Measuring the performance of your content marketing strategy is a challenge that baffles many marketers. Find out how you can set yourself by success by creating a content marketing report. (Presentation from WordCamp London 2017)

1. Showing ROI: How to Create a Content
Marketing Report
WordCamp London 2017
Ilia Markov
www.markovunchained.com
@nochainmarkov

2. Download these slides:
http://nocha.in/wcldn17

3. Why does content ROI matter?

4. Every uncool content marketer ever
Oh, I’m mostly a blogger…

5. What gets measured, gets managed
Peter Drucker (maybe)

6. Playbill
• Act 1: Content is part of your business strategy
• Act 2: How to set up a report
• Act 3: How to calculate ROI

7. • Content marketer with
strong focus on SaaS
companies
• Curator of Content
Marketing Weekly
newsletter
• Saints fan, have traveled
to Hull, Swansea, and
Southampton
A bit about myself…

8. Act 1:
Content is part of your business
strategy

9. Business Objectives
Marketing Objectives
Marketing Strategy
Content Objectives
Content Strategy
Content Tactics
What’s the bigger picture?

10. What are your goals with content?
• NOT “Traffic” → It could be a KPI (next slide)
• Do you have someone doing Sales? → It could be
leads
• Are you selling a digital product (SaaS)? → Trials
started

11. Tie your KPI framework with the goals
• KPI = Key Performance Indicator
• What metric shows progress on your goals?
• Some popular options include:
• Traffic
• Shares & Comments
• Leads generated
• Conversions

12. Act 2:
Set up your content report

13. What tools to use
• Google Analytics → straightforward (sort of)
• Woopra → detailed analytics, free plan
• Google Search Console → for measuring SEO
• Google Sheets + Analytics Add-on → for the
actual report

14. Create a funnel
Traffic
Leads
Prospects
Customers
Sessions, Unique visitors,
New vs. Returning
Emails collected (Goal conversions)
Pricing page visited, Trials started
Sales (Goal conversions)

15. Woopra works great for funnels

16. Your report could be a custom dashboard

17. Or built from scratch by pulling data

18. Some things you should consider
• Attribution → consider using UTM links
• Set up goals in Google Analytics / Woopra
• How to measure to avoid data issues (spikes, etc.)

19. UTM links allow you to get very detailed

20. Setting up goals in Google Analytics

23. Think about how you look at data

25. Act 3:
How to Calculate ROI

26. You need to know two numbers
• CAC: Cost of Acquiring a Customer
• LTV: Average Customer Lifetime Value

27. How to find out your CAC
• In February you generated 4 clients and spent £1200 on
content:
• Writing: £800 (4 posts x £200 each)
• Editing: £300 (10 hours x £30)
• Tools (hosting, keyword research, email provider, lead
gen): £100
• => Your CAC of content is £1200 / 4 = £300
• But this is quite simplified…

28. Calculating LTV is similar
• In reality, it’s the average deal size, but with
caveats…
• If you’re selling a subscription-based product (e.g.
SaaS, productized consulting, etc.), => average
[monthly/annual] rate x average time someone’s
a customer
• If you’re freelancing (e.g. building websites for
clients) => figure out your average deal size

29. Putting CAC and LTV together
LTV < CAC
Obviously not good…

30. Putting CAC and LTV together
LTV > CAC
Slightly better, but…

31. Putting CAC and LTV together
£301 > £300
…is it enough?

32. A good measure of comparison
LTV ≥ 3x CAC

33. For more on the topic:
• Content Marketing ROI: How We Measure
Success at Hubstaff

34. nocha.in/content-marketing-weekly
Before I finish…

35. Thank you!
@nochainmarkov
hello@markovunchained.com
http://nocha.in/wcldn17
It’s time for your questions…