Content marketing: the digital strategy that you must know in depth

The Marketing Digital ceased to be a market trend to become an indispensable investment for most companies, but we already know that , do not you? Today, anyone who wants to remain relevant to their customers needs to have online visibility.

Therefore, the issue is no longer the need to be on the Internet, but how to be present in it to win the attention of the public and stand out among your competitors who are already there.

You have to adopt the best and most modern customer acquisition strategies, the main element being: an Inbound Marketing strategy. One of the main ones is Content Marketing, which is used and recommended by the world’s leading specialists.

If you still do not know Content Marketing or do not master this modality, we have prepared this definitive guide for you so that you can learn everything you need to know to become an expert.

• What is content marketing
• The Inbound methodology in Content Marketing;
• Benefits of Content Marketing;
• Overview of a content strategy;
• Content planning;
• Execution of the strategy;
• Measurement of results;
• Tools of a Content Marketing strategy

What is content marketing

Content Marketing is a way to involve your target audience and grow your network of leads and customers through the creation of relevant and valuable content, attracting, involving and generating value for people and, in this way, create a perception positive of your brand, generating more business.

But, to make it even clearer in your mind, I’m going to break down the concept and explain it to you in detail:

“Content Marketing is a way to engage your target audience and grow your network of leads and customers …”

First of all, you need to understand that the time when we were forced to passively watch television commercials is gone.

Today, the public has more power than ever to choose the content they want to consume and how to interact with it. And you have the power and knowledge to produce exactly the content that your audience wants.

«… through the creation of relevant and valuable content …»

Traditional professionals find it difficult to stop talking about their products and focus on what the public wants: really useful content.

Good content is not focused on selling, but on bringing some benefit to those who read it, such as solving a problem, clarifying a doubt or teaching something. The sale is only one consequence of this process.

«… attracting, involving and generating value for people …»

The content you create is not only useful, but it also delivers the right message to your audience when they need it most. You exceed expectations by providing content so incredible that your audience will want to share it with others.

«… in order to create a positive perception of your brand and thus generate more business. «

That is the most interesting part! Since you helped him when he needed it most, your audience will have a positive vision of your brand.

And, as we well know, people are more likely to do business with brands they know and like than with unknown brands.

The ultimate goal of marketing is: always bring positive results for the company! And, with Content Marketing, that goal can be achieved.

How? Now I will tell you.

How Content Marketing is linked to Inbound Marketing

The Inbound Marketing is the leading digital marketing strategy today. And, within it, is Content Marketing. In this topic we are going to show you how Inbound principles make a difference in a content strategy.

To talk about the benefits and importance of Content Marketing, it is essential that we first understand what the Inbound methodology is.

Inbound Marketing is any marketing strategy that seeks to capture people’s interest without invading or interrupting their experience.

Unlike aggressive advertisements that shoot ads in people’s faces when they’re unprepared, their goal is to subtly engage audiences.

You let the public come to your company respecting their time and you wait for them to give you permission to pass on your message. That is why Inbound is also called attraction marketing.

To achieve this, Inbound is based on four pillars:

• Attract: through relevant content, inbound attracts visitors interested in the business;
• Convert: here, the intention is to transform visitors into leads, bringing them closer to your business and transforming them into potential sales;
• Sell: is your lead interested in the product or service that your company offers? This is the time to show him that your solution is the best and close the sale;
• Enchant: the relationship between your company and your customer does not end with the purchase. Inbound preaches a lasting relationship, in which you offer all the necessary support, in addition to charming the client with interesting materials and competent attention.

Basically, what you need to know is that doing Content Marketing is following the Inbound methodology .

That is, it is to attract your audience to gain their trust and win loyal followers for your brand. But there are several other benefits of Content Marketing for your business, as I am going to explain to you now.

Access our complete Inbound Marketing guide if you want to delve into the subject.

