How to Know if Your Content Strategy is Working

Why do I need to blog? A question that clients and employers have asked me during my career as a content marketer.

Well, it depends on what you want your content to accomplish. What’s your goal? I mean, marketing can’t be done in a vacuum and usually, it’s to accomplish bigger business goals right?

Before you determine the frequency of your content efforts (how often do you want to send emails, blog, or produce lead magnets?) and before you even determine WHAT those content efforts are, think about what you want your content to do. What are your content marketing goals? You need an end goal before you write the map and directions to get there.

Content should, above all else, address your audience’s pain points and be useful and valuable. It should be high quality and showcase your brand’s voice. Are you talking to a savvy marketing manager? Or are you trying to talk to a high level executive who’s the decision maker?

But once you have all that figured out - how do you know if it’s working? Here are three common content goals and how to tell if they’re working (i.e. what should you measure to know if it’s… doing what you want it to do.

Build Brand Awareness

I mean, content alone won’t build your brand awareness outside of long game SEO wins. Is your traffic increasing? What’s your bounce rate? Are people reading it and clicking around? What’s the bounce rate on your website? Is organic traffic growing? What avenues are you using to promote your content - social? Email? You should see increased traffic from the sources you’re promoting your content on.

Generate Leads

Your blog alone will not generate leads unless you offer them calls to action - what’s next? So, if you’re using a tool like Hubspot, you should be able to look at your pages, and see what the conversion/CTR is on any calls to actions you have on the page.

What are your lead magnets? How many leads are you generating from them? What are your promotion efforts?

Generate Revenue

Most businesses have a goal of increasing revenue so you probably want to know if your website is generating revenue - which you can tell in Google Analytics and more importantly if that revenue is growing month over month, right? But if people aren’t finding your site, then chances are your revenue is falling flat and/or not reaching your goals - right? Think about the opportunities you’re giving people to convert and to reach you.

It starts with awareness. It starts with people being able to find you - your content should answer their questions and should address their pain points giving them valuable information. It should be LESS about you and more about your reader and what they NEED/WANT from you.

What you don’t want to see amid any content marketing efforts - outside of typical seasonality (i.e. if you know your business trends slower at a certain time of year…) is dips. Even seasonal dips in traffic, or leads - you should be looking for a year over year growth in leads, traffic, and your audience growth.

So this new year, as you look at your strategy and your goals for 2021 do yourself a favor and stop thinking your marketing is all about you.

Stop trying to just sell, sell, sell, and start trying to be helpful. People don’t want to be sold to, they want value and content that speaks to THEM and their problems.

If you want to develop a content strategy that delivers results in 2021 but you’re not sure where to start, let’s chat and see if I can help you accomplish your small business goals!