Anyone can create content.
But how do you if that content is working?
B2B content marketing metrics can help you answer that question.
After all, data doesn’t lie!
But what are the best content marketing metrics for your business?
This Article Contains:
- 11 Crucial B2B Content Marketing Metrics to Track
- 5 Practical Tips to Improve Your B2B Content Marketing Metrics
Let’s get started!
11 Crucial B2B Content Marketing Metrics
B2B content marketing metrics provide valuable insights into the content your target audience prefers.
They also help a content marketer:
- Measure content marketing performance
- Determine areas for improvement
- Identify the best content creation strategies to achieve goals, like brand awareness or lead generation
- Maximize their marketing ROI
But here’s the thing:
There isn’t one or two metrics that’ll give you all these benefits.
You’ll need to choose a portfolio of relevant metrics from a vast list of marketing KPIs for different content marketing goals, including:
A. SEO Success
SEO (search engine optimization) is a super-effective way of increasing organic traffic to your website.
Here are content metrics that’ll tell you if your SEO strategies are working:
1. Traffic
Traffic is the number of visitors who land on your website during a specific time frame. You can analyze the data for your whole site or for individual content pages, like specific blog posts.
Here’s what you need to know about it:
Why Is Traffic Important?
Website traffic tells you how often users land on your site via search queries. It’s a good indicator of your SEO strategy’s performance – after all, driving traffic is a core part of SEO!
While tracking it, you can get further details, such as identifying how much traffic came from different sources, like:
- Paid ads: Traffic generated through paid means like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.
- Organic search: Visitors that land on your website from organic search engine results for specific queries.
- Direct: Traffic with no source data. They typically land on your site by directly entering the URL into their browser or from a page bookmark.
How to Measure Traffic?
You can track this marketing metric on platforms like Google Analytics.
Acceptable Ranges
Per firstpagesage.com, you should aim for a 10% growth in website traffic month-over-month, with at least 70% of your traffic coming from organic search.
Fun fact: Per HubSpot’s report, the biggest source of web traffic is direct (about 22%), followed by organic search (17%) and social (16%). Displays ads and paid search account for 12% and 9% of web traffic, respectively.
2. # of Top 3 Pages
A more practical indicator of content marketing success is the number of content pieces that rank in the top 3 for a search result (or target keyword).
Here are the details about this content marketing KPI:
Why Is Page Rank Important?
A high rank indicates your content addresses that keyword’s search intent and provides value to readers. This also depends on your topical authority and other factors, but in general, it means your SEO and content strategy are on the right track.
Per firstpagesage.com, the top-ranking page for a search query receives 39.8% of the traffic, the second receives 18.7%, and the third receives 10.2%.
But here’s the thing:
With Google’s upcoming AI-powered search experience, you’ll get AI-generated answers above the search results listings. A search result will have fewer website listings on the first page, increasing competition.
As a result, getting to the bottom of page 1 (ranks 6-10) will no longer do.
Optimizing for higher page ranks is more vital than ever for a good content marketing ROI!
How to Measure Page Rank?
You can track your page rank with tools like Ahrefs or Accuranker. You could also do so from Google Analytics, but only after linking it with Google Search Console.
Acceptable Ranges
There’s no standard for how many top 3 pages you should have. However, it can help to set goals like maintaining a growth rate of 10% year over year.
3. Backlinks
Backlinks are links from third-party websites to your site’s content or blog post.
This is typically when another site links to your site since they found something valuable, but you can also pay for backlinks.
Here’s everything you should know about it:
Why Are Backlinks Important?
Backlinks indicate that other websites find value in your content. Plus, they can aid your page rank by endorsing your topical authority.
However, backlinks aren’t essential for your SEO strategy.
In the November 2022 Google Office Hours video, Duy Nguyen said: “backlinks as a signal has a lot less significant impact compared to when Google Search first started out many years ago.”
Plus, there’s a way to boost your search engine rank without relying on backlinks.
Wondering how?
Startup Voyager has a content strategy that’s demonstrated massive success in helping companies rank for keywords without relying on backlinks. Get in touch with us to know more about how we do it.
How to Track Backlinks?
You can use tools like Moz’s Link Explorer or Google Search Console to track the number of backlinks to your website.
