measuring the effectiveness of content

#CMWorld

Measuring the Effectiveness of Content

Connie Bensen Global Social Content Strategy, Dell

How to Plan, Develop & Optimize A Content Marketing Program for Tech

#CMWorld

Connie Bensen

Defined Community Manager Role – 2006

Social Insights – 2008

Global Social Content Strategy, Dell – 2014

Build community around your intent.

@cbensen #SocialBizology

#CMWorld

B2B content marketing offers opportunities

70% of marketers don’t have a

content strategy Altimeter

60-70% of content is never

used Sirius Decisions

60% of

customer journey is completed before contacting company

HubSpot

By 2017 the CMO

will spend more on IT than the CIO

Gartner

#CMWorld

CMO’s realize that internal alignment is required

4

#CMWorld

This looks simple enough…

Create Content Strategy

Plan Campaign

Produce Content

Publish

Measure and Refine

#CMWorld

Measurement basics

1. Decide on business objectives

1. The goals define what will be measured

2. Start simple with one to three KPI’s and build on that

2. Benchmark and report on a regular basis

1. Create a scorecard

2. Translate the % change to impact on business

3. Use insights to drive improvements

#CMWorld

The question is how to measure the ROI of content across the customer journey?

• Influencer relations

• Share of voice, reach

• Traffic to website

• Organic SEO

• Leads, Conversions

• Improved NPS

• Reduced demand on call center

• Increased advocacy and WOM

• Talent recruitment

#CMWorld

Site traffic Web analytics from Omniture, Google Analytics, etc

• Visits • Visitors • Page views • Bounce rate • Pages per visit • Traffic from organic search

Insights: Vanity metrics can be deceptive - Dig into spikes to determine source Bounce rate indicates whether messaging is appropriate for place in buying cycle Pages viewed shows depth of visit

#CMWorld

Site engagement

• Repeat visit % • Avg time on site • Content views • Comments • Newsletter signups • RSS subscribers

Insights: Are customers returning to your content? What steps should be taken to increase this? What content is being viewed the most? What topics have gaps? Does the content inspire the reader to comment? Is the newsletter bringing people back? Is it a summary or is there opportunity to provide unique value.

#CMWorld

Social engagement

• Total shares

• Referred traffic

• % of total traffic

• Referrals from Twitter,

Facebook, and LinkedIn

• Influencer promotion

Insights:

How shareable is your content?

Does the platform make it easy

What traffic is earned vs paid

Which channels are driving the most?

Are influencers engaging with your content?

How can you signal influencers?

or, incorporate their opinions and ideas?

#CMWorld

Overview of frequently used metrics

Site traffic Site engagement Social engagement Impact

Visits Repeat visit % Total shares Leads

Visitors Avg time on site Referred traffic Revenue

Page views Content views % of total traffic Share of voice

Bounce rate Comments Referrals from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

Organic search rank

Pages per visit Newsletter signups Influencer promotion

Traffic from organic search

RSS subscribers

#CMWorld

Is your content marketing effective?

59% of senior level

business and IT decision makers usually scan marketing materials

and throw in trash Forrester Research

#CMWorld

Dell publishes to many properties on-domain and off.

#CMWorld

Dell is building an infrastructure to support an integrated customer experience and new metrics

Business functions Collaboration Customer-centric

content

alignment

Global Marketing

Dell - Internal Use - Confidential

Opportunity to evolve as a Social Business

Social media links teams across the customer journey

– It offers direct access to the customer

– Social is not a silo. It encourages and fosters collaboration

– Business functions use data-driven insights

– Early adopters encourage their teams to revise their processes

– Opportunity to connect offline with online (multichannel)

15

[noun] Social Bizologist definition: The person responsible for guiding the business to shift to a customer focused approach and become a social business.

Build community around your intent

#CMWorld

The opportunity to consolidate content calendars, workflows and content silos.

Digital asset manager Extranet Sales Enablement Platform Sharepoint

Blog or Digital magazine

Corporate CMS(s)

Marketing automation

Community Platform

Social Channels Technology stack • Social publishing, listening and engagement • Content production

#CMWorld

Moving beyond the basics and working collaboratively

Use of centralized content tool

1. Simplification of workflows

2. Combine many content calendars into one with global visibility

3. Repurpose content that is performing

4. Aggregate content silos

5. Access to all content for localization

Business value

% productivity gain

Reduced asset production time

Increased Marketing Qualified Leads and increase conversion rate of Sales Qualified Leads

Increased performance in channels

Reduced time to find source files

#CMWorld

Research study of 8 companies using Kapost for their content marketing operations

• 133% increase in return visitors to their Website

• 253% increase in online engagement (downloads, blog reads, etc.)

• 200% increase in email open rates

• 75% increase in Web traffic

• 512% increase in marketing qualified leads

• Six-fold revenue lift from content marketing activities

• 30% reduction in asset production cycle time

• 24% productivity improvement for content marketing resources

#CMWorld

Lessons Learned

Lesson 1: Keep KPI’s simple. Don’t try to measure too many data points.

Lesson 2: Consolidate content calendars in order to provide a holistic view and facilitate cross-functional workflows and alignment across business functions.

Lesson 3: Measure production time and inventory to show business value and increase quality of content.

Lesson 4: Report on inventory and usage across customer journey and personas to optimize content available and minimize localization barriers.

Lesson 5: Content performance metrics such as engagement and sharing point to content that should be repurposed.

Help others recover after failing. (fail fast) Understand, learn, and support (iterate often)

20

Questions? Connect with me: conniebensen@gmail.com

Resources

Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/conniebensen

Creating a Culture for Making Business Social

It Takes a Village

Optimize

by Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing

Revenue Engine

by Steven Woods, CTO Eloqua

Rise of the Revenue Marketer

by Debbie Qaqish

Altimeter Report: Digital Transformation: Why and How Companies are Investing in New Business Models to Lead Digital Customer Experiences