An Initial Guide to Content Marketing – The Hows and Whys of Content Analysis

Now that you are done with everything from content ideation and strategy to its creation and publishing as well as promotion, you must be planning to sit back and relax. But wait. The game isn’t over yet. No matter how much sweats and blood you’ve put into content marketing, there’s always some room for improvement. The strategies you’d have thought to make a stellar launch might fail and those you had low expectations with might come up with bumper results. And all of that would not happen through magic but there is a complete science behind. Thus, you need to learn the whys and hows of content analysis.

The job of a content marketer isn’t limited to the publishing phase but they also have to analyze and report the outcomes to their bases as well as come up with timely improvements. And for that, you must know how to track your successes and failures. That’s important for convincing your upper management and get those budgets approved by them. Because no bosses agree to spend big amounts unless they see a future.

So how can you track your successes and failures? Let’s dive into this part of the initial guide to content marketing for learning all the details.

The Whys and Hows of Content Analysis

Analysis and reporting are significant, we agree with that. Now how to do that and from where to begin? Let’s find out.

First things first. Stay smart. Just as you got through with the phases of ideation and strategy to creation and publishing smartly, this phase also needs smartness and proactiveness. Always remember that there is a huge difference between analysis and auditing. The analysis is an ongoing process where you can simply keep monitoring the metrics and make required improvements from time to time. So, start small and start smart.

The very first thing you shall do in the phase of content analysis and reporting is to set your standard metrics. Just as you determine a particular goal in traditional marketing, content marketing also asks you to set particular goals and metrics. They are of great help in analysis and evaluation for they determine where you are standing.

Wondering what goals shall you set? Here is the list of top five goals that most content marketers are likely to set as primary and put their efforts into attaining them.

Brand Awareness 

Brand awareness is the significant most goals and metric. It helps you come front and attract more and more people towards your brand. The better you aware people about your brand, the bigger would be the chance of your brand popping up in their minds whenever in need. Therefore, setting a particular target for brand awareness can help majorly contribute to content analysis and determine whether the goal has been achieved or not. For instance, you set a target to attain a 2x brand awareness by the end of a content marketing campaign, you’ll have a number to compare in the end and determine whether the goal has been achieved or not.

Engagement 

This is one step forward from brand awareness where you don’t just let people know about your existence but also interact with them. This happens when your audience can connect with your brand emotionally and look upon you in times of need. Therefore, setting a particular target for engagement can massively help you in analyzing and tracking your success and failures. For instance, you set a target to attain 50% more engagement than usual by the end of a particular content marketing campaign, it would be much easier to track your success or failure.

ReadMore: An Initial Guide to Content Marketing – Why Is Content Promotion Significant?

Customer Retention

Now that you have attracted and engaged the potential audience and customers, how would you keep them retained? Stellar content marketing campaigns are a great means of keeping people hooked to your brand and also to get them back in case they have wandered away. Therefore, customer retention shall be set as a goal and metric within content marketing campaigns. It can help in determining the outcomes of the campaign and can majorly contribute to the final content analysis and reporting.

If the customers have been retained, your content must be stellar and if they are wandering away, you must focus on upgrading your content. As simple as said.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is a significant part of sales and content marketing gives you versatile platforms for the purpose. Be it sending follow up emails to your potential clients conforming whether they would like to work in the future or not, or sending them updates and new offers over the time, all these lead generation tactics involve content marketing to its fullest. Therefore, setting a lead generation goal or metric in your content marketing campaign can majorly in help content analysis and reporting at the end of your campaign.

Sales 

Sales have always been a goal for every marketing campaign, be it a traditional marketing campaign or a modernized content marketing campaign. As we all know that sales are intended by a marketing campaign, we often ignore the part of setting a particular sales target or metric. That’s where we make a mistake. You cannot achieve big unless to think big. Therefore, setting a huge sales target with your content marketing campaign is always a great idea. And it can also contribute majorly to content analysis and reporting at the end.

Remember I mentioned the flywheel concept at the beginning of this guide, now you have learned almost everything about to get that flywheel moving. Read it, consume it, and share it. Also, you are free to add your opinions and suggestions in the comments section.

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