How to Assess if Your Content Marketing Is Working

You probably work very hard at ensuring that your content marketing is exactly what it should be and that it is doing the job that you expect it to do for your brand. You may have written the most amazing content marketing materials but how do you know that it is actually giving you any sort of return on investment and that it is as effective and valuable as you need it to be?

Assessing your content marketing materials

Your content marketing materials may be everything that you want them to be. They may be compelling, exciting, tremendously educational, and extremely valuable all around; however, you still need to find a way to gather metrics on those materials so that you can know for sure what is working and what needs to be improved.

All business people (including  you) have the same objective in mind when it comes to their business. They all need to establish relationships with people with whom they can build trust, credibility, and with whom they can position themselves to be the subject matter expert in the eyes of the other person. The concept is quite simple; however, getting there is often quite challenging. Of course, that is the initial goal. The ultimate goal is getting the other person to buy your products and/or services (not just once but over and over again). 

Patience is a virtue

Once you start to share your content marketing materials with other people and you start to build a relationship with them, you should not assume that you will see results instantaneously. It just doesn’t happen that way (usually). Just as it takes time to build meaningful relationships, it also takes time to see the fruits of your labor. In fact, it will most likely take between three and six months before you see any significant results and even longer before you see any significant return on investment (ROI). It may take even longer if you happen to be in an industry that functions with sales cycles at its foundation.

However, with that being said, you need to be patient because you will achieve those results. It is just like many other things in life. You need to put the work in up front. You can’t expect to reap the rewards before you do that. There is no guarantee that you will be a success but there is a very good chance that you will be. Just remember to consistently deliver top-quality content and really listen to what the other person wants and needs. It is a true formula for success. Not only will you be successful as far as other people knowing who you are and what you represent with your brand but the money part of it will follow as well. 

You need to find out exactly what is working and what is not working

Not all business people will be assessing the same things for their particular businesses. The first thing that you will need to do is determine which goals are important for your particular business. Once you have done that, you will want to use some sort of analytics program, which can help you to find answers. This is critical for your business because there is no point in your wasting time on something that isn’t working.

The other thing is that your brand’s needs will most likely change over time. If you make an assessment in the beginning, you shouldn’t expect that the assessment will necessarily apply a year later, or at some other point in the future. One thing that you should keep in mind is that there may not be a large amount of money coming in right at the beginning based on your efforts. You need to trust that it is only a temporary situation.

Don’t be short-sighted

You need to make sure that you keep all of your values and all of your expectations in sight at all times. If you focus on money alone, you will be missing a lot in your business and it is important for you to remember that there are a lot of elements that go into making a business successful. Of course, ROI is an extremely important aspect of your business but you need to do a lot of work before you can accomplish that.

Another concept that is really important is that your approach must be effective if you are going to succeed. The relationship that you share with the other person has an emotional/human foundation. That means that you need to relate to the other person in a human way. If you use any other approach, you will not succeed. You build the relationship with the other person solidly and the rest will follow in time. 

Achieve one goal at a time

If you are able to concentrate on short-term goals, one at a time, before you know it, you will be able to achieve a great deal. Short-term goals are much easier (in general) to accomplish than giant, long-term goals. In the end, you will arrive at the same place anyway so it really doesn’t matter.

It is time to start measuring

After you have determined exactly what you need to assess, you will want to make sure that the information is well organized so that you get the answers that you are looking for as painlessly as possible. You will want to generate regular reports (once a month) so that you can examine what you are doing carefully and so that you can compare your work, month by month. It is very important to remember that you should only be gathering metrics on whatever is truly important for your brand and your business. Some information that you will want to include in your assessment is: 

Identifying your main objectives: You will want to include exactly what type of data, how you plan to use those data, and where you can gather those data.  You will want to focus on your conversions, which pages people are reading most, increase (or decrease) in website traffic, which content of yours other people are sharing, and an overall analysis of what and how your content marketing materials are doing.

Conclusion

Assessing how your content marketing efforts are doing is critical to the success of your business. It is important to understand what is working, what may need some adjustment, and what isn’t working at all (and should be eliminated). You should never think of your brand as a stagnant entity. It is a living, breathing part of you and, just like you, it grows and evolves over time. If you don’t periodically assess how you are doing, you will be fumbling in the dark and you cannot leave the success of your business to chance. Your ultimate goal is to sell more of your products and/or services. Assessing how you are doing is an extremely important and intricate part of that.

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