Beyond Traffic and Engagement: The KPIs That Matter
While traffic and engagement are valuable indicators of content reach and resonance, they don’t paint the whole picture. To truly understand the revenue impact of your content, you need to delve deeper into KPIs that reflect its influence on the sales pipeline and customer lifecycle.
Lead Quality: Are You Attracting the Right People?
Not all leads are created equal. Generating a high volume of leads is meaningless if those leads aren’t qualified or a good fit for your product or service. Focus on measuring the quality of leads generated through specific content pieces. This can be done by:
- Lead Scoring: Assign points to leads based on demographics, firmographics, and behavior such as content downloaded, webinars attended, and pages visited.
- Sales Feedback: Regularly solicit feedback from your sales team on lead quality and whether they are having productive conversations.
- Source Attribution: Track which blog posts, ebooks, or webinars are generating the highest-quality leads.
MQL to SQL Conversion Rate: Bridging the Gap Between Marketing and Sales
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) have shown interest, while Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) are ready to be pursued. The conversion rate between these stages reveals content effectiveness.
Why it Matters
A low MQL to SQL rate might indicate mismatched targeting, ineffective nurturing, or misaligned qualification criteria.
How to Improve
- Refine Your MQL Definition: Align with sales on what qualifies as an MQL.
- Improve Lead Nurturing: Build targeted content for specific pain points.
- Optimize for Conversions: Use clear CTAs and easy next steps.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): The Long-Term Impact of Content
CLTV is the total revenue expected from a customer over time. Content influences this through:
- Onboarding & Training: Help customers succeed early.
- Retention: Keep them engaged with ongoing value.
- Upselling/Cross-selling: Highlight relevant products or services.
Tracking Tip: Use multi-touch attribution models to assign credit to all content touchpoints along the customer journey.
Content-Influenced Deal Size: Does Content Drive Larger Deals?
Analyze whether content exposure correlates with higher deal values.
How to Measure
- Attribution Reporting: Use CRM and marketing automation to link content to deals.
- Analyze Sales Data: Compare average deal sizes between content-engaged and non-engaged prospects.
Tracking, Analyzing, and Optimizing for Financial Impact
Start by setting up a strong measurement and optimization process:
Choose the Right Tools
- CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM
- Marketing Automation: Marketo, Pardot, HubSpot
- Analytics: Google Analytics 4, Adobe Analytics
- Attribution Modeling: Ruler Analytics, Bizible
Implement Proper Attribution Modeling
Select the attribution model (first-touch, last-touch, multi-touch) that reflects your sales cycle and content influence accurately.
Regularly Analyze Your Data
Ask:
- Which content generates the highest-quality leads?
- What content best moves leads through the funnel?
- Which content contributes to high CLTV?
- Are there content gaps?
Iterate and Optimize
- Create more of what works.
- Improve underperforming content.
- Experiment with formats and channels.
- Retire ineffective assets.
