Before starting a content marketing program, both B2B and B2C companies need to establish goals.
Examples of content marketing goals include:
- Brand awareness
- Leads
- Sales
- Website Traffic
- Decrease sales cycle time
- Improve customer satisfaction
- And more… content marketing can have an impact on many different areas of a business
B2C content marketing goals
For B2C companies it is going to be about building brand awareness. The way brand awareness is measured is how you’re trending in the social media networks or Google Trends. Brand awareness can also be measured based on how much traffic you’re getting to your website or how many likes you’re getting on Facebook and Twitter. Those are going to be key measurements of success to see how engaged your audience is with your brand.
Secondary metrics that companies can use are channel sales, or how your sales are improving within the channel. For example, if I sell bubblegum and I sell it through 7-Eleven, Costco, and Wal-Mart, I’m going to measure success as being driving more sales at those stores for my bubblegum.
B2B content marketing goals
On the B2B side, it’s actually quite different. Many B2B companies don’t really care about traffic. They’re going to be measuring leads and sales. Another key indicator for success is how a B2B company is doing compared to their competitors. Are they now ahead of their competitor on search engines for certain keyword races? Have they now established themselves as a thought leader within the space? These are the goals to be companies will be using.
What if I don’t know how to measure my marketing program?
For most companies that are just getting started in content marketing, I recommend that they go and install Google Analytics on their website. It’s free. It takes a couple minutes to install especially if you’re using a WordPress-based website. It will give you a quick overview of how much traffic and other basic metrics you’re getting to your website.
Tempesta Media will be rolling out a content analytics module within the next quarter that will be able to provide much more in-depth analytics on how your content marketing program is performing across your various channels, including your website.
