From Content Mapping to Content Marketing: Part III—Measuring Content Effectiveness

Now that content mapping has led to effective content marketing, it’s important for you to measure the effectiveness of your overall content. It’s simple to find statistics on how much of an impact content marketing has for a business, but giving an exact number or time frame to measure its effectiveness isn’t quite as easy.

How Can I Tangibly Measure My Dealership’s Content Marketing Success?

The world around us today is a “right now” type of environment—we want results, and we want them now. It’s difficult to implement a strategy and realize the gain may be steady and paced instead of immediate. Marketing success doesn’t come overnight; it requires your dealership to build your brand, outlets, audience, and customers on a solid marketing foundation, which takes time. When trying to figure out if your marketing strategies are working for you, a few measurement tips will help you nail down the effectiveness of your content and improve it:

• Know your goals. If your content meets them, you can show that impact. Design your content to reflect an impact on your dealership’s sales and revenue. Track the return on investment (ROI) that results from your content, clickable links, etc., and then you’re left with a tangible number and able to show you met a specific goal from the moment you started posting content. For example, if your goal is to gain 5% in sales in the next six months by adding content or using a new marketing strategy, that will reflect a tangible number which shows gradual improvement.  

• Engagement is the new time, and time is money. Engaging with your customers and general consumers is key to gaining advocates and keeping your business strong in the long run. Your followers’ and target audience’s time is important. If they’re using their time to interact with your content, you’re doing something right. Keep track of numbers like the amount of followers, unique visitors, traffic, bounce rates, users’ time on your site, etc., and compare them with sales increases over a specified period of time. Allot time throughout the day to interact and respond to consumers on social media.

• Use the right tools. The problem many businesses encounter is that they want to measure ROI, but the tools they’re using aren’t giving them the actual information they need. For example, many businesses use Google Analytics, which will show traffic, but will not measure leads. To truly know the ROI of your content—social media, blog, ads—people must fill out a form on your website. This form will attach a “cookie” to the person’s IP address and allow you to track the person’s behavior on your site. By doing this, your dealership is able to see each lead gained through your content and the exact amount of customers that came from those leads.

• Patience. Know that content marketing success will not be a speedy process. To build up your dealership’s content, increase followers, and have the ability to see and gather real data requires time.

• Schedule. Know when you want to collect data and who you want collecting your data. Some metrics may be monitored monthly while others should be monitored weekly or even daily to keep goals on track. Make having a measurement process a priority, and keep in mind, the cycle of measurement is essential to tweaking and marketing your content correctly.

• Accept change. The significance of what you’re tracking and measuring is always changing. It’s important to evaluate your metrics from time to time and reassess the data in relation to your key concerns and questions. Keep adapting your content and marketing strategies to reflect your dealership’s findings and take note of changes that stem from updates and adaptations—numbers that reflect more or less traffic, interaction, clicks, and sales.

Knowing how to correctly measure the results of your content marketing is crucial to coming out ahead as a dealership today. It gives your dealership the ability to learn about your audience and create content that sells. If your content is turning consumers into prospects and creating customers, it’s important to know about it and keep adapting, updating, and bettering your content so that it remains effective for you.

For more guidance on how to market your content effectively, check out our Welcome to Customer Experience Management article in our Resource Library.