What are the benefits of Content Marketing

Why use Content Marketing? In this section we will show you the main advantages of the strategy for your company to achieve its business objectives.

According to a report posted on Neil Patel’s blog , 93% of B2B marketers use this methodology in their customer acquisition strategy. 

As the figures show, most companies already know the benefits of this methodology.

But why are they betting on it?

Well, the reasons are several and very interesting for your business. In addition to generating value for you, Content Marketing:

1. Increase your site traffic

The digital transformation has made most people use the Internet to search for information, especially search engines like Google. That is, your site is the main gateway for new customers and Google is the way to it.

Producing relevant content is the best way to get your site on the first page of Google – where it will always be found by your audience – and let that door invite them in.

The proof of this is that companies that use Content Marketing have, on average, twice the number of visits to their sites. And if you produce more than 13 content per month, that number is quadrupled!

2. Genera brand awareness

Content production helps more people recognize your brand and get to know the products and / or services that your company offers.

As I already explained, people tend to buy brands that are familiar to them and for which they feel sympathy.

A regular reader of your blog, for example, will prefer your brand when they need to buy a product or service. After all, he already knows you and you have probably already helped him several times with your content.

3. Increase engagement with your brand

While brand awareness increases the number of people who know and have a positive perception of your brand, engagement seeks to build a close and constant relationship with a select audience.

By producing quality content, you increase people’s interactions with your brand, creating real engagement .

The result of this are evangelizers who recommend and defend it.

4. Educate the market

Many times, your target audience does not understand well the market in which it is inserted, what the products offered by your company are for, etc.

In that case, don’t give up! It produces content that answers customers’ questions and teaches them everything they need to know to make the purchase decision for themselves.

If your content is really of quality, you will overcome objections and increase customer satisfaction, since they will arrive at the time of purchase knowing your product in detail and how to use it.

5. Generate sales in the medium term

Surely you are thinking: but is not generating sales what all companies want?

Yes of course! However, it is not always the end goal of the Content Marketing process.

Increasing the number of sales, in this case, means focusing your content production to guide your leads through the entire purchase process and prepare them for decision making.

In any case, business opportunities arise naturally when the content strategy is done in a disciplined manner and following good practices.

From the production of rich materials in an editorial calendar, the attraction of the buyer persona to your website is favored. Thus, your potential customers access your website and find you before the competition.

Nothing better for a sales team than to reach a perfect potential client first, right?

Developing content focused on the terms that your buyer persona is searching for on Google increases the generation of qualified leads exponentially.

This is the great difference of a company that does Inbound Marketing: potential clients come to your sales team, preventing you from wasting a lot of time looking for them.

In this way, it is possible to optimize the efficiency and productivity of the sales department, which will only contact those who reveal themselves as real business opportunities.

At the same time, the advanced and comprehensive content is very useful for traditional outbound prospecting.

Using them in email flows, it is possible to educate your prospect about your offering and your company. In addition, they reinforce the authority and visibility of the brand, positioning itself as the main reference on the subject for the potential client, generating value in their search for information.

But these are just a few examples of goals. The important thing is that you identify yours to direct your planning in the right way.

6. Boost lead generation

Ok, you already have visitors on your site. But without information about them, you won’t be able to submit the right content to turn them into leads and connect them with a seller.

That is why generating leads is the main objective of 64.7% of companies! And some of them are already getting triple the number of leads doing Content Marketing.

And the best: with a solid strategy, which will continue to bring long-term results, generating traffic and leads even if you do not produce content regularly.

7. Aumenta el lifetime-value

Lifetime-value (LTV) is the total value that a customer spends on your business as a whole. For example: if your customers buy a $ 50.00 product twice on average, your LTV is $ 100.00.

Every business owner knows that it is cheaper to sell to a current customer than to attract a new customer. So using a content strategy with this objective is a good move because it keeps the customer engaged with your company.

You can use various types of post-sale content, such as exclusive newsletters for customers, to offer new products or discounts in your virtual store .

