Content marketing is evolving (here’s how you can adapt)

ISSUE #50

Sometimes it might feel like the content you produce goes out into a void. After all, how do you know if it’s actually generating measurable results?

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Sometimes it might feel like the content you produce goes out into a void. After all, how do you know if it’s actually generating measurable results?

In a B2B marketer survey by Content Marketing Institute, more than 80% said they used content to increase “brand awareness” over the past 12 months. And 75% said they used content to “build credibility and trust.”

How did they measure these? And how did they tie them to business results, like sales and revenue?

In today’s Deep Dive, we show you how to tie content marketing performance to business results, so you can prove to your clients (and yourself) that your content campaigns are actually moving the needle.

Let’s dive in!

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DEEP DIVE –

The Key Perception Change To Prove Content Marketing’s Actual Worth

First things first. We need everyone on your team to understand that indicators of marketing performance — such as brand awareness, likeability and trust — actually turn into business results, like sales and revenue.

To communicate this to non-marketers, we should probably scrap these elusive terms and put them under the bracket of “brand impact.”

Let’s use this as a measure of content marketing’s impact on business results.

What you should tell your friends about measuring “brand impact” 👇

1. Marketers need to develop a results measurement plan alongside their campaign plan. Give each piece of content trackable goals
2. Calculate the baseline costs involved in executing campaigns to track ROI
3. To measure brand impact, we need multi-touch attribution models. This allows us to see the non-linear paths buyers take. Google Analytics 4 allows us to do this

Read on to learn how to measure the “brand impact” of your content.

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Track The Buyer Journey From Aware To Customer
(& Get Results-Based Metrics For Your Content)

All customers go through the “know, like and trust” buyer journey. Every legendary marketer — from Eugene Schwarz to David Olgivy — knew this, even before the internet days of data tracking.

Tracking when someone becomes brand aware, to liking the brand, to trusting the brand, will enable you to see the results of your campaigns.

Brand Awareness (Know)

Tracking brand awareness is a case of watching how much, and how often, your brand is mentioned online.

We find that Sparktoro is the best and easiest tool for this. Just run a “my audience frequently talks about [BRAND NAME]” search to see the size of your aware audience.

Brand Awareness Metrics:

• Quality of traffic as a % of total addressable market (TAM)
• Brand name search volume on Google
• Social media brand name mentions
• Audience demographics*
• Social content shares
• Website page views

*Pro tip: While it’s beneficial to be a household name, your brand needs to be known among the demographics most likely to engage with your product. Track who specifically searches and finds your brand. Do they belong to the demographic groups most receptive to your product?

Brand Reputation (Like)

When you see the size of your awareness audience, you can start to investigate how much of that audience understands and likes your brand.

One way to do this is with online polls. You can ask questions that relate to people’s perspective on your brand. And how people talk about your brand on social media and in communities.

This insight will let you know what brand image your content is creating.

User tracking platforms like Hotjar show how users engage with your site and landing pages, like in the click map example below which shows where people click:

How much users engage with your site and content is probably an indicator of how much they like your brand. Plus, the more they engage, the more they know about you, and will potentially grow to like you.

Brand Reputation Metrics:

• Heatmap and clicks (Hotjar)
• Website pages viewed
• Website bounce rate
• Email unsubscribes
• Email subscribes
• Time on site
• Email opens
• Churn rate

Brand Trust (Trust)

Comparing the size of your “awareness” and “like” audiences to the size of your converted customer and subscriber base is a good indication of trust in your brand.

If there’s a big discrepancy, it’ll be worth doing audience research to understand why people don’t become customers.

To measure trust, run surveys with your subscriber and customer audiences to backtrack their buyer journey. Ask them about their perspectives on your brand.

Also run pop-up surveys on your site. Ask why visitors didn’t become customers.

Brand Trust Metrics:

• No. of subscribers who increased their trust in the brand since signing up for your content compared to existing customers or those who don’t know the brand
• No. of “unknown” people who increase their trust in the brand after exposure to its messaging or content
• Ranked trust of your brand vs. competitors or others in your space among audiences, prospects, leads and customers
• Email list conversions into sales or subscriptions
• Social comments and likes
• Pop-up survey results

*Tool Tip: Content analytics tools like Market Muse can help you see which content is helping build awareness, likeability and trust.

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Setting Up Your Brand Impact Strategy

GA4 is leading the way in the future of data analytics.

With its release, Google is signaling that marketers should focus more on behaviors and actions on their websites, not just visit volume.

Analyzing the engagement rate of different pieces of content is one of the best ways to measure content performance.

3 steps to set up your “brand impact” strategy:

1. Agree upon some “brand impact” metrics
2. Create your tracking plan alongside your content campaign plan
3. Review results and iterate to improve

That’s it for today’s Deep Dive. Hope you found something valuable in it!

Inspiration for today’s Deep Dive from Content Marketing Institute

Pulse

To Small Business Owners Worried About Making Enough Money This Christmas…

Have you reflected on your yearly plan for 2023 yet? If not, you probably should. We all have uncountable possibilities racing through our minds. But there are only a few you should focus on to get the most out of this business year. Angela Henderson has helped 100s of small business owners generate consistent 5- to 6-figure months. In her latest podcast episode, she shares 7 steps to get your business in order for a wealthy and happy Christmas.

Create Content That Gets You “YES” Clients Every Time

Your “YES” clients are the exact people you’ve created your offer for. Your intuition will guide you in creating content that addresses your “YES” client’s core issues. And when your message resonates, it strikes a chord deep within their soul. Dive deep into their struggles, acknowledge their pains, and give them a lifeline with your expertise. Because remember, you don’t sell products or services — you change lives.

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GA4 is always evolving. Even if you’ve outgrown the beginner stage, you’ll continually face new features and possibilities as they appear. Unlike learning a language, for instance, there are no standards and requirements to define the different levels. This list of resources can help you compose your ideal learning path, whatever level you’re at.

How Joe Pulizi & Robert Rose Would Drive Brand Awareness For Your Business

Connecting brand awareness to revenue is not unlike figuring out how a single baseball player’s statistics relate to the team’s wins — there are many factors at play. The value of brand awareness comes from influencing the customer’s perception of your brand. To measure the impact, you’d need to track how your efforts improve that perception over time.

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Thanks for reading

Thank you for reading today’s Growth Memo! We hope you enjoyed it.

See you in a few days!

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