.

You can measure the below content marketing KPIs to measure how effectively your content is creating brand awareness.

Content Marketing KPI #1: Article Views

This is one of the easiest KPIs to measure. You can simply use tools such as Google Analytics to check the number of views your article receives. In fact, you can also gain insights from search engines about traffic sources, average session duration, and bounce rate for each article.

Image via Google Analytics

It might be a bit difficult to measure the number of views on your article if it's not part of your website content or landing page. However, many guest posting websites display a view count, which lets you see how your content creation is performing.

In addition to Google Analytics, you can also create UTM links for guest posts to see how many views your content receives through social media shares and other content promotion activities.

Pro Tip: Leverage content promotion platforms and tools to boost the reach of your content.

Content Marketing KPI #2: Social Shares and Engagement

Social media plays a very important role in making any content piece viral. And viral posts tend to lead to higher conversion rates.

You should track and measure social shares and engagement to see how well your content is performing. The more social shares you get, the larger your audience base will be. This will eventually help you improve your overall online presence and help drive more sales.

Tools like BuzzSumo rank the top-performing content on any topic based on their social shares and engagement. It is similar to Google Analytics, but more focused on social media platforms.

Image via BuzzSumo

You can identify the type of content that drives maximum social shares in your niche and leverage it to boost your brand awareness.

Useful Tip: If you feel like you’re running out of content ideas for social media, you can use content curation tools. Not only do they provide you with relevant content recommendations, but they can also help with social media management.

Content Marketing KPI #3: Number of Followers and Subscribers

The number of followers and subscribers you have is another important KPI to track brand awareness. And the best thing is that these numbers are easily quantifiable.

You can easily track the number of subscribers to your blog and YouTube channel. Similarly, it is easy to track the growth in your social media follower count over a period of time.

Content Marketing KPI #4: Audience Engagement

Genuine audience engagement such as comments and interactions on your content can help you understand how consumers feel about your brand. This also means that your content has the ability to spark a conversation and make an impact on readers.

Tracking audience engagement can help you analyze which type of content your target audience engages with the most. In turn, this can help you drive up your conversion rates.

Content Marketing KPI #5: Inbound Links

Are people linking to your content? Is your content being quoted on different websites? If so, this means that your content is making its mark.

Getting more brand mentions and links means that the industry sees you as a credible and authoritative source. This can help you reach more people and get more organic clicks, traffic, and generate leads. Also, it will help enhance the overall reputation of your brand.

As a leading digital marketing consultant, I frequently get mentions from top publications such as Forbes and Entrepreneur.

Goal: Generate Leads

Lead generation is one of the primary business goals. You need to track whether or not your content generates high-quality leads for your business.

The below KPIs can help you measure the effectiveness of your content when it comes to lead generation.

Content Marketing KPI #6: Click-Through Rate

Measuring the click-through rate of your website content can help you understand how effective your content is when it comes to lead generation.

If you want to encourage users to click through to your content, you should include a clear call-to-action (CTA) at the end of every post. Whether you want the reader to visit a specific web page, contact you, download your gated resource, or take any other action, a clear and compelling CTA can help you generate leads.

Here’s an example of a compelling call-to-action:

Image via Netflix

Want to know if you are on the right track?

You can use content analytics tools like Clicky to get more details like how users interact with your content and the kind of actions they take.

Content Marketing KPI #7: Cost Per Lead

You can calculate the cost per lead by dividing the cost of your campaign by the total number of leads it helped you generate.

Tracking your cost per lead for multiple types of content and multiple channels can help you analyze what performs better. You can use these insights to prioritize channels in your marketing strategy.

Goal: Drive More Sales

While increasing brand awareness and generating leads are important marketing goals, your content should be able to drive more sales too. After all, you want to convert your leads into customers and generate revenue for your business, right?

If you want to track how many sales your campaign drives, you should track and measure the KPIs mentioned below:

Content Marketing KPI #8: Conversion Rates

You need to optimize your content for conversions so that you don’t lose valuable leads. You need to track and monitor how many leads convert into paying customers.

Tracking conversion rates can help you see which content pieces drive the maximum conversions and sales. You can track conversions using custom UTM links for each piece of content you publish and share.

Many top brands such as Amazon use personalized content throughout their buyers’ journeys to increase conversions. This includes optimizing website content as well as the content in their emails based on the interests and past buying behaviors of their prospects.

Amazon offers personalized recommendations based on the browsing and buying history of their consumers to improve conversion rates.

Image via Amazon

Content Marketing KPI #9: Length of Sales Cycle

One thing about a great content strategy is that it decreases the average length of your sales cycle. You should measure the length to understand how long the sales process takes for you to convert your leads.

This will help you identify channels that help you generate leads that close faster and have a shorter sales cycle. You can prioritize such channels to improve your campaign ROI.

Don’t Limit Yourself to Common Content Marketing KPIs

The content marketing KPIs mentioned above are some of the most common KPIs. They are easy to monitor as there are many analytics tools that can help you track and measure these content metrics.

However, this does not mean that you need to limit yourself to measuring these KPIs only. You can dive deeper and identify more relevant KPIs to measure the success of your campaign.

For example, this table from Search Engine Journal lists more content marketing KPIs. It also tells how important it is for B2C and B2B businesses, agencies, and publishers to track each.

Image via Search Engine Journal

FAQs

Q1. What metrics are content marketing KPIs?

Some common content marketing KPIs include:

• Article views
• Social media shares
• Social engagement
• Number of followers/subscribers
• Target audience engagement
• Inbound links
• Click-through rate
• Cost per lead
• Conversion rate
• Length of sales cycle

Q2. What KPIs do you use to measure your content marketing efforts?

Depending on the type of content and the goal of the campaign, I use a variety of different content marketing KPIs including but not limited to:

• Article views
• Social media shares
• Social engagement
• Number of followers/subscribers
• Target audience engagement
• Inbound links
• Click-through rate
• Cost per lead
• Conversion rate
• Length of sales cycle

Q3. What are some examples of KPIs and metrics to track for content marketing?

Some of the most important content marketing metrics and KPIs to track include:

• Article views
• Social media shares
• Social engagement
• Number of followers/subscribers
• Target audience engagement
• Inbound links
• Click-through rate
• Cost per lead
• Conversion rate
• Length of sales cycle

Q4. How do you measure content marketing?

To measure the results of your content marketing campaigns, you must first define your goals. Based on your goals, then decide which key performance indicators (KPIs) you will use to track your progress to your goals. Monitoring your KPIs will help you measure the results of your content marketing efforts.

Q5. How do you define the success of content marketing efforts?

To define the success of any marketing campaign, you must first define the goals of your campaign. Then you can plan which KPIs you will track to measure your progress towards achieving your goals.

Based on your progress, you can then determine the success of your content marketing efforts. You will also be able to define what worked well and what needs to be changed or improved before your next campaign.

Remember That Establishing KPIs is Not a One-Time Event

You have specified your business goals and identified relevant content marketing KPIs. But that is not the end of it.

Establishing content metrics is not a one-time event. Instead, it is an ongoing process since the KPIs you need to track can change depending on your business goals.

As a content marketer, you should identify relevant performance metrics for each new campaign. If you make any changes to your campaign over time, you should revisit your content marketing KPIs.

What content marketing KPIs do you track? Please feel free to mention them in the comments below.

Infographic

Infographic design by Easelly