8. Reduces the cost of customer acquisition

The CAC, Customer Acquisition Cost, is a metric that indicates the value you invest in the Marketing and Sales areas to get a new customer.

If winning a new client is cheap, the income generated by him covers the expenses created up to there and gives a profit. Therefore, the goal of any company is that its CAC is as low as possible.

But why am I explaining this to you? Because most companies still have a large sales team focused on prospecting and inject money into paid media to get new customers.

These actions are successful at many times, but they also result in a fairly high CAC. Even because personal and advertising are not cheap at all, right?

With a Content Marketing strategy you reduce the CAC by providing materials that eliminate customer doubts at the time of purchase and, at the same time, provide your sales team with e-books, webinars and other content that can facilitate the sales process.

And also, you can use Content Marketing to train your sales team, improve the conversion of your leads, build authority in the market, etc., just to name a few of the benefits.

But it is clear that, before reaping the fruits, you will need a well-defined strategy.

Content Marketing, in general, is a work in three stages: planning, execution and measurement. And that’s what I’m going to teach you now.

How to start a Content Marketing strategy

Content Marketing is much more than just writing. Actually, that’s the smallest part. Before it is necessary to define objectives, strategies and which metrics to evaluate.

Planning is all of the above to actually starting to create content: the choice of topics, language, keywords, etc.

It is the moment when you make clear the results you want to obtain with your strategy, the path that you are going to trace to achieve your goals and how you are going to measure your progress.

Producing content without planning is like taking a car trip without a GPS – you can have fun on the road, but you’ll probably end up lost in the middle of nowhere with a punctured tire.

That is why, in the development of a content plan , we define all the steps of the company’s Content Marketing strategy, starting with the person.

Definition of objectives and KPIs

A clear objective helps your team perceive which metrics must be monitored and what actions they must take to improve results. Every strategy must pursue a goal that brings real benefits to the business!

I have listed some of the benefits of Content Marketing for your company that can be used as objectives:

• generar brand awareness;
• increase engagement with the brand;
• educate the market;
• generate sales;
• reduce cost per sale;
• aumentar el lifetime-value.

These examples encompass a good part of the cases that we see on a day-to-day basis. Then evaluate what results you need to achieve in the current moment of your business and what goals will help you get there faster.

Once the objective is defined, the next step in planning your content marketing strategy is to define your KPIs, the key performance indicators.

It is essential that this definition is well done because there are two types of people who do not know if their campaigns are performing well: those who do not follow metrics enough and those who look at metrics too much. And they both create the same kind of problem!

In the first case, if you are not measuring any results, you are walking blindly, without knowing if the path you are following is the correct one. In the second case, accompanying any available metric is having a huge amount of data, but no relevant information.

Inevitably a good KPI should be:

• important to strategy ;
• easy to understand ;
• easily measurable ;
• capable of leading to positive action;

Defining the KPIs is the next step after choosing objectives, since they are directly related. Next, we are going to show an objective and which KPIs can be observed to accompany success:

• Brand awareness: number of reactions on Facebook, followers on Twitter, video views on YouTube, visits to your site;
• Engagement with the brand: shared on social networks, number of pages visited on the site, low rejection rate, comments on posts;
• Market education: number of pages visited on the site, subscribers to your newsletter and subscribers to the RSS feed;
• Lead generation: landing page conversions , contact base growth;
• Sales generation: number of sales, sales / leads;
• Cost per sale: time spent to make a sale, number of sales, CAC (customer acquisition cost);
• Lifetime-value: contract time of each client.

So, look at your goal and reflect: what metrics are going to show me that I am on the right track to meet my goal, being these the only metrics that I cannot stop monitoring?

Definition of the Buyer Persona

One of the pillars of Content Marketing is that you don’t want to attract just anyone to your site. You want the right person, the one who really has a profile to become a customer.

