Data-Driven Content Marketing That Delivers Results

By Alan Edgett, Gig Agency - An analogy for me is that the internet is like a river. These are the consumers, small businesses, or B2B participants, etc. They're just flowing constantly in a river. And what content marketers are doing is fishing on that river. Some clever companies have built a really nice dock (like Google), and then they rent it to you. You can fish off their dock, and that's good for them. Sometimes it's good for us too, but we all want to have our own fishing places on the river. There are many ways to fish on the river. Content is the bait that we use to allow people to experience our brand. The way I view content is multifaceted, and I think it's constantly changing. It's the one thing that's wonderful about the internet. We didn't use to have UGC from staring straight at a camera, and now we have TikTok and influencers. Now there's a new way to express content from a brand's perspective. If you think about content strategy in this way, it's not just articles, PR, blogs, or videos. It's also every one of your taglines, hashtags, comments, reviews, testimonials, etc. Content is multifaceted and always changing. And, of course, the KPIs around content are multifaceted and change depending on certain aspects of your business.

Which data metrics matter?

If you're a B2B or B2C company, some of the metrics that you might care about will change. So, it can get very complicated. Think about the river I mentioned and the large dock owners like Google, Facebook, etc.; they're using a tremendous amount of machine learning and algorithms to determine which content they elevate, amplify, promote, or even allow their users to see. Like the old cliche, you don't want to bring a knife to a gunfight. Understanding your KPIs and bringing to bear tools (whether an AI system like Rellify or an integrated analytics platform) so that you have all the data points you need is absolutely critical.

Key KPIs to consider

I wanted to throw out a comprehensive list to get you thinking about other KPIs:

  • Time Spent (on Website/Blog Articles, etc.)
  • Bounce Rate
  • Scroll / Completion Rate
  • Click-Through Rate
  • Page Value / Influence
  • Conversion Rate
  • Download / Engagement / Email Subscribers
  • Page rank / SEO Value (Inbound Links)
  • Shareability / Comments
  • 3 Second Video View - Try to understand the drop-off from the 3-second mark to the 25% mark to the 50% mark.

These are critical pieces of information to funnel back to your content creators. This way, they'll write more compelling opening lines and make their videos more engaging in that first three seconds. You're probably very familiar with page rank, SEO, the number of backlinks, etc. These are all important KPIs in certain situations. However, you might find that you're not ranking well on particular keyword terms that you know you should be or that your competitors are. You may want to look at data and generate content specifically for this purpose. We do a lot of work with our clients around content generation. We often find the content folks have their own preconceived notions of what makes good, compelling content. Either they're writing, or they're videoing, sometimes coming in from a performance perspective. If they don't go beyond the 3-second mark, it doesn't matter how good the video is. You've got to get the consumer or whoever it is watching locked in. Just changing the openings, or even the display screen on a video before viewing is super important.

How do I create data-driven content marketing?

You should consider several metrics also on social channels. Sometimes B2B clients don't always consider how blogging or social posting is interacted with as a metric. They're very more familiar with their traffic KPIs on their website. Sometimes the social teams are disconnected, or they don't necessarily get that data or that feedback. Please don't ignore the number of people that like, comment, share your content, etc.; this can be a pretty awesome KPI to track. There is a lot you can push into the data layer when an individual interacts with the website. You can send that information using events to all sorts of things: Facebook, Google Analytics, CRM systems, or other tracking systems. There is a rich set of information that's very relevant to content marketers. I find there's sometimes a little bit of a disconnect between the analytics groups and the content marketers themselves.

Marketing tools

If you use some marketing campaign automation engines, whether it's Marketo or HubSpot, Salesforce, etc., you get unique insight as well. AB testing tools, Multivariate tools, or heat map tools are all useful as well. I think it's absolutely critical that you A) get knowledge yourself and B) loop in tools (such as rellify) that help you fight the fight with machine learning, among the many things that you can do with the good data points coming back up to you. As I mentioned, identifying content topics that are resonating with specific audiences, specific channels, and in real-time are three critical and different aspects of judging content. What do I mean by a specific audience? We all have multiple buyer personas that we are targeting. Within those buyer personas, you might have slightly different use cases. So, in most cases, acquisition marketing has specific business goals or use cases in mind when it's creating an advertisement or a blog article. Different use cases and different personas will receive content differently. You should try to pass your audience variables through your analytics tools so that you can then judge how your audiences are interacting with the content (because they're going to interact with content differently).

Different marketing channels

Different channels behave differently - I'll bring up TikTok again. It's vastly different in the way it was built and the way the consumers are interacting with it. The expectation of the nature of the content changes based on the channel. If they're on YouTube, they're expecting longer-form content. If they're on Instagram and they're watching a story, they're not. On LinkedIn, perhaps, they're a little more interested in reading. Then over on Facebook, video works quite well. The nature of the content needs to change when audience interaction with that content is going to change.

Use data to enhance your content strategy

If you're searching for ways you can incorporate data into your content strategy, a content performance platform like rellify can enhance those efforts.

It's the digital solution that enables you to formulate web content with maximum web relevance for your target audience. We are focused on leveraging AI for the purposes of improving relevance. The idea is to leverage AI and machine learning to apply practical insights to create informative, useful, helpful content. This will ultimately put you in a great position with your target customers. We focus on visibility first and foremost. We're applying an innovative AI model, and really, it's all about relevance at the end of the day.

Reach out to one of our content specialists to learn more. And if you want additional insights on how data can improve your content marketing, be sure to check out Alan and the Gig Agency.

About the author

Alan Edgett is the founder and CEO of The Gig Agency. He has over 20 years of experience in online advertising, marketing, and digital strategy. He is a leading expert in data analytics, especially around direct response and performance marketing. He’s the former CMO of high-growth B2B and SAAS direct-to-consumer startups. This includes Cove Homes, where he built an innovative real estate lead generation marketplace supported by over $250 million in private equity funding. Prior to that, Alan led digital marketing strategy and innovation for Experian’s ConsumerDirect Division. Here he was named Global Innovation Innovator of the Year in 2010. He holds an MBA from USC’s Marshall School of Business, which happens to be where I first met Alan. In addition, he has a BA from Arizona and served in the US Air Force. Here’s what he has to say about data-driven content marketing.