By Julian Steinforth, Expedition PR
The idea behind Content Marketing is that compelling content attracts customers. An organization creates materials that are relevant for its audiences, such as industry news, white papers, e-books, infographics or case- studies. The key challenge most content creators face is measurement. Which key performance indicators should they pick to measure the outcome?
Especially B2B Content Marketers struggle with the interpretation of intangible benefits, such as thought leadership and brand awareness. Hence it’s not surprising that according to a study by Contently, almost every key performance indicator on the marketers’ wish list was an intangible metric. 60.1% of the surveyed marketers wished that they could measure how people’s opinions of the brand are hanging because their content, followed by the desire to be able to measure how much more likely people are to buy the products because of the content (54.6%).
To date it is hard to attribute revenue increase to content marketing campaigns. However, you have to take into consideration that buyers are in the early stage of the purchasing process and that it is often one of many factors that influence the purchasing decision of the customer.
But despite the lack of clear key performance indicators Content Marketing is still on the rise and companies don’t stop investing in their Content Marketing Strategy. Modern B2B content marketing measurement methods considers both – tangible and intangible benefits. While tangible key performance indicators, including web traffic and sales leads, are easier to measure, B2B marketers still have to find a better way to measure intangible key performance metrics, such as an increase in brand awareness.