Pageviews and clicks are good metrics to know about but with the overwhelming amount of information available online, it’s more important to focus on how much value your prospects ascribe to your marketing content.
There’s a lot of talk about measures and metrics. I thought I’d share a few ways that I’ve found it useful to interpret prospect response. We’ve really got to start looking beyond traditional metrics if we want insights that help us build better relationships with our prospects.
Here are 7 factors to consider using to do just that:
- Time – Are prospects viewing one article for 5 seconds or spending the time necessary to read the entire piece? Do you even know how much time it takes to read the piece on average? Do your prospects stay for the entire Webinar or leave after the first 15 minutes?
- Depth – Do prospects read one page and leave your website, or do they tend to click on links to related information and travel more deeply within the site to explore that content more fully? Can you discern patterns that indicate where they are in their buying process? Viewing one content asset won’t verify that. Viewing multiple related pieces will help you do so and help you create relevant ways to extend the dialogue.
- Storyline – Is it evident that prospects follow a directed path through your content or do they click around aimlessly on unrelated pages without settling on any of them long enough to learn anything? Are they intrigued enough to ask questions at the end of your webinar? Even better, do they sign up for another webinar on a related subject?
- Interaction – In addition to how many registrants your webinars get, measure the difference between unique attendees and total attendees—those who attended plus those who viewed the recorded version. A higher number of total attendees over time can be an indication that your content is considered important enough to revisit and view again, or that it’s been passed along and shared with others—hopefully those involved in the buying decision. Even better, how many questions or chats were posted during and post-event?
- Social – How many of your prospects and customers are sharing your Webinars, white papers and other content with their social networks via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or mentions in their blog posts? How many establish a dialogue with you, share something you share, follow you or subscribe to your RSS feeds?
- Opt In – What percentage of prospects who visit your landing pages are opting in for your gated offers? This includes Webinar registrations, newsletter subscriptions, online demos and other content offers. Opt in is permission and keeping it is directly related to their assessment of your credibility based on the value they’ve assigned to your marketing content. If this diminishes, they’ll unsubscribe or relegate your communications to junk mail.
- Referrals – Are your prospects only visiting your website when prompted by an email? Or are they coming to you via social media, search returns or peer recommendations or on their own? Being findable is the new “black” for marketing. The more accessible your content is—regardless of where your prospects happen to encounter it online—the higher it’s value. And this goes beyond removing forms to how much effort it takes to engage with it. How easy is it for them to understand and how quickly is that made clear?
All content is not equal in relevance or usefulness to your prospects. The overwhelming amount of content available online generates a lot of clutter and noise that your prospects must sort through to find useful information that addresses their needs. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of surface-skimming, repetitive content out there that adds nothing to the dialogue. The uniqueness of the ideas you share counts.
Their assessment of your content’s value is expressed through the combination of the factors shown above. Content perceived as valuable delivers immediate takeaways that leave lasting impressions, helping to motivate a higher willingness to trade their attention for your content whenever they see it.
