You’ve invested time and money either producing your own content or paying someone else to produce content for you. On the one hand you know it's important because marketing people like me keep telling you it is. But the truth of it is, you’re not convinced that it actually generates sales or leads.
Having spent much of my career producing content for my business and for other businesses, I have similarly had those doubts. It has felt at times like I was producing content and throwing it out into the ether with no feedback, response or anything like an enquiry. So why bother? Is content marketing really worthwhile?
It’s expensive to deliver
The ugly truth about content marketing, whether that is doing email marketing, blogging, ebooks or videos, is it all takes so much flipping time. That’s the inescapable truth. And time is money. So it is expensive, but the real question is, “Is it worth that time and expense?”
Is it worth it? Yes it is!
Now, you might not be surprised to hear me say that. It is a huge part of my job. However, there is one vital tool you may be missing in your content marketing…
Tracking your content
In the same way that you can track visitors to your website, see how long they spend on your website and your top performing pages, you can also track your content. As you know, using tools such as MailChimp you can see how many of your emails have been opened and the number of people who have clicked on the links in your email.
What you can’t see is who they are. That’s the missing piece that, in order for you to track the value of your content, you have to be able to see.
Using a tool like HubSpot, you can track who and which companies visit your website, not just the number of people who visit.
In our business, I can see if the same people open the emails I send them, if they read the blogs I produce and, importantly, which blogs they read. By seeing who is consuming my content, I can see who is thinking about their marketing. Who is looking for a solution. Who is looking to develop their marketing. Suddenly, I have a new audience of leads who, without ever having contacted me, have clearly indicated they are looking for a marketing solution. That’s where my conversation starts with them.
The Answer
Content marketing is absolutely worth your time and effort. For many companies and particularly B2B service companies, it’s often your only route to generating more leads. But the key is in the tracking.
The fact is, saying content marketing doesn’t work for your business is something you cannot prove without tracking. With good content marketing you can absolutely generate leads and with money invested in marketing your content, you can drive leads.
Content Marketing Tip 101: Track it at an individual level.
