MEASURING CONTENT PERFORMANCE: HOW TO PROVE YOUR CONTENT ROI

Content marketing ROI is the revenue your content generates compared to content creation and content distribution costs.

With more money than ever being funneled into content marketing across the industry - and more pressure than ever to drive revenue through content - understanding your ROI becomes really important. If you calculate content marketing ROI, you can see which pieces of content are enticing potential customers and delighting existing ones – and which ones aren’t.

This insight allows you to refine your content marketing strategy, ensuring that your increased budget is spent wisely and effectively. Knowing your content marketing ROI is key to staying ahead and achieving your business goals.

It’s easy to say content marketing needs to be measured – knowing which metrics to measure is challenging. Ultimately, marketing teams have an interest in content key performance indicators that directly affect the business, and specifically how they help the business grow.

Content marketing ROI formula

While there are many variables to include when figuring out your ROI, there is a simple formula that can be used to calculate it.

Remember, your investment isn’t just what was spent on a single content piece but includes the advertising, labor, and any other financial expenditure that goes into that content.

Now that we know the formula and basics, we can look at each step in measuring your ROI.

Step 1. Calculate spend

• Identify costs: List all expenses related to creating content, including salaries, freelancer fees, software subscriptions, and other overheads.

• Include advertising: Factor in the costs of promoting your content through paid channels such as ads on social media platforms, PPC campaigns, and paid social media posts.

• Account for tools and technology: Include costs of content management systems, analytics tools, and any other technology used in content production and distribution. Free tool subscriptions can be excluded here.

• Sum up total investment: Add up all the identified costs to get the total investment of your content marketing program.

Step 2. Calculate revenue

• Track leads and conversions: Use trackable links, UTMs, and conversion events to attribute organic traffic, leads, and sales revenue to specific pieces of content.

• Monitor key metrics: Keep an eye on metrics such as MQLs (marketing qualified leads), SQLs (sales qualified leads), actual sales and other metrics that can be attributed to your content.

• Communicate with sales: Work closely with your sales team to understand the lead journey and ensure accurate revenue attribution from content marketing campaigns.

Step 3. Use the ROI formula

• Calculate ROI: Subtract the total investment from the total revenue generated by your content. Divide the result by the total investment, then multiply by 100 to get the ROI percentage.
• Check out the green box above for a visual formula breakdown.
  
  

Step 4. Compare with industry benchmarks

• Research industry averages: Look up average ROI figures from sources like the Content Marketing Institute to benchmark your performance.

• Adjust strategies accordingly: If your ROI is below industry average, identify areas for improvement in your content strategy. If above average, analyze successful content marketing campaigns to replicate.

Step 5. Ensure your metrics are actionable

• Align with business goals: Choose metrics that align with your business objectives, whether it’s to increase brand awareness, lead generation, or revenue.

• Evaluate metric relevance: Whether it's conversion rates, page value, or website traffic, regularly assess whether your chosen metrics provide valuable insights and adjust as necessary. 

Step 6. Utilize analytics tools

• Leverage technology: For keyword planning and visibility, Google Keyword Planner can give you a steer on potentially high-ROI topics. Use analytics platforms like Google Analytics or Turtl Analytics to gather detailed insights on content performance and user behavior. 

• Report findings: Create accessible reports that highlight important metrics such as read time, bounce rate, and individual reader engagement.

Step 7. Continuously optimize

• Iterate based on data: Revisit your existing content regularly to refresh opportunities and identify underperforming assets. Use the data you’ve collected to make informed decisions about future content production and marketing campaigns. 

• Stay updated: Keep up with industry trends, like search engine optimiation changes, and continually refine your metrics and measurement techniques. 

Want evidence of the ROI of content marketing? Measuring content performance should be your first port of call. Performance metrics like social media engagement, engagement rates, lead generation, and revenue influenced paint a clear picture of the return on investment. If your content’s getting a lot of engagement and leads are through the roof, you know something’s working.

With performance data under your belt, you’ll refine strategies for better ROI and minimize the risk of a content misstep. Cold, hard proof of content performance also gives higher-ups confidence their investment is well spent – making budgets, dream projects, and career growth much easier to come by.

So, what counts?

In truth, there are hundreds of metrics that you can measure – but just as too many choices can leave consumers confused and deflated, copious amounts of data can hamper even the most enthusiastic content marketers.

Focusing your content marketing metrics around more strategic business outcomes – the types that the rest of your business can really understand, get behind, and support, is a proven method. In practice, this can take the form of a two-tiered metric measurement system, where both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ metrics are monitored and reported.

Internal ROI metrics

Shared only among the marketing team, these are regular indicators of audience engagement on which to base valuable iteration.

• Click Through Rates (the ratio of clicks per content viewer)

• Engagement Rate (total interactions per content viewer)

• Session Length (how long content is viewed for)

External ROI metrics

Reported back to all relevant departments besides marketing. Typically, these take longer to develop into metrics that are genuinely fit to report. Ultimately they carry more weight in the context of B2B content marketing ROI and overall strategic business objectives.

• Volume of Leads

• Leads to Revenue

• Cost Per Lead

Take time to consider which metrics are right for your business and whether they help you to achieve your goal as a marketer, and prove your value to the wider business. For many the bottom line is the most important thing, meaning the metrics that demonstrate contributions to increases in revenue and overall return on investment ROI receive the most focus.

To generate leads is one of marketers' main responsibilities – which makes sense why lead gen rates are one the most popular metrics for demonstrating a marketing strategy’s success. Discover how Turtl helped Redstor boost MQLs by 567% and measure and report on key metrics to prove content ROI.

From how it builds customer loyalty through high quality content to how it drives high quality leads into the marketing funnel, the value of content marketing can't be overstated.

But whether you’re chasing organic search growth, paid traffic, improved keyword rankings, or simply creating a standout blog post that resonates with your target audience, it's crucial to have metrics to measure content marketing success.

Proving content ROI isn’t just about crunching numbers - it’s about showing how your content drives growth, fuels pipeline, and impacts the bottom line. When you connect your efforts to how much revenue comes back, you don’t just justify your budget; you secure your seat at the strategy table.

With Turtl, you can track, measure, and optimize your content ROI effortlessly. See what’s working, refine what isn’t, and deliver results that make an impact.