Therefore, all planning must be based on the knowledge of your person , seeking to help her in all her pains and lead her through the sales funnel.

The concept of person is different from that of a target audience. While the target audience is based on the description of a demographic that you are looking to reach, the person is a semi-fictional description of your ideal customer.

Semi-fictional because the process of creating people goes through in-depth interviews with your best clients, in an attempt to identify common traits between them and that should be repeated in future clients.

Let’s suppose that the target audience of a certain brand of shampoo can be described as women between 20 and 30 years old, who work, study and do not have time to go to the beauty salon.

This information does not tell us much about customer preferences, how they think or act.

So that brand interviewed some of its most loyal customers and drew a profile made up of the characteristics that best describe its ideal customer.

The result of this is the person Joana, a 25-year-old university student who works part-shift as a private teacher, likes to go out on weekends to dance, seeks to save and, for that, reads beauty blogs in search of practical advice that you can do them on your own.

As the person is more detailed, it allows you more accurate actions, such as producing perfect content to help women like Joana.

In addition, knowing who you are is essential to map the purchase journey of your ideal customer, the step by step that follows from the moment they find you to the time they make the decision to buy.

If you still do not have your person documented, I recommend you download this ebook and start right now.

And of course, you can produce content that makes your person go faster from one step to another. I will talk about it now.

Content adaptation to the sales funnel

The sales funnel has been used for a long time by marketers because it is a simple way to illustrate the sales process, from the first contact with the public until the moment the sale is made.

In the same way that a funnel is capable of receiving a lot of volume at the top but, in the end, it lets little matter through.

The sales funnel shows that of the many people who come to you, only one parcel will go through the whole process and actually become a customer.

This representation is extremely important to classify where a prospect is in the conversion and what efforts are required to take them to the next step until they reach the purchase decision.

Traditionally, much of the sales process is done by the sales team. However, we can use content marketing to make this process even more efficient today, shortening the sales cycle!

One of the bases of Content Marketing is to generate relevant content that is of interest to your audience, promoting interactions and engagement with your brand, right? But, working with Content Marketing is, essentially, a strategic job.

Therefore, if we want to use content to optimize the sales process, we have to think about content that helps in the development of each of the stages of the funnel.

Below is a list of articles we have about what content works for each stage of the sales funnel:

• How to Produce Top of the Funnel Contents
• Middle of the funnel: how to write for the consideration stage
• Bottom of the funnel contents: which ones work?
• What content should you produce to retain customers

Definition of content distribution channels

Now that you have a well-structured persona and a sales funnel laid out, it’s time to choose which customer acquisition channels to invest in. That is, where are you going to distribute your content.

Here it is important to note that a good channel is the one your person uses. It is useless to publish content on Twitter if your person does not even know that social network, is it?

Also, choose only the channels to which you can dedicate yourself. It is preferable not to be on a channel than to have a bad presence, which only publishes once in a while and never creates a de facto relationship.

That said, let’s go to the main acquisition channels that currently exist, their advantages and some information:

1. Corporate blog

According to Neil Patel in his 25th tip, 82% of marketers who blog see a positive ROI from their inbound marketing.

It is generally the basis of a Content Marketing strategy, since it offers a range of possibilities, both due to the variety of formats it supports and the options to convert leads and generate more business opportunities.

But the biggest benefit of blogging for a strategy is that all the traffic you get is yours. You are not subject to losing your entire audience to traffic borrowed from another platform, as is the case on social media.

Plus, the simple act of blogging drives traffic to your site. The proof of this is that companies that publish blog posts receive around 3.7 times more visits per month!

2. Social networks

Today it is impossible to think of a Content Marketing strategy that does not include social networks .

This is because the benefits of these platforms are many – brand awareness, audience engagement, blog traffic generation and sales opportunities, among others.

A recent Hubspot survey revealed that most businesses spend a fifth of their budget on social media and that the trend is to increase in the next five years.

