Avoid Traditional Marketing Metrics To Prove Content’s Real Value

Marketing is classically measured by how it shortens the time between a product’s availability and the customer’s purchase (i.e., the efficiency of the buyer’s journey). How many more buyers do you reach than average? What percentage of buyers move onto subsequent stages?

Any improvement in either or both metrics for the same effort and/or budget means you’re spending the budget more efficiently.

In growth companies (like startups), the emphasis may shift toward more customers. In value companies (legacy brands, for example), the focus shifts toward higher conversion.

Inevitably, business leaders want both success measurements.

However, measurement operates differently in content marketing. The objective is to use valuable content to develop a deeper relationship with a broader group of people than immediate buyers. Sometimes, you intentionally slow down the process so that a visitor becomes sufficiently educated to become a buyer. You’re playing the long game — developing a meaningful relationship so that when a person is ready to buy, they view you as a trusted provider.

This is the critical difference. Content marketing measurement assesses the depth and scale of a relationship that may influence the buying process. You measure what your content marketing audiences do that other audiences don’t, showing how these better relationships impact the overall marketing strategy.

And that means you must start your content marketing measurement journey with a shared and well-communicated objective.

Get everybody on the same page

Shared objectives without measurement analytics are visions without direction. Measurement analytics without shared objectives are like having a map but no agreement on where to go.

When you start with a shared objective and an understanding of how you know if you achieve it, you can then define that success with numbers that have a purpose and, more importantly, meaning.

Think of your company as a football team. Your shared goal is to win the game. Everybody knows that you need to score more points than your opponent. But unless you have a shared understanding of how many points result from a field goal or touchdown, no one knows if they’ve scored enough until someone declares the winner. If you’re the loser, it’s too late to change it. If you win, nobody understands why.

What’s the answer?

Align on an objective, not a measurement data point.

Recently, a marketing manager told me his team’s quarterly goal was a 30% increase in web traffic. “Why?” I asked. “Because more traffic equals better marketing,” he replied.

But that’s not necessarily true. If the objective is more high-impact leads, more traffic might be the worst thing to focus on.

That’s why you must design shared objectives in clear, unambiguous terms before selecting the key performance indicators to show what’s working (and what isn’t) on the path to reaching that shared objective.

Too often, marketing leaders set goals and objectives for their teams, while sales leaders establish goals for their teams. Meanwhile, executives set their objectives for the company. But no group has communicated or aligned these objectives with one another. So, the five most important things on marketing’s to-do list differ from the five most important things on sales’ to-do list.

As a marketing vice president recently shared, “The sales team is measured on the value of opportunities that turn into customers. Marketing is measured by the number of leads created. And content marketing is measured by traffic to the blog. That sounds like a match, but it’s not.”

If you don’t have a clearly defined and shared vision for what content marketing success looks like, you can’t measure anything meaningful.

Creating shared success measurement

Once you set a shared objective, you can set up the metrics to define its success.

Objectives and key results (OKRs) have emerged as a useful measurement architecture. OKRs are a fantastic method for measurement that matters because they center on a shared objective.

I prescribe a four-step OKR approach for my clients.

Let’s walk through each step.

Step 1: Set the objective

Once you have a shared objective, you should clearly express how content marketing will contribute to that objective and the time it will take to achieve success.

It might take a quarter, a year, or multiple years to realize the objective, so you might have short- and long-term goals within the larger objective.

TIP: Don’t shy away from setting long-term strategic objectives for fear of marketplace shifts or evolving assumptions. You’re just boxing objectives into a timeframe to understand how quickly you need to change.

Now that you have a shareable strategic objective, you can start defining success.

Step 2: Define success with your key results

Decide which metrics will unambiguously define success. Don’t be afraid to use more than numbers. In many instances, you may measure qualitative impact or capabilities, not just transactions.

For example, key results such as learning a skill or developing a capability might have graded (A, B, C, etc.) key results. Or you may have contextual key results. For example, the objective may be year-long, but the key results reflect quarterly progress.

Just remember the objective is change. These key results define the progress toward that change.

This graphic illustrates the concept of setting your objectives and key results, starting with the statement: “We will (objective) as measured by (key results).”

The objective completes this sentence, “We will accomplish (something).”

That sentence is supported by four types of key results:

• Performance key results are unambiguous (i.e., agreed upon) and verifiable results that indicate the objective has been met.
• Context key results are aligned by context. For time-based results, for example, you could note the objective is multi-year, and the key result is quarterly.
• Learning key results may be enabling but not necessarily performance-based (e.g., learning a skill or developing capability).
• Graded key results can also be based on a grade rather than performance (e.g., 50-plus equals an A, and 40 to 50 equals a B).

Keep in mind that OKRs are not KPIs (key performance indicators). The objective and the key results define the desired change, and KPIs equal progress toward that change.

Here’s an objective-setting example. Let’s say the strategic objective is to drive a 25% increase in net new sales in the next year. So, you might come up with an objective for the content marketing approach that says, “We will prompt 10% of all net new sales opportunities in the next year.”

That’s a shareable objective, but it doesn’t define how you’ll achieve that success. So, you need to support it with key results:

• Increase new high-quality leads with content by 15%.
• Increase conversion rates of free trials by 25%.
• Decrease cost-per-thousand advertising rate by 20%.

Now, you’ve defined how the shared objective will relate to profit over cost. That’s the key.

Step 3: Design your KPI metrics

Your key results will most likely combine measurements. In the example above, the first key result specifies high-quality leads. Therefore, you wouldn’t measure the total number of leads; you’d measure the number of leads that matched the targeted opportunity persona.

You’ll have to combine a few metrics to derive that number. These aggregate measurements are the KPIs that indicate progress toward the key results.

That brings you to the final step.

Step 4: Design your analytics

Multiple key results and KPIs naturally require multiple single metrics. At this point, the more transactional nature of measurement — web analytics, conversions, SEO metrics, downloads — becomes important. These numbers (in combination) feed your KPIs, which assess whether your key results are on track.

Design the measurement pyramid

Think of all these steps as forming a pyramid showing what you need to measure and why.

In this image, the single block at the top represents the objective — the shared goal. Below are two key results blocks — the unambiguous investment values achieved from the shared purpose.

These rest on a row of three KPIs — the unique, aggregated measurements that inform progress toward the shared goal. A row of metrics — the detailed actions/conversions that help improve the efforts — forms the pyramid’s base.

If designed correctly, you’ll measure only things that matter to meeting an objective. Other measurements may be interesting or relate to what you’re tracking, but your focus should be on these four elements.

You will have one measurement pyramid for each strategic objective. Once you have all the strategic objectives and their measurement pyramids, you might roll them into the overall business objectives.

What would that look like? You could design it like an org chart, with the overall business mission segmented into strategic objectives. Each segment connects to the OKR pyramid and the source tool for each metric that goes into it.

Click to enlarge

Meaningful measurement

Now you’re measuring what’s meaningful, not just anything you can. If the game is won, everybody will know why.

I’ll admit it — measurement isn’t the most enjoyable part of anyone’s job. Many content marketers want to avoid thinking about it.

Have you heard the saying, “Create a life so good that you don’t need a vacation to escape from it”?

You can echo that sentiment in your approach to measurement: “Create an analytics and measurement strategy so good that you don’t have to do any math to support it.”

It’s your measurement story. Tell it well.

Updated from an October 2021 article.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute