Content Operations Metrics Part 2: Aligning Metrics With Goals
Setting Clear Objectives
Marketers must ensure all metric tracking, reporting, and prioritizing align with business objectives. For instance, if your company is seeking more brand awareness, growing overall and unique traffic metrics will be important during this time. Conversely, if your company is at a point where it needs to grow sales significantly, conversion metrics will matter greatly to prove the success of your marketing efforts.
To define and set measurable content goals that fit your company’s current needs and goals, you’ll need to:
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Understand the general, overarching current goals of your company.
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Find relevant metrics that match each of those goals.
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Prioritize the relevant metrics based on which goals are most important to your company in the short- and long-term.
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Measure past performance on these metrics and their growth rates over time.
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Set timeframes for how often you’ll be measuring and tracking progress.
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Set a realistic, measurable goal based on past performance and your team’s content creation capacity in the specified amount of time.
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Monitor progress based on these timeframes.
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Make changes to your strategy based on data gathered from your metrics.
Tools and Technologies for Measurement
More complex tools zeroing in on content metric tracking include SEO tools, CRMs (Customer Relationship Management platforms) and content operations platforms like DAMs (Digital Asset Management platforms). These benefit content creators by focusing more acutely on specific types of content and the factors that affect their performance.
SEO tools like Semrush, Moz, Ahrefs, and more help content marketers track which keyword their website ranks for on search engines and which new keyword opportunities they can target. Ranking highly for a keyword on search engines means showing up highly on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) that appears after a web user searches for that specific term. The more often a brand shows up highly on SERPs for relevant key terms, the more chance they’ll have at reaching a relevant, convertible online audience.
CRM platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, ActiveCampaign, and more allow companies to manage their contacts, track interactions with current and potential customers, send email campaigns, and track their performance. Robust CRM systems can also help brands track web content performance, schedule and track the performance of social media posts, and more in one place.
DAM platforms empower companies to store and organize their digital assets used in content operations, including documents, original and stock photos and videos, custom-created graphics, ad copy and images, sales and marketing collateral, and more. When managing your digital content and its distribution through a DAM, you can more easily track its performance across platforms and audience-specific iterations.
Common Challenges and Solutions in Metric Measurement
Common pitfalls in content metrics tracking include improper cost-to-return analysis, paying attention only to vanity metrics like views without considering deeper metrics like engagement and conversion, and not measuring actions throughout the buying process. Find out how to solve these issues in your content metrics tracking and analysis strategies.
Measure Costs Correctly to Prove ROI
Ensure you’re measuring the actual cost of producing content to measure its return on investment correctly. You’ll need to include both direct costs, like hiring writers and paying for content pieces, and indirect costs, like employee wages during the processes of researching, editing, posting, and distributing content.
Focusing on Engagement and Conversion
Curating the metrics you pay attention to and prioritize when presenting to stakeholders is one of the trickiest parts of content management. To make sure you’re focusing on the right metrics, follow these tips:
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Discard any metrics not directly tied to your business goals to keep reporting straightforward and streamlined.
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Support vanity metrics like views with data that delves further into user behavior, like engagement or conversion metrics.
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Pay attention to how content performs on every distribution channel to inform future decisions on content distribution strategies.
