showing roi: how to create a content marketing report
TRANSCRIPT
Showing ROI: How to Create a Content Marketing ReportWordCamp London 2017
Ilia Markov www.markovunchained.com @nochainmarkov
Why does content ROI matter?
Every uncool content marketer ever
Oh, I’m mostly a blogger…
What gets measured, gets managedPeter Drucker (maybe)
Playbill
• Act 1: Content is part of your business strategy
• Act 2: How to set up a report
• Act 3: How to calculate ROI
• Content marketer with strong focus on SaaS companies
• Curator of Content Marketing Weekly newsletter
• Saints fan, have traveled to Hull, Swansea, and Southampton
A bit about myself…
Act 1: Content is part of your business
strategy
Business Objectives
Marketing Objectives
Marketing Strategy
Content Objectives
Content Strategy
Content Tactics
What’s the bigger picture?
What are your goals with content?
• NOT “Traffic” → It could be a KPI (next slide)
• Do you have someone doing Sales? → It could be leads
• Are you selling a digital product (SaaS)? → Trials started
Tie your KPI framework with the goals
• KPI = Key Performance Indicator
• What metric shows progress on your goals?
• Some popular options include:
• Traffic
• Shares & Comments
• Leads generated
• Conversions
Act 2: Set up your content report
What tools to use
• Google Analytics → straightforward (sort of)
• Woopra → detailed analytics, free plan
• Google Search Console → for measuring SEO
• Google Sheets + Analytics Add-on → for the actual report
Create a funnel
Traffic
Leads
Prospects
Customers
Sessions, Unique visitors, New vs. Returning
Emails collected (Goal conversions)
Pricing page visited, Trials started
Sales (Goal conversions)
Woopra works great for funnels
Your report could be a custom dashboard
Or built from scratch by pulling data
Some things you should consider
• Attribution → consider using UTM links
• Set up goals in Google Analytics / Woopra
• How to measure to avoid data issues (spikes, etc.)
UTM links allow you to get very detailed
Setting up goals in Google Analytics
Think about how you look at data
Act 3: How to Calculate ROI
You need to know two numbers
• CAC: Cost of Acquiring a Customer
• LTV: Average Customer Lifetime Value
How to find out your CAC
• In February you generated 4 clients and spent £1200 on content:
• Writing: £800 (4 posts x £200 each)
• Editing: £300 (10 hours x £30)
• Tools (hosting, keyword research, email provider, lead gen): £100
• => Your CAC of content is £1200 / 4 = £300
• But this is quite simplified…
Calculating LTV is similar
• In reality, it’s the average deal size, but with caveats…
• If you’re selling a subscription-based product (e.g. SaaS, productized consulting, etc.), => average [monthly/annual] rate x average time someone’s a customer
• If you’re freelancing (e.g. building websites for clients) => figure out your average deal size
Putting CAC and LTV together
LTV < CAC
Obviously not good…
Putting CAC and LTV together
LTV > CAC
Slightly better, but…
Putting CAC and LTV together
£301 > £300
…is it enough?
A good measure of comparison
LTV ≥ 3x CAC
For more on the topic:
• Content Marketing ROI: How We Measure Success at Hubstaff
Thank you!
http://nocha.in/wcldn17
It’s time for your questions…