Cracking the code of content marketing effectiveness

With a plethora of platforms, tools, agencies and analytics companies dotting the world of marketing, most of the times marketers are awash with a sea of data. But ask marketers if they exactly know whether the metrics they have deployed to measure content marketing effectiveness is fetching them accurate results or not, most of them will answer: ‘Figuring out’, ‘I guess, yes’, ‘It’s challenging, but yes’. Very few know the art of the trade well and will respond ‘You bet!’.

According to quite a few reports floating around, almost 40-50% marketers are not able to measure content marketing ROI the right way. In the end, it all boils down to reporting to the boss if the content campaign is adding to the bottom lines or not. If a marketer doesn’t have accurate measurement metrics, it might show less impact or vice-versa even if the campaign is performing well.

Sonia Notani

“In the context of a brand, content expresses what you stand for. They don’t call content ‘King’ without a reason. You can have great content, but if it isn’t marketed or positioned well, it will never build trust and loyalty that reaps business benefits. The true effectiveness of good content lies in accurate segmentation, intelligent placement and efficient platform utilisation among other things. It is extremely difficult to delineate and attribute weightages to different elements that go into making a successful campaign that delivers on ROI. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” said Sonia Notani, Chief Marketing Officer, IndiaFirst Life.

Many would agree that measuring content marketing effectiveness is difficult than measuring advertising effectiveness or even other forms of marketing.

Navin Khemka

Navin Khemka, CEO, MediaCom South Asia, said many brands fail to acknowledge and prioritise their key objectives while deploying a content marketing plan.

“It is not as simple as measuring ad effectiveness as the number of variables at play increase on the basis of platform, content creator, amplification, etc. One of the main reasons is also the combination of KPIs, which are unique for every objective that one wants to achieve at the end of a campaign. The lack of clarity impacts the execution at every stage, ranging from creation to platform selection and to execution. Hence, a model that is flexible and addresses this is needed.”

Neena Dasgupta

Neena Dasgupta, CEO and Director at Zirca Digital Solutions, believes that while a marketer may have a time period defined based on a sale or campaign, etc., the consumer reacts at her own speed and in relation to her need. An ad seen today may have an immediate impact on some, may convert into sale months later for some, and for others, it might not resonate at all. Content is even more subtle than advertising. It is more of a pull than push phenomenon. Consumers accept or reject a piece of content. Therefore, the impact of content can be far-reaching. A bad piece of content’s negative impact can be more lasting than a bad ad.

She added, “The metrics to measure content effectiveness need to keep this in mind, rather than just blindly accept the legacy advertising metrics. So, while it may not be difficult to arrive at these metrics, it will certainly require an evolved perspective to arrive at. We believe we need to move beyond traditional definitions of marketing effectiveness. Digital is especially affected by the myopic view of viewing every marketing stimulus from the view of performance. While we acknowledge the need for holding marketing to greater scrutiny, as it only means that marketing is seen as a growth engine rather than a cost centre for companies, we should also be wary of linking every marketing effort with success parameters within a finite duration. That’s not how advertising works.”

Unlike traditional media, content delivery platforms have their own impact and metrics that are dynamic depending on user behaviour. One can’t measure content just on impressions. One size doesn’t fit all and all platforms are unique in their own way.

Tusharr Kumar

Tusharr Kumar, SVP and Business Head, Global Creator Network (OML’s content marketing vertical), seconded, “When compared to online/social media advertisement metrics, every platform develops metrics using their large pools of data points and understanding of the underlying algorithms of their platforms, which keeps changing with time. Access to data of various platforms and assimilating that in conjunction with user behaviour/interaction is crucial to understanding what metrics are right for desired business/brand objectives.” 

Rahul Jain

While most participants in this story are of the view that measuring content marketing effectiveness is challenging, Rahul Jain, Co-Founder, Flicktree, believes it isn’t challenging if a brand is clear what it wants to achieve from a content marketing campaign. He said that it might be difficult for offline brands, but for digital brands or brands with an omnichannel strategy, it is not difficult at all.

He said, “If you are engaging with influencers, or simply creating and investing in your own content, you have all the tools available to measure the effectiveness and ROI for that campaign—be it the number of users reached or any other intended action as per the objective of the campaign. In fact, I feel that it is easy and more effective to run content campaigns. Content marketing is measurable and much more effective, and we have seen this across multiple brands we have worked with.”

Giving an example, he explained, “The regular pre-roll ads that we run before our video content has a VTR of about 2%, which means only 2% users do not skip the ad and watch it completely while the content view rate or completion rate of our branded content is around 49%. That is a huge jump in value for the brand. Not only completion, we are able to track quartiles, thereby giving exact view time deliverables to the brand.”

Content marketers devise near-accurate possible solutions

Until everyone is on the same ship (standardised uniform measurement metrics) that has possible solutions to the challenges related to measuring content marketing effectiveness, each marketer or content practitioner is sailing in his/her own boat, wading through waves (ambiguities surrounding the measurement of content marketing).

Zirca has developed a metric called the Reach Depth Multiple. It measures both the reach and depth of engagement delivered by a particular piece of content. Dasgupta said, “It is a dynamic metric that can benefit mass publishers who deliver reach and hence lower averaged engagement and those who have a super-engaged but niche audience. It helps brands identify at what depth of a piece of content the brand message should be placed after considering factors such as product or service category, publisher context and, most importantly, consumer mindset. It allows a planner to optimise their spends based on differing objectives of reach, engagement or conversion, etc.”

For Global Creator Network, engagement is the key metric to consider. Kumar emphasised, “What is also important to consider is that campaigns are not always uni-platform and human interaction with content on each platform is varied and different across content formats.”

Global Creator Network has a proprietary engagement metric that factors these dynamics when looking at engagement. The proprietary metric is based on engagement since that is how social media platforms are currently built. Platforms prioritise engagement where it works together with platform algorithms to deliver reach and impressions. By mirroring the platforms, GCN tools allow them to plan and execute campaigns in the truest reflection. 

Adding a clause, Kumar said, “What is also important is that engagement does not work as a sole barometer by itself. The campaign objective defines if any other metrics need to take into consideration and the metric hierarchy. For example, if the content marketing objective is to build equity, marketers could lean more on engagement-related metrics while if commerce is the eventual goal, they must also consider click-related metrics as well.” 

IndiaFirst’s Notani gave a few standard examples of metrics. She said one can look at engagement on social media, especially ‘shares’, as it reflects on the consumer and hence shares are an excellent indicator of how effective your content is. For a site or blog, the most important consumption metrics are page views, unique visitors, and average time on page. And for content created for lead/sales, the most important metric boils down to actual sales numbers coming out of your leads. How much revenue did your content fuel?

Giving a straight-forward simple and broad solution to the challenge, Flickstree’s Jain said if the brand objective is to drive online sales, then the metric is quite straightforward—look for increment in sales and put the right attribution structure in place. Whether the brand works with influencers or creating content for social media, the cost per sale metric will help them understand their ROI quite clearly.

He said, “If the objective is to generate leads or any other consumer action, again the right set of attribution tools will help marketers measure the effectiveness. Lastly, if the brand objective is creating awareness, then reach and exposure are the metrics to chase and ROI for all these can be easily calculated because brands know the input spends in any case. For branded videos and sponsorship content, we encourage our advertisers to move beyond just the view or reach and start measuring the duration of content watched and brand exposures delivered. We do this with the help of a third-party analytics solution that is directly implemented in our video player.”