Measuring content performance: How to prove your content ROI

In modern B2B marketing, content creation and performance tracking can no longer be viewed separately. Measurement against key metrics should inform how you produce your next piece of collateral to give you and your business the best possible chance of measuring ROI and achieving your goals.

What is content marketing ROI?

Return on Investment (ROI) is all about measuring the bang you get for your buck. When it comes to content marketing, ROI tells you how much revenue your content generates compared to what you spent creating and promoting it.

Turtl content marketing research from 2023 found that 70% of very successful content marketers expect their budgets to increase in the next 12 months. In fact, 56% of marketers reported that their annual content marketing budget has increased over the last year, and 62% expect it to rise even further in the coming year.

With more money than ever being funneled into content marketing, understanding your ROI becomes really important. By calculating ROI, you can see which pieces of content are delivering results and which ones aren’t.

This insight allows you to refine your 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 use is challenging. Ultimately, marketing teams have an interest in metrics 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.

(Return – Investment / Investment) x 100 = ROI

In short, this calculates the percentage of revenue in comparison to investment in content marketing. 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.

Step by step guide to measuring your content marketing ROI

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 content creation, including salaries, freelancer fees, software subscriptions, and other overheads.
• Include advertising: Factor in the costs of promoting your content through paid channels such as social media ads, PPC campaigns, and sponsored content.
• Account for tools and technology: Include costs of content management systems, analytics tools, and any other technology used in content production and distribution.
• Sum up total investment: Add up all the identified costs to get the total investment in your content marketing efforts.

Step 2. Calculate revenue

• Track leads and conversions: Use trackable links, UTMs, and conversion tracking to attribute leads and sales to specific pieces of content.
• Monitor key metrics: Keep an eye on metrics such as MQLs (marketing qualified leads), SQLs (sales qualified leads), and actual sales 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 efforts.

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.

Step 4. Compare with industry benchmarks

• Research industry averages: Look up average ROI figures for your industry 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 tactics to replicate.

Step 5. Ensure your metrics are actionable

• Align with business goals: Choose metrics that align with your business objectives, whether it’s revenue, lead generation, or brand awareness.
• Evaluate metric relevance: Regularly assess whether your chosen metrics provide actionable insights and adjust as necessary.

Step 6. Utilize analytics tools

• Leverage technology: Use analytics platforms like Google Analytics or Turtl Analytics to gather detailed insights on content performance.
• 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: Use the data you’ve collected to make informed decisions about future content production and marketing strategies.
• Stay updated: Keep up with industry trends and continually refine your metrics and measurement techniques.

Average ROI in B2B content marketing

ROI is different for every company in every industry but knowing the average for your industry will help prove whether your ROI is on par with competitors.

According to research by FirstPageSage, the average ROI for B2B SaaS marketers is 702%, which, while not the highest number in the chart, is an incredible return on investment.

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 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

Consider if metrics are actionable

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 ROI receive the most focus.

But revenue is not always the most important metric in content marketing. If your end goal is more leads then consider how engagement fits into your average customer journey and how you can convert that into leads.

Increasing lead generation is one of the most popular metrics for demonstrating a marketing strategy’s success. Discover how Turtl helped Kantar boost its lead generation metrics and measure and report on key metrics to prove its content’s ROI.

Click to read Kantar Media + Turtl | Case Study

You should always consider your campaign or audience when choosing the right metrics. Whilst these can sometimes go hand in hand, brand campaigns don’t include metrics tied immediately to business revenue. For example, a document with lots of downloads may appear to be popular, but with this as the only metric, you’ve not got much insight.

Digital touchpoints provide far more data, leading to metrics that tell better stories about your content marketing.

Allianz GI used insights from every piece of marketing content they produced to build a truly comprehensive picture of their ICP.

Click to read Allianz GI + Turtl | Case Study

Focus on what is helping direct your marketing towards actions that nurture or convert leads. Choose KPIs that measure engagement, shares, and dwell time for evidence of warming leads.

Businesses often measure team goals using objectives and key results (OKRs) and key performance indicators (KPIs). These can be easily applied to your content marketing framework, giving teams specific goals and measurements to align with.

Not only do you want to ensure your content marketing strategy is hitting the mark – you want to track how each piece of content produced is performing.

Ever posted something on social media and caught yourself waiting for that little hit of dopamine from a like, a share, a comment? Seeing, matter-of-factly, that something you’ve crafted is actually being read or shared can be rewarding stuff. Knowing that it’s helping your business to bring in customers, even more so.

More and more businesses have clocked on to the importance of measuring the results specifically of creative output. Relying on intuition alone no longer cuts it.

To help you either get started or strategically improve, here’s some steps (including resources) to assessing your content’s success:

• Start with the theory behind measuring content performance
• Set content objectives to determine how to measure success so that you can identify what good performance looks like.
• While there’s no single metric that measures the success of your content, you need to align content metrics with your objectives.
• Analyze your data. Data is a fickle friend. Establish methodologies for applying your data in the most constructive way to see real value from it.

Turtl Analytics is designed to present your content’s most important metrics, such as read time, bounce rate, and insights into individual reader engagement, in highly accessible reports.

Turtl understands marketers’ needs. We know there is no one correct metric to use across all content marketing campaigns, but understanding which metrics are most important for your business is vastly more important than just collecting as much data as possible.

A focused selection of metrics will significantly help to achieve your desired outcome; whether that’s more leads, reads, engagement, or another metric more suited to your business. Don’t fluff out a report with unnecessary figures.

Using data to understand the ROI of your content marketing helps you make decisions about what content is working and where the business should invest. Using tools that show content views and not just downloads. Metrics such as reads vs readers, source and device type, and time spent reading, are more valuable signposts.