Acceptable Ranges
Businesses should aim for 2-3 backlinks per month (primarily from high domain authority websites).
Backlinks from low authority domains, poor-quality pages, and link-building schemes can backfire — negatively impacting your page rank and domain trust score.
B. Engagement
Your content needs to be engaging enough to attract leads and conversions.
Simple enough, right?
Here are the best content engagement metrics to keep an eye on:
4. Social Shares, Mentions, and Comments
For brands on social media, likes, comments, shares, and mentions are the essentials for tracking engagement.
Now, you may think that social engagement is more important for B2C companies, and you’d be right. However, B2B companies can also greatly benefit from it since even businesses, CEOs, and managers are on social media!
This is what you need to know about it:
Why Is Social Engagement Important?
They show you which posts resonate with your audience since people will only share and interact with posts they find relatable and engaging.
Tracking what posts engage your followers and learning from them can help you tailor your content creation strategy to your audience and build brand awareness.
For example, let’s say you ran two promotional campaigns — one with a discount code and one offering a limited free trial. Later, you find that the one with a discount code got double the engagement. You should ensure that future promotional campaigns include a discount code since it resonates better with your audience.
How to Measure Social Engagement?
You can track your social engagement on your social media platforms, or you can use social content marketing analytics tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
These tools use your likes, comments, shares, mentions, reactions, and more to calculate the engagement rate of your posts.
Acceptable Ranges
Per hootsuite.com, a good social engagement rate is between 1%-5% of your audience interacting with your posts.
5. Time on Page
Time on page (ToP) is a content marketing performance metric that measures the time a visitor spends on a single page of your website.
Let’s explore everything you need to know about it.
Why Is Time on Page Important?
It tells you how long visitors are engaged on a page, providing insights into what type of content keeps your visitors’ attention.
For example, you could compare the average ToP for a page with videos versus one with infographics to see which one keeps your visitors’ attention.
How to Measure Time on Page?
You can track this marketing metric on Google Analytics.
Acceptable Ranges
A good time on page (ToP) will depend on the type of page, the content format, the industry, and so on. For example, a good average for e-commerce pages is 44 seconds to 1.5 minutes, and for blog posts it’s between 2 to 5 minutes — according to websitebuilderexpert.com.
Some pages, like forgot password or order success pages, typically have a low ToP (lower than a minute). A high average in these cases can mean users struggle to complete the process.
6. Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is the percentage of visitors who interacted with your website by clicking buttons, visiting more than one page, or staying longer than 10 seconds.
Here’s what you need to know about this content marketing KPI:
Why Is Engagement Rate Important?
The more people engage with your content, the likelier they will convert.
Plus, engagement is a measure of content quality and can influence your page rank.
How to Measure Engagement Rate?
You can calculate your engagement rate using this formula:
Engagement Rate = Number of engaged visits / Total number of visits * 100
Acceptable Ranges
According to dataflow.io, B2B websites have an average engagement rate of 63%.
However, you should keep trying to improve your engagement rate, even if it goes above the average.
Example
Let’s say you have 1,000 total visitors, out of which:
- 400 visitors stay on the landing page for over 10 seconds
- 300 visitors view a second page
- 100 visitors fill out a contact form
- 200 visitors leave right after landing on your homepage
Then your engagement rate = Number of engaged visitsTotal number of visits 100 = 8001,000 100 = 80%
That would indicate that your website has a good engagement rate of 80%. However, you could try to improve your homepage’s interactive content since 200 visitors left after landing on it.
You could also try to improve your opt-ins to increase engagement, as your contact form sign-ups could use a boost. But most importantly, you should address the search intent visitors typically have when they land on your page to keep them there.
C. Leads and Sales
Your content marketing campaign activities typically aren’t worth much if they aren’t leading to quality lead generation and sales.
Let’s see how to track your content marketing performance for leads and sales.
7. Number of Leads
Leads are the people who are prospective customers. They typically fill out forms or sign up for demos, providing you with personal information like their phone number or email address.
Here’s all you should know about this metric:
Why Is Number of Leads Important?
It’s an indicator of how good your content is at generating leads.
How to Measure Number of Leads?
You can track the leads you gain through your database, email service provider, or customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Acceptable Ranges
There isn’t a fixed standard for leads per day since it can depend on your industry, audience, and market.
