Showing ROI: How to Create a Content Marketing Report

Showing ROI: How to Create a Content Marketing ReportWordCamp London 2017

Ilia Markov www.markovunchained.com @nochainmarkov

Download these slides:

http://nocha.in/wcldn17

Why does content ROI matter?

Every uncool content marketer ever

Oh, I’m mostly a blogger…

What gets measured, gets managedPeter Drucker (maybe)

Playbill

• Act 1: Content is part of your business strategy

• Act 2: How to set up a report

• Act 3: How to calculate ROI

• Content marketer with strong focus on SaaS companies

• Curator of Content Marketing Weekly newsletter

• Saints fan, have traveled to Hull, Swansea, and Southampton

A bit about myself…

Act 1: Content is part of your business

strategy

Business Objectives

Marketing Objectives

Marketing Strategy

Content Objectives

Content Strategy

Content Tactics

What’s the bigger picture?

What are your goals with content?

• NOT “Traffic” → It could be a KPI (next slide)

• Do you have someone doing Sales? → It could be leads

• Are you selling a digital product (SaaS)? → Trials started

Tie your KPI framework with the goals

• KPI = Key Performance Indicator

• What metric shows progress on your goals?

• Some popular options include:

• Traffic

• Shares & Comments

• Leads generated

• Conversions

Act 2: Set up your content report

What tools to use

• Google Analytics → straightforward (sort of)

• Woopra → detailed analytics, free plan

• Google Search Console → for measuring SEO

• Google Sheets + Analytics Add-on → for the actual report

Create a funnel

Traffic

Leads

Prospects

Customers

Sessions, Unique visitors, New vs. Returning

Emails collected (Goal conversions)

Pricing page visited, Trials started

Sales (Goal conversions)

Woopra works great for funnels

Your report could be a custom dashboard

Or built from scratch by pulling data

Some things you should consider

• Attribution → consider using UTM links

• Set up goals in Google Analytics / Woopra

• How to measure to avoid data issues (spikes, etc.)

UTM links allow you to get very detailed

Setting up goals in Google Analytics

Think about how you look at data

Act 3: How to Calculate ROI

You need to know two numbers

• CAC: Cost of Acquiring a Customer

• LTV: Average Customer Lifetime Value

How to find out your CAC

• In February you generated 4 clients and spent £1200 on content:

• Writing: £800 (4 posts x £200 each)

• Editing: £300 (10 hours x £30)

• Tools (hosting, keyword research, email provider, lead gen): £100

• => Your CAC of content is £1200 / 4 = £300

• But this is quite simplified…

Calculating LTV is similar

• In reality, it’s the average deal size, but with caveats…

• If you’re selling a subscription-based product (e.g. SaaS, productized consulting, etc.), => average [monthly/annual] rate x average time someone’s a customer

• If you’re freelancing (e.g. building websites for clients) => figure out your average deal size

Putting CAC and LTV together

LTV < CAC

Obviously not good…

Putting CAC and LTV together

LTV > CAC

Slightly better, but…

Putting CAC and LTV together

£301 > £300

…is it enough?

A good measure of comparison

LTV ≥ 3x CAC

For more on the topic:

• Content Marketing ROI: How We Measure Success at Hubstaff

nocha.in/content-marketing-weekly

Before I finish…

Thank you!

@nochainmarkovhello@markovunchained.com

http://nocha.in/wcldn17

It’s time for your questions…