STEP 1:
Set content objectives

From business goals to content goals

Where does your content fit into the bigger picture?

The first step in determining how to measure the success of your content is identifying what success looks like

To measure content success, you need to know what that success looks like – to your business, your team and yourself. This is fundamentally the 'why' of every piece of content.

If your business is mature enough in its content practices to have a documented content strategy, this should outline the objectives you need to focus on. Every piece of content should connect back to one of them.

If you don't have a documented strategy, you'll need to do more of the groundwork.

No two marketers’ objectives are exactly alike. What matters is aligning against business goals, not all the abstract things you can measure.

Rebecca Lieb, content strategy specialist

These are the kinds of questions you need to answer:

What is your business trying to achieve over the next year or two?
Which of these objectives is your division responsible for?
How will you know when those objectives are achieved?
What needs to change/happen to get there?
How will you know when each of those things is occurring?

For example:

1. What is your business trying to achieve over the next year or two?

The email automation company Laura works for is trying to exponentially grow its customer base in the SME market, improve customer retention among its US customers and achieve more diversity in its senior team.

2. Which of these objectives is your division responsible for?

Laura's team has been set the objective of growing the company's share of the SME market.

3. How will you know when those objectives are achieved?

The business wants a 100% increase in SME customers over the next 12 months, and 200% the year after that.

4. What needs to change/happen to get there?

To get there, Laura's division needs to increase awareness of its software in the SME community, keep the SME audience interested in the brand and product and ultimately increase the number of SMEs who become customers.

5. How will you know when each of those things is occurring?

More SME visitors viewing and returning to the website, engaging with Laura's content, trialing the product and purchasing a plan.

To achieve these goals, different content is needed for the different stages of the audience's buyer journey.

For Laura, this means, creating content that will grab the attention of SME marketers, content that will keep them coming back for more, and content that persuades them to submit their card details.

Larua's content needs to cater to the entire and pretty complex B2B buyer journey of the SME decision-maker.

Source: Forrester