What is Content Marketing?
“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” – Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and Junta42; author of “Get Content Get Customers.”
Companies use content marketing to build awareness, establish thought leadership, generate leads and guide prospects through the buying cycle. This content, in the form of blog posts, eBooks, videos and more, is designed to offer unique insight and resources to audiences in hopes they will share it online, connect to learn more about a topic, and think of you first when it comes time to purchase.
Unfortunately, it is often difficult to attach an ROI to content marketing, largely due to the number of content interactions that may take place away from your site. Such is the case, for example, with downloadable content, webinars, and some online videos.
However tracking content ROI is not impossible. Following are three ways marketers can better track content-driven lead conversions using both web analytics and call tracking solutions.
1. Drive Visitors to Landing Pages
Each piece of content you develop should include a call to action. Consider having the call to action drive audiences to a specific landing page. Here you may choose to include additional resource links, related content articles, and links to connect on social media.
You’ll also want to include a web form and phone number for visitors to contact you. Configure your web analytics to register any web form submission as a new lead, and set up call tracking systems to associate a unique number to a visitor who landed on the page. Using a cookie in their browsers, the visitor is shown the same number throughout the site, helping you to tie any call conversions back to the content piece, no matter what pages they navigate to.
2. Include Call Tracking Numbers in Downloadable Content
There may be an opportunity directly within your downloadable content to give readers the option to call to speak with an expert, or learn more about a specific topic.
Publish unique call tracking numbers within each new piece of content, and track the number of calls you receive over time. You can then use this information to evaluate which content format and topics are more likely to generate leads, as well as what type of lead quality you can expect from each.
3. Online Videos and Webinars
Similarly, there are opportunities to add call-to-action information in online videos and webinars.
Online Videos — Using a basic video-editing program, you can quickly add graphics and text to any video. Many marketers use the end of the video as an opportunity to offer viewers details on how to get in touch should they need additional information. This is the ideal location for a unique call tracking number.
Online Webinars — Webinar presenters typically offer ways for attendees to contact them with additional questions. Not only can call tracking record the number of incoming calls that resulted from the webinar, but it can record the call itself. Presenters can then go back and review the calls to understand if something wasn’t clear enough in the presentation and needed to be explained further.
We’re curious to hear how content marketers are tracking conversions, both through web analytics and call tracking services. Please share your examples in the comments below.
Tags: Call Tracking, content marketing, conversion tracking, inbound marketing