That is why the demand for content on social networks grows every year. Between 2014 and 2016 alone, content consumption on Facebook increased by 57%, on Twitter, by 25%, and on LinkedIn, by 21%.

It is not in vain that practically all large companies have a strong presence on social networks

3. Videos

The use of videos in your content marketing strategy is a powerful initiative to increase your authority in the market and educate your audience and that should grow even more in the coming years.

The forecast is that, in 2019, 80% of Internet traffic will be video, according to a Cisco report .

One of the great advantages of video content is that it is easy to consume on various types of devices, such as cell phones, tablets, etc. In addition, this format has a high perception of value by the viewer, while it is cheaper and easier to do than it seems.

4. Rich materials

Rich materials are pieces like e-books, templates, and white papers, which have more valuable and informative content than a blogpost.

Producing rich materials is a great way to show that your company is an authority on something. After all, you have enough knowledge to talk about it in depth and educate the market.

But the greatest value of these materials is in your ability to generate leads and increase your contact base.

Think with me: the greater the value that a content offers, the greater the public’s willingness to overcome some barrier to obtain it.

This barrier can be a registration form, for example, that will help you get valuable information about your leads, such as whether he already uses a solution like yours or not. Think about this!

5. Interactive web pages

On the Internet, innovation is the golden rule, which means that from time to time more sophisticated and qualified content formats emerge for users. For now, the format that best fits this perspective is that of interactive content web pages !

These consist of materials that offer an original and captivating experience to people who browse a website, since they can actively participate in the consumption of the content.

Whether in a questionnaire, calculator, infographic, or ebook , interactive web pages provide resources that the user can click to indicate their preferences.

An example is the LTV calculator that we produced with Ion Interactive:

On the other hand, website administrators can understand the behavior indicated by interactions to deliver the exact information or offer that the user needs. You can even display different versions of the same page depending on the user who interacts with it.

Some of the advantages of interactive web pages are:

• longer time spent on the page, which positively influences SEO positioning;
• more brand mentions and backlinks, as they are more interesting for users to share on their social networks and websites;
• valuable audience data, which can be used to develop more accurate sales strategies;
• 94% higher conversion rates than static web pages, as this study by Ion Interactive and Demand Metric shows;
• and many more.

In this complete ebook you will understand in detail how interactive content gives scale and power to a digital strategy:

6. Email

Here it is very important to say that: email marketing did not die! On the contrary, although it is discredited by many people, email is one of the channels with the highest ROI (return on investment) in a Content Marketing strategy.

In addition, according to Radicati Group , the use of e-mail worldwide will reach 3 billion users in 2020. That is, e-mail is not even close to dying.

In addition, it offers many advantages, such as predictability of reach and low cost, since you only need a tool and an analyst to take the shots and it allows you to know exactly how many people received, opened and clicked on your message.

7. Others

But these are just a few channels that you can use. There are companies that have successful strategies using others, such as SlideShare presentations, webinars and even offline formats, such as magazines or newspapers.

Therefore, always stay informed about the market news and identify what new channels can be useful to your company to have good results and not fall into the trap of the Shining Object Syndrome.

Just because something is new and attracting attention does not mean that it will necessarily be positive for your content strategy. Make sure that your person is active, engaged and that you can generate relevant content for that channel.

The truth is, without planning and dedication, investing in any channel will be a waste of money!

How to manage a Content Marketing strategy

Many, many times I saw spectacular business plans that did not work at the time of being executed.

To prevent this from happening, it is essential not to lose sight of what was defined in the planning stage and to maintain the frequency of content generation and distribution.

It also understands that its execution must be open to small changes of route towards the final objective.

This may seem complicated now, but I am going to explain step by step how you should drive your strategy starting with content production

Content production

Production is the heart of a Content Marketing strategy, where all your planning takes shape!

Creating quality content is not an easy task and requires investment of time, dedication and work. But, following a few recommendations, this process can become much less laborious.

