Without data, it's challenging to know what's working and what isn't when executing a content marketing strategy for your Shopify business. You could be wasting time and resources on tactics that aren't effective.
You'll want to measure a few key things to ensure your content marketing efforts for your Shopify business are successful. Let’s go through five ways you can measure your content marketing:
1. Track engagement metrics
Engagement is one of the most important indicators of content marketing success, making it essential to track on an ongoing basis across all platforms. By tracking these key engagement metrics, you can ensure that your content marketing is on track and reaching your target audience.
Here are a few engagement metrics to track:
WEBSITE METRICS
Here are a few engagement metrics you can use to track the success of your content pieces on your website:
- Views
- Time spent on page
- Scroll depth
- Click-through rate
You can find all of these engagement metrics in your Analytics dashboard, whether that be Google Analytics, Plausible, With Cabin or Fathom.
PROMOTIONAL METRICS
Promotional metrics to track include things like asset downloads, email sign-ups, email open rate, and click-through rate (CTR).
For example, the promotion metric you track might be downloads if you offer promotions as a lead magnet. You’ll want to compare the number of downloads to the visitors on the page. Monitoring this can indicate how valuable the promotion is for your target audience.
Additionally, you should pay attention to open and click-through rates on your email newsletters or other communications where you are promoting your content. Monitoring these metrics - especially your click-through rate - will indicate how interested people are in the content you have produced.
BACKLINKS
Backlinks are links from one page on a website to yours. So if the site www.sustainablebrand.com links to a page on your website, you’ve got a backlink!
Track the number of backlinks that your content generates. You can track your backlinks in Google Analytics, which can be time-consuming. Many Shopify marketers prefer to use SaaS tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEM Rush. Hint: Ahrefs has a free backlink checker tool!
Tracking backlinks will help you understand how valuable your content is to other websites (when involved with collaborative content or guest posts) and how unique the content is. By tracking these metrics, you'll understand which content pieces resonate with your audience and which are falling flat.
2. Analyse your traffic
TRAFFIC METRICS
Traffic is one of the most important indicators of content marketing success. After all, if your content isn't getting any traffic, it will not generate any leads or sales.
There are a number of different traffic metrics that you can track, but some of the most important ones include unique visitors and page views. Page views on your blog pages will tell you if your content brings the right search traffic to your website. You can find all these metrics for your website in Google Analytics.
SHOPIFY APP STORE DOWNLOADS
This ones for the Shopify app teams, if you're a merchant, scroll past.
We shouldn’t forget that your app listing is part of your content marketing plan. If you are looking to track the success of your Shopify app, you can monitor your downloads and other stats from the Shopify dashboard. Here are a few simple steps you can follow:
- Sign in to your partner dashboard
- Click on the Apps tab
- Click All Apps
- Find your app
- Click on your app
- Under Overview, you’ll see all your statistics
From there, you can check out a plethora of information about your Shopify app. For example, you can see your Shopify app’s 24-hour installs. If the 24 hours uninstall number is too high, it might indicate that your Shopify App Store listing doesn’t correctly describe what your app does.
Many merchants will uninstall your app if it doesn’t do what they think it should. Be sure to optimize your Shopify App Store listing and monitor your downloads and 24-hour uninstall rate after each optimization!
Top tips to ramp up your ranking in the Shopify App Store.
3. Monitor your leads and sales/revenue
LEADS AND SALES METRICS
Be sure to measure the number of leads that your content generates. Lead generation is one of the most important goals of Shopify content marketing. After all, if your content isn't generating leads, then it's not doing its job.
There are a number of different lead generation metrics that you can track, but some of the most important ones include conversion rate and cost per lead, which can be calculated from your Google Analytics dashboard if you set up your goals properly.
Keeping track of leads and sales metrics will help you understand how effective your content is at driving conversions.
ROI METRICS
ROI (return on investment) is the ultimate metric for measuring content marketing success. After all, if your content isn't generating a positive ROI, is it really worth doing?
There are a number of different ROI metrics that you can track, but some of the most important ones include return on investment and cost per lead. Again, this is something you can see through your Google Analytics or whichever analytics platform you use.
You can even do something as basic as:
- Adding up your content marketing expenses
- Calculating your customer’s lifetime value (LTV)
- Multiply your LTV by the number of sales you got through specific UTM codes
- Dividing your calculated LTV by content marketing expenses
4. Elevate your social media research
Social media metrics are a great way to measure the success of your content marketing. Social media is a great content distribution channel. If people are engaging with the content you distribute on social, they're finding it useful!
There are a number of different engagement metrics that you can track to evaluate your social media reach. Some of the most important ones include the number of social shares, number of likes, comments, and quality of comments.
SHARES
First, track how often your content is shared. This will give you an idea of how viral your content is and how popular it is with your target audience. You can track this on any piece of content from Twitter to Facebook and Instagram. Just click on your content promotion piece or insights and take a look at your shares. Be sure to take note of what kinds of content received more shares, so you can produce more of it!
LIKES
LIkes are also a good indicator of how your content is doing. People will like things that inform or entertain them. Monitoring likes month over month can give you insight into if your content is resonating with the people who follow you.
Again, compare the likes of each content piece to see what your audience likes the most, and continue to format your social media posts in a way that resonates with them.
Don’t get too hung up on likes, though!
COMMENTS
Finally, comments are one of the best ways to measure content marketing success on social media. People will only leave comments on things that they truly find interesting or useful.
Be sure to note the difference between an emoji comment and a well-thought-out comment. There is a difference between them. The well-thought-out comments will spark discussion in the thread and make the social media algorithm happy since it’s engaging your community.
SAVES
How many people are saving your social media posts to read later? This is a great indicator of whether or not your audience is finding your content valuable or not. they save it because they don't want to forget it and have the ability to refer to when they need it.
5. Ask your customers for feedback
Finally, you can measure your content marketing success by asking your audience or merchants how they found your content and what they thought of it. This can be done directly through surveys and interviews or by asking for feedback in the comments section of your blog or social media posts.
When your sales reps are are helping customers, they could also be asking about how they found out about your Shopify business. Document what people say and when they mention content, let your content team know in order to allow them to focus on doing more similar content that’s proven to be a success.
✨ Top tips for customer research.
Measuring your content marketing will help you make better decisions about where to focus your efforts, and it can also help you create more targeted and effective content.
By tracking the metrics above, you'll be able to see what's working well and what areas need improvement. This will help you fine-tune your content marketing strategy and make it even more successful for your Shopify business to thrive.
🎉 If you are looking for help creating and executing a content marketing strategy for your Shopify business, we would love to help. View our unique services for you here.
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