Measuring online performance is a key part of any content marketing campaign or long-term strategy. A plethora of performance information is freely available through Google Analytics – but when presented with a screenful of stats, where should you begin? And which areas can help you to draw the most meaningful insights about the impactfulness of your content?
What can Google Analytics tell content marketers?
All Google Analytics stats offer interesting insights into how your content is being consumed, who by and how frequently. If you own the website, or if your client can grant you access to their Google Analytics dashboard (even if it’s a stripped-back version), you’ll be able to learn and measure a lot.
For example, getting an idea of where users are in the world, which device they’re accessing the site on, their gender and age bracket* all help to build a stronger picture of your audience. This might help you to plan your next piece of content, or it might encourage you to be bold and pitch a campaign to appeal to an audience group that’s currently underrepresented, who you know your client is dying to speak to.
Similarly, looking at the makeup of your site’s traffic sources can help you identify growth areas. Do you see a big spike when an email newsletter is sent? Would more SEO-focused content bolster your traffic coming from organic search? If so, what are the most popular topics on the site currently, and where are there gaps to be targeted?
Google Analytics and KPIs
The stats that you monitor most closely and regularly are those relating to your campaign’s KPIs. It may be that you need to increase visibility, in which case you’ll be measuring the unique page views and total users over a key period. By comparing a similar period (the previous year or quarter, say), you’ll easily be able to see the difference in traffic.
Engagement is key, so your KPIs may be around achieving a high average time on page, pages per session or conversion rate, therefore showing that the traffic you’re getting is of a high value to your client. To make performance against your KPI targets easier to track regularly, you can use Google Analytics’ Goals function to set and measure your performance against a target.
Dig, dig, and dig some more
So you’ve got numbers coming out of your ears, but what should you do with them? As mentioned, a great starting point for making sense of the numbers is comparing them against some previous stats. If your content went live in May and was promoted over the course of the month, and was the main content marketing activity on the website that month, then compare site performance in May versus April. If the values have increased, it’s reasonable to conclude that your content has affected that increase!
However, being able to probe your results will stand you in good stead for rigorous questioning by budget holders. Could the increase be due to other factors, such as a seasonal spike? Compare your results to the same period last year to see if there were any similar patterns. Did anything else happen on the site – a UX update, or updates to pages you didn’t create – that could have impacted its performance? Analyse which pages of the site gained the most traffic, and had the highest engagement rates. If your content saw the strongest performance, and the user journeys show people are eager for more from you, then you’ve got great evidence of your success.
Furthermore, digging into the stats a little more should give you a good steer for content ideas that are likely to be successful. Are there any trends in terms of the topics covered, or the way the content is formatted? Why might those pieces have been more popular with your brand’s particular audience? Would you recommend following up with more content along similar lines, or using a popular format to explore a slightly different topic? Look at where your audience is coming from and going to. Have you made gains in the proportion of users coming from organic search, for example? Why could that be – did you make a conscious effort to target key search terms with your copy? Drawing attention to trends as they emerge will help you to react to them quicker and better, which ultimately means you’ll better serve your audience.
Look for gaps and next steps
While it’s great to be able to pat ourselves on the back, it would be naïve to only look for the positives. If your content is performing well, then how can you build on that success? Should you be setting more ambitious targets for the next campaign?
Ask yourself what didn’t go so well. When you were digging into the data, did you find any particular pages that didn’t perform as well as you’d hoped? Look at these pages closely – could the headline or article structure have worked harder? Was it left out of the email newsletter? Did a rival brand execute a similar idea more successfully, or pip you to the post with a piece of timely content you wished you’d thought of?
Being honest with yourself about room for improvement is healthy. Paired with your trends analysis, identifying next steps gives you plenty of ideas that you can use to pitch for more work, starting the whole cycle of ambitious target setting and rigorous monitoring again!
By Ella Taylor, Deputy Editor at Future Fusion
* Demographic information may be derived from the user’s Google or social media profile, or inferred from other data such as other sites the user has visited, so may not represent the overall composition of your traffic.
I work for Future Fusion, the content marketing arm of Future PLC. We are experts at building communities around people’s passions and in doing so positioning brands at the heart of incredible content that drives transformative results.
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