How to measure RoI on content marketing using Google Analytics

Mehedi Hasan Shoab from Powerhouse Blogger sheds light on measuring tools that can help marketers understand the impact of their content marketing tactics for optimum RoI.

According to reports, 91% of B2B marketers practice content marketing to connect with their customers. While the Internet is exploding with content, slicing through the noise can be difficult. It gets more difficult when your content doesn’t perform well. So, it is critical to measure RoI of the content marketing tactics.

Here's listing seven techniques to measure content marketing RoI for your brand:

Measure your Sales' Conversions

Your sales' results could be a direct reflection of the impact of your content marketing strategy. Now, how do you track it? The solution lies in using CRM tools such as HubSpot or Salesforce & linking them to Google Analytics dashboard to show the impact of your sales.

Another technique using Google Analytics could be to track the impact of your sales by preparing conversion goals. Goals can involve several things:

• Purchases
• Form fill-ups
• On-site time
• Traffic, and much more

You can also leverage Google Analytics to calculate the number of leads and the final conversions or sales for your campaign through:

• Check 'Conversions'
• Then click 'Goals'

Hence, helping you to track the sales and the revenue. 

Measure Organic Search Traffic

As per a report, 53.3% of entire site visitors come from organic search but SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media.

Again, the question that arises is how do you measure organic search traffic? You can turn towards Google Analytics again as the solution by applying the following steps:

• Navigate to 'Behavior'
• Click on the 'Site Content' and select 'All Pages'
• Find the traffic sources by opting for 'All Sources' from the 'Site Content' button.

After following these steps, you’ll reach a graph showing traffic overview alongside URLs. You can also find the keywords with which the visitors attempted to search for your brand/organization. Further, you can find information on the most visited page and on-page time, too.

Measure your On-Site engagement

According to Skyword’s research, top content marketers focus more on engagement than traffic.

In general, you can use Google Analytics to find the following:

• Total page view count
• Unique and return visitors' count
• Behavior - if they went to more pages, if yes, in which order
• Pages per session - How many pages one visitor visits
• Average on-page time
• Bounce rate
• Visitor sources

To do so, follow the below steps on Google Analytics:

• Click the Audience
• Followed by Overview.
• Then click on Behavior, Site Content, followed by Sources

Also read: Leveraging Branded AR Experiences for Festive Marketing

Measure Bounce Rate

The chart shows the industry-wise average bounce rate. Most of the websites’ bounce rate ranges from 26% - 70%. The overall average is 58.18%.

A high bounce rate is bad for businesses while reports suggest that less than 40% is considered exceptionally good. To reduce yours, first, you must track it. This again can be achieved through Google Analytics by selecting Behaviour, then Site Content & then the 'All pages report'.

Measure Social Media Engagement

According to 52% of social media marketers, social media strategies & more impact their company’s sales and revenue positively. The medium can help boost:

• Brand awareness
• Inbound traffic
• Search rankings
• Conversions & more

To measure & track the analytics, you check the engagement metrics such as followers, likes, comments, and replies.

You can also use tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer to find how engaging your content is on social media. They have metrics similar to the ones on Google Analytics.

Measure Your Keyword Growth

Using keywords is the key to search engine traffic. To measure the keyword growth, SEO analysis tools like MOZ Pro or SEMrush can help.

 Measure Backlinks

In general, search traffic study suggests that more the backlinks for a page, better are its ranking on Google search results.

You can utilize Google Analytics as the tool to check your backlinks. Just follow the below steps.

• Go to the ‘Acquisition' tab. 
• Just navigate to 'All Traffic'
• Then select 'Referrals'

The window will show you the referral traffic section. You can find all linking domains falling under the 'Source' column. Then, you can view each backlink by clicking on the domains and checking the 'Referral Path'. Similarly, SEMrush is also a resource to measure & check backlinks for your page.

This article piece is authored by Mehedi Hasan Shoab, Copywriter & Founder, Powerhouse Blogger