With specific goals and careful measurement, e-commerce marketers can close the loop on content marketing performance.
Among them era of AI, content costs money. It’s not free. It should deliver a positive return on investment for any business, including retail, direct-to-consumer, and B2B.
When done well, content marketing attracts, engages, and retains customers.
- Attract. Content is the foundation of search engine optimization and social media marketing.
- engage. Content builds relationships between prospects and your business, and often positions your company as a trusted expert.
- Retention. Content through blogs, email newsletters, and social channels can help businesses stay in touch with customers between purchases.
Content goals
Setting goals is the first step to generating ROI from content marketing. There may be about two per month.
- Get 1,000 visits from search engines.
- Get 100 new email subscribers.
The number of site visits leads to our ultimate goal. Get email subscription.
If you apply these goals to your individual posts, you could publish 4 articles each month, with each article receiving 250 hits and 25 visits. Newsletter subscription.
- The average number of views per post is 250.
- 25 visitors (10%) have subscribed to email.
You can then set the values for each action. Let’s assume the following:
- 5% of email subscribers purchase monthly.
- The average order value is $125.
Therefore, 100 new email subscribers should result in 5 purchases and $625 in revenue. You can now assign a value to each action.
- The value of a site visit is $0.63 — 62.5 cents.
- $625 in revenue ÷ 1,000 visits = $0.63
- Email subscription is worth $6.25.
- $625 revenue ÷ 100 subscriptions = $6.25
Content measurement
Whether it’s via a spreadsheet or a full-fledged tool, business intelligence suitetracks the same basic information about the content.
- title.
- URL.
- topic. Keyword phrase or concept.
- author. This may not be the actual author or signature line.
- Published or updated date.
- content type. Blog posts, podcasts, and videos.
These could be columns in a sheet or fields in a database.
Next, get key performance indicators that align with your goals.
- Total number of visits. Number of visits to new content.
- Total number of email subscriptions. Cumulative number of email subscriptions since the content was published.
- Revenue. Purchases made by shoppers who accessed your content and subscribed to your emails.
Metrics vary depending on your goals. Some people may take longer to measure, such as a shopper who subscribed on April 15th and made a purchase on May 20th.
Finally, track your content costs.
- Creation. Amount paid to writer including refresh.
- edit. Editor’s costs.
- graphic. Photos, custom images, and AI-generated images.
- SEO. SEO platform or consultant costs for keyword phrases and gaps.
- promotion. Advertising expenses.
ROI calculation
Measuring KPIs and costs allows for basic ROI calculations.
ROI = Net profit ÷ Investment cost
here:
Net income = Total sales – investment costs
ROI = (total sales – investment cost) ÷ investment cost
Assume that four blog posts cost $400 and drive 1,000 site visits, 100 email subscriptions, and $625 in e-commerce sales. The ROI is 56.2%, or $0.56 (56 cents) for every $1.00 invested in the first month.
($625 – $400) ÷ $400 = 56.2%
Don’t get too excited. This is an example. Excludes cost of goods sold, email platform costs, and conversion optimization.
optimize
Nevertheless, this example is a framework for measuring performance, Optimize over time. Certain content topics can lead to more visits, subscriptions, and sales. One writer can outperform another. Analyze, tweak, and improve your results.
