Metrics to measure ROI on content marketing – a compulsion or subjective choice for brands?

Time and again industry stalwarts and legacy brands have emphasized the importance of getting a clear picture of ROI on content marketing efforts. It is not only tied to the revenues but also helps brands in optimising the ad spends.

If a brand is not getting enough pageviews, shares, and visitors on its post, it is obvious that people aren't engaging with its content. The brand needs to know that its content initiative isn’t reaping enough benefits. And that is where the need for measurement comes in.

However, there have been instances where brands often accept not having any measurement system and not a single rupee being spent on the same.

Aarti Samant

Content Marketing has to have a direct impact on ROI and brands must track the impact of their content versus the returns depending on the marketing funnel whether it is about building awareness, consideration, conversion or retention. Content is at the core of the funnel and if one tracks the results brands will only be able to optimise their efforts in the long run, said Aarti Samant - Founder - Sorted and Masala Tokri, Head Of Content - Future Group.

Rumi Ambastha

Although, primary metrics or efficiency metrics always come into play even though one does not do an active content marketing measurement, said Rumi Ambastha, Director- Brand Marketing, The Man Company.

“There is no standard tool to measure the content marketing efforts. It mirrors itself in increased shares of the content or new acquisitions or increased brand affinity,” she said.

Divya Dixit

However, Divya Dixit, SVP – Revenue and Marketing ALTBalaji, believes that if the measuring of ROI on content marketing doesn't help in the brand's goals or if the measures can't be acted on, i.e. if there is no insight to be gained from tracking these, it wouldn't be necessary for that particular brand maybe.

But she added that measuring content response is highly important for most brands that strive to be successful; however, the unawareness around the importance may lead some brands to ignore the matter and not invest in tracking the returns.

ALTBalaji continues to track these to make the right changes to give subscribers a better experience. It has built a content intelligence system to efficiently evaluate its content effectiveness so that it can quickly take highly important actions.

There’s plenty of anecdotal data about the measurement of content but no universally agreed-upon metric. And to get a clear picture of the content marketing ROI, it’s important to know which metrics really matter.

When asked if this is one of the many reasons why brands do not invest time or effort in measuring content, Ambastha said brands or brand marketers do not shy away from the time or effort of measurement tools or metrics but one standard accepted tool does create a bit of drift in the plan.

“So we devise our own metrics to determine the efficacy of the content,” she added.

According to Samant, the metrics are very clear.

“If its awareness - then content needs to play a role for garner maximum reach and impressions and followers gained. At a consideration level, it will be largely engagement and traffic. Overall if it’s the organic content play then brands must look at bird’s eye view level ascertaining what is the traffic contribution between paid and organic? Paid vs Organic traffic is one of the biggest metrics that brands can track as far as content creation and marketing is concerned,” she shared.

Is it okay for the brands who invest heavily in content marketing to not have an exact metric system to measure the ROI?

Ambastha believes that it certainly is a pretty subjective and black and white area.

The primary metrics like Reach/ CTR/ ROAS/ pageviews gives you a fair idea of the route that your content has taken and what kind of engagement it is garnering.

She added, “One does need to have a hawk-eye on it so as to not go down the wrong path and keep doing course correction. Multiple times we expect with the strategy too and content like those need a long gestation period to realise the end goal.”

“The brands should identify what works best for them and their requirements and what they hope to achieve and accordingly work on what system works best for them,” said Dixit.

“They should pick the metric system which is easiest to analyse and help them grow better. There is no blanket rule on this. However, I have always said, any spends/investment without measurement metrics is Vanity Badge,” she added.

Samant said that the beauty of digital is that everything can be tracked and today, where the world has become audio-visual brands, are forced to invest in video content and this investment must pay back and have a direct impact on the larger ROI. Therefore, it is absolutely not okay to not have an exact metric system for the measurement.

She further suggested, “Everyday Always-ON content is to keep the engagement levels high. HUB and HERO (a model designed to help publishers and marketers ensure that they can fill the gaps in their content, and to plan their future content strategy) content campaigns will build appointments and drive business respectively. One can track the success on a quarterly basis where paid vs organic traffic contribution is 50-50 that’s the benchmark brands must look at achieving so that over a period of time the dependency on paid marketing is not as high and content is doing the heavy lifting of brand love, consideration and ultimately conversion”.

Having the measurement helps a company gauge effectiveness of their content and marketing strategy as well as analyse the audience response/behaviour.

Dixit shared that this helps not only in creating future content pipeline but also helps various teams like marketing understand the strategy of launch, surround content creation as well as tech to understand UI/UX interface and consumer journey and insights in terms of time spends, content engagement etc leading to a better conversion rate for the platform.

One never creates content just because there is a decent tailwind to it. One does it because it goes with the brand strategy and thereby the content strategy. The brand, ethos, end consumer, consumer's personality and the category it is in, determines the reason why you do content and what content a brand does. And therefore, it is important to have your own set of metrics to keep yourself in check and keep the brand ethos in check, according to Ambastha.