However, per HubSpot, growing your number of leads by 8% each month can be enough for significant growth in a year — provided they’re high-quality leads.
Acquiring low-quality leads can mean you’re targeting the wrong audience, which results in lower conversions and ineffective spending on PPC ads (pay-per-click ads).
8. Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who click on a button that triggers a conversion event, like a white paper download, newsletter sign-up, or a paid subscription.
Here are some important points about it.
Why Is Conversion Rate Important?
Conversion rate is an important metric since it indicates the percentage of website visitors who perform a desired activity.
It’s also a measure of how optimized your content is at getting them to complete a desired action. And if that desired action is a paid subscription, your conversion rate can serve as a direct indicator of your content marketing ROI.
How to Track Conversion Rate?
You can track this content marketing metric on platforms like Google Analytics.
Or you could calculate it using this formula:
Conversion rate = Total conversions / Total website visits * 100
Acceptable Ranges
Per popupsmart.com, a good website conversion rate is between 2-5%.
Example
Consider your website’s homepage has 50K monthly visits, but only 2K visitors fill out your “book a consultation” form that month.
Then your conversion rate for the form is:
Conversion rate = Total conversions / Total website visits * 100 = 2,000 / 50,000 * 100 = 4%
This is a healthy conversion rate based on the benchmark above. However, you should keep testing different variations, like CTAs or copies, to see what improves the rate.
To optimize your conversion rate across your marketing efforts, note which campaigns get the most conversions and use the same approach for other campaigns.
D. Bonus: Email Marketing
We know. We know.
Email marketing technically isn’t the same as content marketing.
However…
Your email marketing and content marketing approach should align since they work best together.
Plus, email marketing opens up avenues of stats and figures that provide insights about the impact your content creates.
Here are the key email metrics to track:
9. Open Rate
Open rates are the bread and butter of email marketing. It tells you how many people, out of the total receivers, open your emails.
Here’s what you should know about it:
Why Is Open Rate Important?
It provides insights into the impact of your email copy, including the subject line, level of personalization, clarity, etc.
How to Measure Open Rate?
You can measure your open rate using any email marketing tool, like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign.
You can also calculate it with this formula:
Open rate = Total number of emails opened / Total number of emails delivered * 100
Acceptable Ranges
Per MailerLite, the average open rate is 37.65%.
Example
Let’s say you create an email marketing campaign that’s delivered to 5,000 people and opened by 2,000 people.
Your open rate = Total number of emails opened / Total number of emails delivered * 100 = 2,000 / 5,000 * 100 = 40%
This is above the average rate, indicating your email copy is doing well. You should try analyzing what works and improving what doesn’t to increase your open rate.
Simple tips for boosting your open rate include:
- Using personalized and engaging subject lines
- Update your email list often to remove inactive subscribers
- A/B test different times to identify the ideal time to reach your audience
- Optimizing for mobile
10. Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate (CTR) is an important metric that measures the number of people who click on links in your marketing email.
Let’s explore everything you should know about it.
Why Is Click-Through Rate Important?
CTR can provide insights into the engagement level of your email copy, indicating how good it is at convincing people to take action.
It also tells what percentage of people weren’t interested in your link or email.
How to Measure Click-Through Rate?
You can measure your click-through rate on any email content marketing analytics platform, like HubSpot or Mailchimp.
You can calculate it using this formula:
Click‒through rate = Number of recipients who clicked a link / Number of emails delivered * 100
Acceptable Ranges
Per MailerLite’s 2022 report, the average click-through rate across all industries is 8.93%.
Example
Say you send a B2B marketing email to 1,200 recipients, and 110 of them click on at least one link in the email.
Your CTR = Number of recipients who clicked a link / Number of emails delivered * 100 = 110 / 1,200 * 100 = 9.16%
This indicates your email is doing above average, but you don’t need to be satisfied with that. You can always try to improve the copy and content of the email.
Plus, you could try clarifying the link’s purpose or improving engagement by adding links to images instead.
11. Unsubscribe Rate
Unsubscribe rate is the number of people who unsubscribe from your email marketing campaign in a week or month.
Here’s what you need to know about it:
Why Is Unsubscribe Rate Important?
Your unsubscribe rate can tell you what types of copies or topics lead to unsubscribes. And if your email marketing tool allows it, you may even get to know why users unsubscribed via a short survey.