Some of the factors that must be taken into account are:

Choice of keywords

Keywords are terms or phrases that people use when conducting an Internet search. They are the main piece when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the optimization of your content to appear well positioned in search engines.

The idea is that you discover the relevant keywords for your business and invest your production on this topic.

But remember: your text is directed to an audience and not to a search engine. Never harm the user experience in favor of Google.

Content size and format

The size and format of content should vary from site to site. Ultimately, the most important thing is to deliver value to the reader.

But there are some tips that can help you guide your production, for example: avoid unnecessarily long and complicated texts or too short and empty of information.

A good size to start with is 500 words, adequate to answer your personal questions and long enough to be benefited by Google, which tends to favor more complete texts.

In addition, it is important to vary the format to maintain the engagement of your audience. Offer infogaphies, podcasts and try new formats to see what is most accepted by you.

Videos are a big trend and score SEO points when compared to competitors who don’t offer this type of content on their websites. Bet on them!

Scannability

Working on scannability is formatting your text so that it is attractive at first glance.

Before reading a piece of content, everyone “looks” over it to see what it is about and if it is worth continuing to read. That is, they scan the text.

Inter-titles, images, lists and bold are good resources to increase the scannability of a content, since they escape the pattern of running text.

As they are different, these resources attract the attention of the eye and inform that these points are important and need to be read. Invest in them!

And don’t forget to use short sentences and synthetic paragraphs. Large blocks of text impair understanding of where a line of reasoning begins and ends.

Revision

A text full of spelling errors can wipe out all the authority you fought so hard to build.

Therefore, please review all the content you produce, not only to find errors, but also to see if it conforms to the standards cited above .

Ideally, wait some time after writing to do the review, because if you do it right away, some errors that are under your nose can go unnoticed.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

With your quality content ready, it is not enough to just post it on the cover of your blog. You need to optimize it so that it is found by you.

And that’s where SEO comes in, which is search engine optimization practices and one of the main strategies of the Inbound methodology.

Search engines like Google and Bing use algorithms to classify all indexed content.

It is by means of these algorithms that search engines define that article X is more important than article Y and, therefore, must be the first one placed on the page when a person searches for a certain keyword.

The more relevant the engines consider your content, the better its position on the results page will be. That is essential to reach you, since, according to a report by Internet Marketing Ninjas , the first place wins 21% of the clicks!

The same survey says that the second earns 10%, the third only 7% and that number is falling. That is, if you are not well positioned, it is almost as if you do not exist.

These contents may also interest you:
SEO in WordPress: how to get to the top of Google using the resources of that content manager
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However, as algorithms are logical, it is possible to follow some principles to show search engines that your content is really relevant.

The most important principle is the presence of the keyword throughout the text organically. That is, not the frantic repetition of the keyword, but variations that adapt to the semantic flow of the content.

And not only in the text, but also in the title, in the URL, in the meta-description, in the alt-text of the image.

But that is only the main factor. There are many others, which are divided into SEO On page, which blocks everything that has to do with the content page, and SEO off page, which are external positioning factors to the website or blog.

Content Promotion

As much as Google is an efficient search engine, you cannot count on it alone to find your content.

It is necessary to put it in view of everyone, taking it to your audience and encouraging people to read that work that you have been developing with such dedication.

An efficient content promotion directly influences the results of your strategy. Therefore, do not leave it in the background and strive to improve it more and more.

I separated two dissemination channels that are interesting for any Content Marketing strategy:

Social networks

As I said before, social media is an important channel for customer acquisition.

To give you an idea again, I will quote Neil Patel and his statistic 26 : “The most common content marketing delivery mechanism is social media, used by 87% of marketers.”

But publicizing the content you’re producing goes a bit beyond just posting a link on Facebook. Even because you may not need to be on Facebook.

To achieve results through social networks, you need to be part only of the networks in which your audience is present. If your person is not on Facebook, you have no reason to distribute content on that network, do you agree?

