Content marketing analytics: what you should really be doing

Content Marketing Analytics
What you should really be doing…
and probably aren’t
@dSmulevich

I can’t think of any other
industry where its top
professionals have
repeated the same thing…
OVER AND OVER...

And pretty much everyone
out there listened to them…

And pretty much everyone
out there listened to them…
… well, sort of.

A KPI is a metric used to
determine how well you are
performing against your
business objectives.

Number of
new leads
per month
Effective
Marketing
Build a
customer
database
200 per
month
Number of
new leads
per month
by channel

New leads from
Affiliate
programs

And they are also
misleading: they think in
terms of interactive
engagement hits,
do you?
If you don’t know what this means, start
from here: bit.ly/1xF11QO

69% of marketers use
pageviews as a key metric,
forgetting about…
Contently, The State of Content Marketing Measurement
(2014)

And
AJAX
VIDEOS
HOVERS
SCROLLING
CLICKS
TABBED BROWSING
and so on.

Start measuring the
attention time your content
receives, from mouse
movements to video plays,
looking at what browser tab
was opened etc.

Last February, Upworthy
moved from making decisions
based on pageviews to using
attention minutes.
Sample code: bit.ly/1F2JLUG

Last February, Upworthy
moved from making decisions
based on pageviews to using
attention minutes.
And two months later they
were able to charge brands for
branded content.

Or start with free plugins for:
Screen time (bit.ly/11wn6Tm)
Active time (bit.ly/1F2KXHp)
Scroll depth (bit.ly/1eH0S1r)
By @robflaherty

External
KPIs Board
Anything that you can correlate with revenues, conversions, cost
(£)
PIs Marketers
Metrics that help you get to your KPI targets (Content
performance: task completion rate, attention time)
Internal
Flags Marketers + Website managers
To spot issues early (Adjusted bounce rate, site speed)

The goal of our work is to
understand the triggers
behind new and existing
customers’ content
consumption and buying
behaviour…

…so we can plot the best
course of action to drive
demonstrable
improvements in revenue.

Three distinct phases
1.Data audit
2.Framework development
3.Ongoing reporting and
analysis

Understanding what structures
you/the client has in place, and
how the business is using the
data at its disposal, so that we
can devise a data collection and
reporting strategy that supports
our content marketing efforts.

1. Sources attribution
We must attribute prospects to their
acquisition source or channel. We can’t
work out where our best prospects are if
we don’t know the source (PPC, list
purchase).

2. Sales funnel definition

We need to define the sales funnel stages by
establishing the demographic and
behavioural measures as prospects move
down the funnel.

3. Data integration/data warehousing

A data warehouse is just a big database that
pulls data from lots of different sources.
When this data is put together, you can do
an all-round user analysis, e.g. looking at
online behaviour and offline conversion. Or
tie long-term purchase history to online
behaviour.

4. Conversion attribution

We should AT LEAST create an attribution
model to determine credit for content and
sales conversions. It’s a mistake to attribute
conversion to a single action: the reality is
usually a complex mix of sales path
interactions.
The attribution model should be applied to
evaluate content promotion campaigns.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
CONVERSION PATH LENGTH
SEO PPC EMAIL DIRECT
8
9
10
10+

However, this is only the tip of the
iceberg.

Cross-channel attribution:
“The practice of using advanced statistical
approaches to allocate proportional credit to
marketing communications and media activity
across all channels, which ultimately leads to the
desired customer action.”
The Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Attribution Providers, Q4
2014

5. Conversion optimisation

If we know where opportunities fall out, we
can take positive actions: messaging, copy,
calls-to-action, value propositions, design,
and even entire campaigns can be optimized
to overcome any issues.

Don’t forget to test
your assumptions

6. Prospects segmentation

You should segment your prospects, so that
you can boost conversion rates with better
content and increase sales interest with
stronger problem focus.

7. Post-purchase funnel

Can we separate online communications
strategies, campaigns and messages for
repeat sales to the existing customer base?

Thanks to the genial @martoozie for
this!

8. Reporting

8. Reporting
The right level of reporting should enable
different stakeholders (marketers,
salespeople etc.) to receive only the
information they need, in a way that’s as
simple and clear as possible, to take
informed decisions.
Automate reporting whenever possible.

Framework development
=
Data collection strategy

Start from the business
requirements, talk to the
stakeholders involved and
then visualise the
dimensions/metrics that
you aim to get

Now you’re ready to
spec it out!
1.Plan for the mid-long term
2.Don’t overcomplicate things
3.Think of constraints:
• Budget
• Technology
• Resources

AAAAA
Always
Add
Analysis
And
Action

In-depth analysis should be
carried out on a regular basis:
results should be brought into
quarterly meetings with the
relevant stakeholders, upon
internal sharing first with the
(agency) team.

Outcome:
integrated, personalised,
dynamic dashboards and
reports, on which we can
easily add our analysis.

Become best friends with
these bad boys…
APIs Webhooks

Your bible: GA reference
guide

Your playground:
the query explorer
bit.ly/XeNbVy

Three ways to extract data
using the API:
Add-ons (Supermetrics rocks!)
Custom functions
Programmatically (build a PHP app)
Easy
Hard

You can also use the
management API to import
data into GA!
Data on: users, campaigns, content,
products, refunds, cost
bit.ly/1nTIkEl

Webhooks let you send data
to Google Analytics when
something special in another
platform happens, e.g. you
won that contract with the
client!

GA Measurement Protocol: bit.ly/N3z7sa

How do I link GA users
with CRM entries?
•Extract client id from GA cookie
•Use your CRM API to push the data through
along with the CRM id
•Call webhooks as users perform set actions

Now all your data is
integrated, you can visualise
data the way you/your
client/your board needs!
Use free visualisations APIs:
•Google Analytics Embed API
•Google Charts

OUR BIG CHALLENGE
Collection Reporting Analysis
HIGH
MEDIUM
LOW

WHAT OUR CLIENTS WILL EXPECT
HIGH
MEDIUM
LOW

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
HIGH
MEDIUM
LOW

Iterative analytics
implementations:
“As you continually improve your site and its
features, your implementation must evolve
as well in order to provide you with the data
you need.”
@RudiShumpert

Content marketing analytics: what you should really be doing

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