Jazz Jones is anxious to get moving forward with the implementation of her content marketing strategy. She is, after all, eager to begin building her coaching business. But she has just a few more steps before she’s ready to go. The next one, Step 5, is critical and all about keeping the end in mind.

Step 5: Determining how you will measure results (metrics)

At the outset of the planning process, we worked with Jones to clarify her goals and objectives. These become the benchmark against which to measure progress. If we said, for instance, that we wanted to generate 30 leads per quarter, we need to put metrics in place to determine whether we actually do this. These metrics might be both process-based and outcome-based. Here’s the difference:

• Process measures give us some early, or leading, indication that we will be able to achieve our objective. For instance, many content marketers use process measures such as number of visits to the website, number of inquiries, and number of white paper requests. These metrics can be useful, but, ultimately, what we are most interested in are outcome measures.

• Outcome measures are the real bottom-line results we achieve. In this case, our outcome measure is new coaching clients.

It’s critically important that content marketers analyze the data they gather to make changes to their strategies. Avoid the tendency, cautions Ashley Orndorff, director of marketing for Visual Impact Group, an advertising agency in York, Pa., “to get attached and stuck in box of what you have been doing. Let the data speak for itself. If you are collecting and analyzing results accurately, your audience will tell you all you need to know. A lot of your strategy will be tweaked as you go and collect data.”

Read the Entire Series

6 Steps and 6 Days to an Effective Content Strategy

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

(This piece originally appeared in EContent.)

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Tags: content management, content marketing, content strategy, marketing strategically, strategic communications, strategic marketing

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