Another important point is to understand that each of the environments in which you publish your content has different audiences and expectations.

You have to know the tone that you should use in each social network, which formats are more accepted and what people want to read in each of them.

Twitter, for example, is a more dynamic network, which asks for short texts and accepts informal language, memes, interactive content.

LinkedIn requests that you be a bit more formal, putting the jokes aside and sharing only content relevant to your market.

Email marketing

Email is a powerful channel for promoting content because it delivers it directly to the user and you can monitor engagement.

The most common way to disseminate content through e-mail marketing is by sending newsletters, compiled with the main content produced by your company within a period of time that you determine.

But you can also take specific shots for each moment of the customer’s journey , offering content that will help them move through the funnel, such as e-books and other rich materials.

It is also possible to disseminate content in nutrition flows, email workflows, based on a specific action, such as downloading an e-book, for example.

It is enough to recommend in the e-mails of the flow some complementary materials to the content that served as a trigger.

Lead generation

As we saw in the topic about the sales funnel, the volume of people who reach the top content is high, but we need to place those people inside the funnel where they can be worked to become opportunities.

We call this process of placing them within the funnel of lead generation.

Leads are people who have shown interest in your content to the point of providing personal information such as email and telephone.

They are very important for a Content Marketing strategy because, from the moment you have information about a person, you can send them personalized content to guide them through the funnel more quickly.

The most effective way to generate leads is to create conversion points on your blog. These points can be forms, where the visitor registers his e-mail to receive a newsletter, for example; or landing pages, in which you respond to custom fields in exchange for rich material.

All this with the aim of building a large base of leads ready to be nurtured, as I will explain below.

Lead nutrition

With the leads at your base, it is necessary to work on them so that they advance to the next stage of the funnel and are increasingly prepared to be approached by the sales team.

The best way to do this is through what we call lead nurturing. In other words, ” feed” your leads with content to obtain more and more information about them and, at the same time, increase their interest and knowledge about your company.

We generally do it through the scheduled sending of e-mails, with the purpose of educating the lead, improving the perception of your brand in relation to him and guiding him until the moment of purchase. Each new email qualifies the lead a little more in relation to the previous email.

This sequence of e-mails, called the nutrition flow , must be based on some event or characteristic that identifies that audience: downloading a material, filling in a form, the number of employees, among others.

To create good nutrition flows, several tests are needed. If this process is carried out efficiently, the results will be clear – and it is precisely about results that we will talk about next.

How to monitor and measure the results of Content Marketing

Now that you know how to plan and execute, we are going to learn how to measure the effectiveness of your actions. This part is delicate and deserves extra attention in choosing the metrics to really understand the results obtained.

The analysis of the results is one of the most delicate moments of the entire Content Marketing strategy .

It is through measurement that you will discover what is working and what is not and, consequently, make the necessary corrections that we discussed at the beginning of this guide.

The greatest advantage of Digital Marketing over other media is that we can monitor KPIs in real time and change strategies quickly to avoid large losses. Which cannot be done in a television commercial, for example.

In addition, since you can track all the steps of a visitor, know exactly how many business opportunities have been generated with a content, which channels are generating more leads, you can calculate exactly what is the return that the Content Marketing strategy is bringing you to the enterprise. Let’s continue!

Measurement frequency

Each metric has an ideal frequency of measurement. Some are daily, some are weekly, and we also have semi-annual metrics.

To know the ideal frequency of monitoring, it is necessary to know each one of them well and discover the ideal data collection time to obtain statistical relevance.

For example, checking the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) on a daily basis is unnecessary, since that number tends to be more stable and it takes many events to cause a relevant change.

But checking your site traffic on that frequency can make sense, as a drop of just a few hours can have a huge impact on your entire sales funnel.

A good way to discover the ideal measurement frequency is by benchmarking with partner companies and market specialists. Try it!

