Despite a surge in adoption of content marketing and of organizational content strategy, measuring the impact of content on the business is complex and fraught with strategic, organizational and tool challenges. Because the content and analytics markets are still fairly nascent, there are few to no standards that adequately capture the impact of content on the business, whether from a reputation, revenue, operational or brand perspective.
Content strategists and digital marketers struggle to select the right metrics and frequently opt for measuring volume rather than impact when impact metrics are too complex to measure, or the required data or tools are not available.
This report lays out a framework for measuring the impact of content across the business, and includes a set of case studies and recommended metrics to enable content strategists to approach measurement at the outset, rather than at the conclusion, of their content development initiatives.
Key Findings
1. Marketers find measurement to be the single most formidable content marketing challenge
2. Measurement is irrelevant unless the organization establishes appropriate KPIs at the outset
3. Measurement focus is often too narrow. Looking exclusively at sales disregards too many other objectives that can deliver monetary value, Conversely, volume measurement is frequently disconnected from business objectives
4. An ever- broadening range of tool, media, channels, and integrations expands the possibilities for measuring content while complicating the measurement equation
5. While marketers say measurement is a primary need, they are making content software investment elsewhere
6. Finally, content marketing has demonstrable value for business divisions outside of the marketing organization. Metrics proving this value are the strongest way to evangelize participation in content marketing; a tremendous and often untapped potential