Most of us have heard about SMART goals, referring to goals which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
The second – measurement – is especially important in finance content marketing. How do you ensure that your content creation and publication efforts are actually producing tangible results?
Anyone can publish a blog post, but how do you know what difference it is making to your finance marketing? Are you reaching the right people, and if so, what effect is it having upon them?
The best finance content marketers use content strategies which act like a slick, 4-cylinder engine. The constituent parts of these content strategies typically involve:
- Careful planning
- Creating the content itself
- Promoting the content
- Analysing the results
This is the typical, logical order for finance content marketing to occur. Each one naturally leads on from its predecessor. However, the order does not specify priority, or order of importance.
Indeed, each element is crucial to the success of finance content marketing. Two out of four will not do, and neither will three.
The Reality Of Finance Content Marketing
When we take a look at the typical IFA content marketing strategy, most are missing at least two of these constituent elements – and the primary casualty is usually the fourth. Analysis.
This might be due to pure laziness, or a lack of time on the part of financial advisers and wealth managers. More likely, it is simply a lack of knowledge and resources.
Whatever the case, neglecting the analysis of content is widespread. According to one study, around 1/3 of bloggers fail to analyse their content marketing, and check their analytics.
The good news is, you do not need a technical degree in statistics to drill down into your analytics.
In fact, we’re going to share some easy ways to measure the success of your finance content marketing, right here:
#1 Website Traffic
Do you have Google Analytics installed on your website? If not, it’s time to put it on.
With the tracking code, you can quickly discern how many people are visiting your website within defined time periods. You can even compare different weeks, months and years.
#2 Blog / Newsletter Subscriber Growth
Is your finance content marketing causing people to subscribe to your mailing list? If so, that’s fantastic news. It may be that people are downloading premium content on you website, in exchange for handing over their email address. Whatever the case, make sure you keep an accurate headcount.
#3 SERPs
SERPs stands for search engine ranking positions. One important function of finance content marketing is to cause your website to rank higher in relevant search engine results.
When clients work with us, we give them access to our online Portal, which tracks their SERPs over time. Our SEO work has enabled many of them to reach page one on Google, and maintain that position.
Consider investing in a tool like Ahrefs, Moz or SEMRush if you wish to track your rankings yourself.
#4 Duration
Another benefit to Google Analytics is that it allows you to discern the “average time on page” for your website visitors.
When using this metric to evaluate the effectiveness of your finance content marketing, make sure you take the type of content in question into account. For instance, a 45-second video will need to be measured differently compared to a 1,500 word blog post.
#5 Social Following
Are your brand social media profiles attracting greater numbers of Likes, Followers, Shares, Comments and engagements? If so, then your finance content marketing is probably appealing to people.
You may want to consider investing in a social media management tool to keep track of this, such as Hootsuite. Again, when you work with us as a client, we give you access to this data all in one place, along with your SERPs and other KPIs.
#6 Links
When other websites and social profiles link to your content, then that’s usually a positive sign.
People tend to do that when they see something of value in your finance content marketing, which they want to share with their own readers and followers.
Inbound links are also an important signal for search engines, who take high-quality links to your content as a reason to push your website higher up.
Be careful to keep a close eye on your “domain authority”. This shows you how popular your website is for links, and gives a good idea of your search engine ranking potential.
#7 CTR
CTR stands for click through rate, and is probably one of the most important metrics for measuring the success of your finance content marketing.
CTR looks at the number of times people see your content, compares to how many of them actually then click on it. The higher your CTR (as a percentage), the better.
You can usually get an idea of your CTR through your Google Analytics Queries report. You can also look at email metrics by evaluating your open rates and CTRs for links within the email body.
Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter also allow you to measure CTR through their own back-end systems.
#8 Conversions & Leads
Perhaps the king of metrics in the world of measurement and finance content marketing.
First of all, make sure you agree on what constitutes a “conversion” or “lead.” For some financial firms, a conversion will be counted when someone downloads a report from the website.
Another conversion might be counted when someone fills out the contact form, or books an appointment to request a financial consultation.
There are many great online solutions which help you track these lead metrics, as well as using Google Analytics conversion reporting.
