We recently put together an article diving headlong into the essential KPIs of B2B marketing. Well, here we are again, flexing our inbound marketing muscle, but this time we’re looking at your content's top lead generation KPIs.
“What’s the difference, and why should we care?” I hear you heckle.
Well, tracking the type and quality of content you share is a crucial indicator of whether your fans/followers/clients/customers are even halfway interested in what you’ve got to say. That’s a big step from the B2B marketing metrics your sales team and C-suite are monitoring.
Content KPIs tell you what’s happening on the ground floor. So be clever with those content KPIs; you’ll soon deliver stronger, more useful, interesting, better converting, and profitable content. It's precisely this type of content your followers want and enjoy reading—driving the figures your sales teams are so hungry for.
And for those hecklers at the back? Here are the answers to some of the questions you’re likely yelling out of the shadows.
Establishing lead generation KPI's is an essential part of digital marketing
Data-driven operation is growing faster than ever. AI and automation helped to move marketing into a fast lane of facts and figures instead of the hit-and-hope strategies that our ancestors had to rely on, way before the digital world evolved into the living, evolving creature it is today.
There’s no place for guesswork anymore. You know that. So let’s get to measuring everything we can; only then will we truly understand what users are searching for, reading, what they want, and how to leverage that into conversions.
Landing pages, eBooks, white papers, brochures, and reports
SEO is one mighty part of sales and marketing. Why? Because it works. How? Well, you hear it all the time: content is king.
The information on your website and in your apps is what your hopeful leads are searching for, so creating the content they want to read is the goal. We practice what we preach here at Foleon—we’re not sharing all of our knowledge and strategies out of love (but we do love each and every one of you), but because we need to hit our sales targets too!
Now, today’s lesson is how to measure your content data to see what’s working and what isn’t, what your users are reading, where they’re getting bored, and when and where they click the ‘want to know more?’ or ‘buy now’ buttons most often.
Data, KPIs, rates, and figures are how you’ll learn if your content is doing its job. And that’s down to every last landing page, blog article, eBook, white paper, brochure, report, and review. Now’s the time to measure each click and page turn of your content.
There’s a big gap in what KPI's people are measuring
No two businesses are created equal, so no two marketing strategies will be either. For example, lead generation and customer acquisition strategies will differ between B2B and B2C marketing, by their operation size and the type of product they sell.
What gets measured varies from organization to organization, usually depending on what delivers the best conversion rates and what it takes to keep them nice and high.
However, putting all your lead generation eggs in one basket isn’t smart—you know that, and so does marketing. Instead, exploring new avenues can uncover new successful strategies and better results.
Perhaps it’s time to fill a few gaps and see how they bump up the numbers.
There’s more to measure than traffic and conversions
Okay, marketing wants high traffic and more qualified leads, and they’ll keep hitting the refresh button, hoping to see those figures magically change until they wear their fingerprints off. Yet, as Einstein told us, “Insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
So, as eager marketers looking to mix things up, we’ll dive deeper into those ground-level metrics we spoke of earlier.
Far too often, we forget to measure our content
Your sales team might have forgotten about content as a lead-gen tool, but your marketing team won’t have. They know where the magic happens. So how can we squeeze more data from it and learn which elements are crucial to fine-tuning its performance across every type, page, and document we deliver?
Measuring your lead generation content
KPI 1 – Average # of pages they read
You’ve created a spectacular report full of relevant information—or so you think—but how do you know that your readers are reading all the detailed information you’ve put together? Or are they losing interest and giving up before they get to the ingenious information you’ve set in that second chapter?
Well, measuring the average number of pages your followers read gives you a clear indicator of how engaging it is. Do they read 2 or 3 pages of a 20-page document? Not good. Or do they read 15 plus? Much better.
Do you want to know how interested your readers are in your content? Measure it.
KPI 2 – Time spent reading
So, let’s look at another scenario. Your average page read count is over 75%. That’s pretty good. We might estimate that most readers are getting through the entire document, yet the average is being pulled down by the few who put off over the first few pages.
Having said that, if the time spent on each page is only a few seconds, what does that tell us? Do they like the pictures and infographics but can’t be bothered to read the body of copy that goes with them? That they’re flicking through, looking for something they never find?
There’s much to learn from how long readers spend on each page. Measure it.
KPI 3 – From which pages did they drop off?
There are plenty of reasons your readers leave a document. The kettle may have boiled, or it could be time for lunch. However, most of the time, we assume that it was the point they’d got bored and finally had enough. If we spot patterns for when readers drop off, it’s time to examine the content on that page and the possible causes.
If you can take those turn-offs out of the equation and keep them reading—that’s excellent.
That’s truly valuable data. Measure it.
KPI 4 – Which pages and topics do they find interesting?
Conversely, what search terms and topics deliver the most readers? Knowing precisely what they’re looking for allows you to become their one-stop expert on those topics.
Which parts of your yearly report, summer or winter brochure, or ‘how-to’ series are your biggest pulls? Measure it.
KPI 5 – What interactive elements do they like?
People love to play. Gamification is a big topic in marketing. Where it might not be a viable option for most of your strategies, a simple interactive element that gives users an excuse to click and play, making their experience more personal, is an option that’s been found to increase engagement figures.
But how do you know which of your interactive elements they interact with? Duh? Measure it.
KPI 6 – Which CTAs do they click?
Here at Foleon, we love a good CTA. It doesn’t have to be a big red button; even a simple link in the body of an article, report, or white paper tells us precisely what our reader wants to learn. When we spot a pattern about where visitors and readers are heading, that’s lead-gen gold. We know what they want, so we give them more to get them hooked.
Buttons, links, and every other CTA you can think of—measure it.
KPI 7 – What forms do they fill out?
Opt-in forms are one of the most exciting metrics for marketers as it means we’ve finally got a fish on the hook—email address secured, qualified lead generated, job done.
Where you position your forms helps you to uncover the information that makes your products irresistible. Gating content is another tool that helps us measure the value of our information.
And which forms work best for you? Free trial applications? Accessing restricted information? Product enquiries? Additional information requests? It’s all crucial data. Measure it.
Discover: B2B Lead Generation Strategies You Should Be Using in 2023
These KPIs don’t just help you measure lead generation but also improve your content
Each of our KPIs offers insights and information about your best and worst content. Put them all together, and you’ve got a strategy to improve your content on an ongoing basis. In addition, updating content will allow you to see if and how new iterations are working. And how will you know? Yes, of course, you’ll measure it.
Oh, snap. You can’t measure any of that with PDF
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PDFs leave you blind – You can measure how many downloads your document has had, but there’s no way of seeing what happens once your readers open up that first page
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You don’t know if they read it – Once downloaded, you can’t tell if they opened it. If you’ve incentivized your PDF brochure or eBook download with a voucher or other promotional offer, it might have gone straight into the trash.
- You can’t improve your content – Once you’ve built a PDF and hosted it, it’s out there until the next iteration, maybe a new season, product upgrade, or yearly report. You certainly can’t change the versions your readers have downloaded.
If only there were a format where you could measure everything that a PDF can’t; something that creates the best eBook, magazine, or brochure you could hope for…
Final thoughts – why not take Foleon docs for a test drive?
Of course, we were always heading to this. We believe how Foleon creates and delivers content is a marketer's dream. Not only can you measure all of the metrics we’ve discussed, but you can update the information on those pages whenever you like, or someone on your team can—oh, and they look fantastic.
Why wouldn’t you take our docs for a test drive? Intrigued? Take an interactive tour right now, or there’s a demo request CTA right up there at the top of the page that sees plenty of action. Want to know how we know? Yep. You got it. We measure it.