What are the Content Marketing metrics

ROI (Return on investment)

ROI is one of the most important metrics for any Content Marketing strategy and probably the most loved metric by bosses and directors. It is used to measure the efficiency of an investment and is expressed as a percentage.

To calculate the ROI of Content Marketing , simply take what you earned on an action, subtract what you spent, and then divide it, again, by what you spent.

It is a very simple measure of work that serves to give a general notion of the performance of any type of investment.

One of the biggest difficulties in calculating ROI is understanding the concept of “generated value”, since Content Marketing has varied objectives, some long-term and difficult to measure directly.

However, it is extremely useful, especially with “more specific” objectives, such as the number of clients acquired or the income obtained in a certain period. Always accompany him!

What tools are essential in Content Marketing

As you already saw, a Content Marketing strategy requires a lot of work from everyone involved! But there are ways to facilitate the routine of these professionals without neglecting the processes and monitoring all the important metrics.

Fortunately, we have several comprehensive and efficient tools and applications on the market.

These platforms can help you measure the results of a Content Marketing strategy, automate processes and increase the volume of content created and disseminated by your team.

Do you want to know some? I have separated for you the most popular and accessible tools in some categories.

Blogging tools

Much more than writing and publishing texts, taking care of a blog requires some actions, such as the following:

• create a navigation structure;
• moderate visitor comments;
• improve the design (appearance) of your blog;
• accompany access data;
• and many more.

That is why every professional blog needs a Content Management System ( CMS ) – in Spanish, a content management system.

Some options are Joomla , Drupal  and WordPress , the most popular CMS in the world.

SEO tools

For those who work with SEO, the challenges are: researching keywords, finding positioning opportunities, optimizing content to get to the first page and monitoring the competition.

Some useful tools for this are SEMRush , Ahrefs ,  BuzzSumo  and Keyword Planner do Google .

Tools for Social Media

The management of social communication channels is a job that needs tools that allow the programming of publications in various networks, the monitoring of the scope, the engagement of the audience with these messages and, also, that generate results reports.

Some options in this area are:

• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• SimplyMeasured
• Quintly.

And there are also other specific ones for some social networks, such as Postgrain  (old Instamizer) for Instagram, Fanpagekarma  for Facebook and Commun.it  for Twitter.

Automation tools

The professional responsible for lead nurturing needs to write and shoot emails, segment the lead base, create flows, and much more.

Doing that job without a tool is unthinkable! But there are very good options on the market that do much of that work.

The most popular and recommended options are Hubspot ,  RD Station,  and  MailChimp .

Performance analysis tools

Every marketing professional needs to monitor the performance of their strategy. There are several tools that help in this task, even those already mentioned.

An essential monitoring tool is Google Analytics , since it brings the numbers for each channel of traffic acquisition of your blog – email traffic, traffic from organic, social traffic …

Another very good one is Power BI , which centralizes all your Marketing metrics and offers interactive data visualization, which provides more insights.

The options are many, but what makes a tool ideal is meeting the needs of your company.

Everything will depend on the numbers you need to monitor. So first identify those numbers and then choose the analysis tool to monitor them.

What remains to be explored on the subject

And then, what did you think of this trip through the Content Marketing universe? Although we have already presented you with a lot of information, that is not all, because the actions of the strategy have their peculiarities.

In the end, the results do not come immediately and the action plans must be adapted to each moment experienced by the company in its movements of digital expansion.

If you want to delve into the topics attached to Content Marketing, you will find a lot of information in these articles and free materials:

• Content Marketing Strategy in practice
• Content Marketing Encyclopedia
• SEO Guide 2.0
• Content Marketing for Results
• Content Marketing: first steps
• Fantastic People Generator

Well, I hope you liked this adventure because of the many possibilities there are to carry out a content strategy.

I say goodbye inviting you to discover the reasons that make Content Marketing the best option for your business. Enjoy it!