Define Your Goals
Episode #3 of the course Content marketing fundamentals by Courtney Goes
Today, we’re going to delve into the purpose of your content, and you’re going to measure its success.
There are many benefits to using content marketing in your business. It’s reported to cost 62% less than outbound marketing but generate more than three times as many leads and convert six times better.
However, focusing on building a valuable, trusted relationship through quality content should always be at the heart of your strategy.
This will stop you from creating content simply for the sake of it or spending precious resources—time and money—on content that’s not aligned to your end goal.
I’m going to break this down for you below, so get ready to start setting some actionable outcomes.
Define Your “Why”
Before you start planning out content for your audience, you must understand why you’re going to create it and what you want it to solve.
Are you trying to inform your audience, educate them about something, or entertain them? Knowing the purpose of your content not only helps during planning, it also keeps your tone of voice and delivery consistent.
Fill in the blanks in this statement to help you define this:
The content we produce helps [audience] achieve [adjective] by making them [feel/learn/do] so they can [task].
Set Measurable Goals
If you can’t articulate measurable business goals as reasons for producing or sharing content, you’re probably wasting your time and money.
To understand what success looks like for you, your content marketing goals should align with your business goals and will therefore differ depending on your type of business.
Your content marketing goals should clearly articulate what you’re aiming to achieve and when.
Here are several categories that our goals could fall into and examples for each:
Consumption metrics
• number of unique page views for a blog post
• number of video views on YouTube
Social sharing
• number of tweets recommending your blog post
• number of readers forwarding your email content
Lead metrics
• number of email opt-ins to download an e-book
• conversion percentage from download to lead
Sales metrics
• revenue resulting from demo video
• percentage of repeat customer purchases
Regardless of the goals you set, make sure they’re specific, measurable, and time bound. I advise not thinking too far ahead, and instead, limit yourself to monthly or quarterly goals. By doing that, you’ll be able to focus on what’s needed right now and make adjustments easily if something’s not working.
Know How You’ll Measure Them
Once you’re clear on what you’re going to measure, make sure you’ve got the systems and tools in place to accurately track them.
Here are a few examples:
• customer relationships management (CRM) system to track leads (e.g. Hubspot)
• sales platform to track sales (e.g. Salesforce)
• email service provider to track subscribers and email statistics (e.g. Mailchimp)
• in-built social media analytics (e.g. Instagram’s “Insights” section for business accounts)
• social media scheduling platforms (e.g. Buffer, Hootsuite)
• website analytics platform (e.g. Google Analytics)
• depending on the goal, social media analytics
Make sure you have everything in place to track what’s happening with your content. For example, this might involve adding Google Analytics or a Facebook Pixel to your website.
Within Google Analytics, you can set up goals to track specific actions on your website, like video views or email subscribers.
Taking the time to define your purpose for creating content, outlining your goals, and how you’re going to measure them is setting up your content marketing strategy for success. Tomorrow, we’re going to take a close look at your audience and what’s right for them.
See you then,
Courtney
Recommended reading
How to Create Social Media Goals Aligned to Your Business
How to Set Up Goals in Google Analytics
Recommended book
The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick
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