How to Set Content Marketing Goals That Matter to Business Leaders
Have you ever heard a salesperson or a corporate executive dismiss content marketing as "arts and crafts" or question its effectiveness? You wouldn't be the foremost to think so.
From time to time, the misconception that content marketing is some ethereal, feel-good, unmeasurable item is replicated. However, the commercial goal of content marketing is explicitly noted in the definition:
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
So, why is there a misconception about unquantifiable, hazy content marketing benefits? It's possible that we, as content marketers, are to blame.
How do you connect content to business objectives and outcomes?
Instead of thinking about awareness as THE objective, see it as one step toward achieving a business goal. What is the purpose of content marketing in terms of business? To elicit lucrative behavior. You've most likely got some inquiries. What constitutes a successful action? Let's have a look.
Content marketing objectives must be more detailed (and quantifiable) to be helpful (and measurable). They must also align with a real business goal that your firm is pursuing.
Sales
Savings
Sunshine (his parlance for customer loyalty, retention, cross-sales, and evangelism)
Select goals that promote a few of those three things, and you'll have no trouble describing how your content marketing team helped the company achieve its objectives. Here are a few to think about.
1. Subscribers
The foundation of content marketing is building a subscribed audience. Subscribers permit you to contact them regularly, and that provides you license to sell to them gently while providing them with a value other than a product or service.
When it's appropriate: When your company wants to break into a new industry, compete with a well-known market leader, or get started with content marketing, make growing a subscriber base a priority.
Monitor your success: by calculating the number of subscriptions to your channel (email newsletters, blog alerts, magazines, podcasts, etc.) or comparing the subscriber exchange rate to the general public conversion rate.
Check to visit this article to learn more about subscription audience as a goal.
2. Leads
Signing up for a demo, writing for an event, or requesting access to a resource Center may all be influenced by great content. (In certain companies, a lead is referred to as a contact.) Leads, unlike subscribers, supply more information than just an email address, and they exchange more personal information since the content provided is valuable to them.
Caveat: Some leads aren't truly leading at all. These contacts may have been engaged in the specific piece of content, but they may no longer want to hear from your company or aren't interested in your product or service. Consider enlisting the help of these phony leads to become subscribers since they may become more useful over time.
When it makes sense: If your company views content marketing as a way for the sales team to help locate and qualify new prospects or nurture leads along the funnel, focus on leads.
Profitable actions to track: Form/landing page exchange rates, downloads, and the percentage of advertising and marketing and sales-qualified leads are all ways to gauge your success.
To go deeper on tracking lead generation, check out.
3. Sales assistance/enablement
Developing content to support sales often entails creating pieces that provide evidence points to assist clients in selecting (or justify buying) your product or service. Consider testimonials and case studies that demonstrate how similar businesses handled their difficulties.
When it makes sense: Direct your content efforts here when your organization needs to increase sales or open up new income sources.
Profitable actions to track: Lead-to-customer exchange rates, time to acquire new clients, and income earned are all ways to gauge your sales support.
For more information on tracking lead creation, see the following websites:
4. Customer support and loyalty
While numerous people think of content marketing as a top-of-funnel play, it may also support a customer's decision after the sale. How-to and activation instructions help ensure that the customer gets value from the purchase and is inclined to buy again.
When it makes sense: Emphasis on customer support material when reducing support expenditures (i.e., huge numbers of support calls), striving to gain repeat business, or upselling product alternatives and add-ons is a goal.
Profitable actions to track: Estimate the impact of the percentage of current customers that consume information, the number of support calls reduced, the number of repeat customers, revenue from upselling, customer retention rate, and churn rate change.
5. Don't bury your ambitions under a barrel (or in a PowerPoint slide)
Most of us are knowledgeable with the SMART main objective framework (specific, quantifiable, implementable, reasonable, and time-bound). According to the authors of an essay published by MIT Sloan, the SMART framework overlooks key factors that can help avoid quarter or year-end surprises: frequent dialogues and transparency.
FAST is a superior acronym and framework, according to the article:
Frequently discussed to keep the team focused on the pertinent topics and allow for course corrections if needed.
They are ambitious. Thus, they push new ideas.
They are specific in that they contain milestones and metrics.
Transparent so that teams know each other's requirements and objectives.
The frameworks appear complementary and might be mixed (SMART-FAST?). FARMS-STAT?) for accomplishing your content marketing objectives.
Do your content marketing program a favor by using whichever framework you pick. Set a high bar for yourself by tying your ambitions to a business accomplishment, and then talk about those aims in ways that will spark your executives' interest.
The majority of content marketing campaigns do not end due to a lack of results. They don't quit just because they aren't employed. They come to a halt because those in charge of the purse strings – those in charge of the budget – have no idea what content marketing is, why you're doing it, or what influence it may and should have on the business.