Typically, an increasing unsubscribing rate is a sign of a bad content strategy, poor relevance to your audience, or too many emails without a valuable purpose.
But remember, unsubscribers aren’t always bad — they may be people who have no intention of converting into paying customers in the first place.
How to Measure Unsubscribe Rate?
You can use this formula:
Unsubscribe Rate = Number of unsubscribed / Number of emails delivered * 100
Acceptable Ranges
Typically, a low unsubscribe rate is preferable. The industry average is 0.24%, as per MailerLite’s 2022 report.
Example
Consider this: You send out an email marketing campaign that’s delivered to 2,000 people, and 5 people unsubscribe. Then your unsubscribe rate would be:
Unsubscribe rate = Number of unsubscribed / Number of emails delivered * 100 = 5 / 2,000 * 100 = 0.25%
This is just about higher than the average rate, so it isn’t terrible. However, you could still look at ways to make your email more engaging and relevant. And if you can access feedback on why people unsubscribed, you can use that information to improve future email campaigns.
Most importantly, remember to build an email list of qualified prospects to maximize relevancy and minimize unsubscribes.
Now that you know which B2B marketing metrics matter, let’s look at what you can do to boost them.
5 Practical Tips to Improve Your B2B Content Marketing Metrics
Metrics aren’t just about keeping track of numbers.
They’re also about learning what you can do better as a content marketer.
Here are steps to take your content metrics above their average benchmarks:
1. Optimize Your Blog for SEO
Following SEO best practices and addressing issues found in audits will help you rank higher on search engines, increasing your organic traffic, leads, and conversions. This can include adding keywords and using internal links in each blog post.
Moreover, staying up-to-date with Google’s algorithm will help you stay on top of the latest happenings in SEO and make appropriate changes to your site content.
Need help with your SEO strategy?
Get in touch with Startup Voyager to 10x your organic traffic and boost conversions. 📈
2. Fill Keyword Gaps
SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs can help you find and fill keyword gaps by comparing page ranks between you and your competitors.
It’s essential to building a winning keyword strategy that’ll bring SEO success.
Moreover, keyword gap analysis lets you discover new opportunities for your site and improve your content performance. It also helps you explore more information to cover and answer your visitor’s search intent.
3. Identify Social Opportunities
Many marketers and content creators use the SWOT analysis framework to build new social media campaigns.
Why?
It helps you explore your Strengths, identify your Weaknesses, discover Opportunities, and uncover Threats. This lets you see what B2B social content you can cover or improve to compete with key players in your industry.
A SWOT analysis can help with:
- Assessing your content performance in terms of your competition
- Launching a content marketing campaign using the right platform and approach
- Setting annual targets that help you achieve greater content marketing success
Wondering how to do a SWOT analysis?
Use tools like Hootsuite or Meta Business Suite – they do most of the heavy lifting for you!
4. Leverage Visual Content
An effective way to boost engagement is by adding visual content.
Consider this: According to Gitnux,
- Articles with images get 94% more views.
- Videos result in 1200% more shares than text and image content.
- Users are 40 times more likely to share visual content on social media than other types of content.
- Infographics can increase website traffic by up to 12%.
B2B marketers should test visual content formats, like infographics, charts, and videos, to see what resonates with their audience.
Slack is a wonderful example of a B2B company that leverages visual content. Its website uses images and GIFs to show how Slack helps improve communication and productivity.
5. Create Content that Resonates with Your Target Audience
Your customers want engaging, interactive content that helps address their needs.
But in addition to making your site content more engaging, relevant, and SEO-friendly, you also want to select the right content format for your audience. This could include publishing white papers, reports, ebooks, whichever best resonates with your audience.
Moreover, B2B marketers and content creators should try to use web-based content if their goal is measuring content marketing performance. You won’t obtain many insights from PDF downloads.
Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy with Metrics
Content marketing metrics let you identify issues in your marketing strategy and create effective plans and budgets for your business.
It’ll reveal what platforms, approaches, and content types impact your audience, helping you take the right step forward! 👣
And if you ever need any help supercharging your content marketing, we at Startup Voyager are here to help!
With a proven track record of helping tons of B2B companies scale their content and 10x their traffic and boost conversions, we know what you need.