How can you present content ROI data to stakeholders more effectively?

What you want your content to help you do? Come up with an idea that makes sense and is achievable within a certain amount of time. Make sure it's something that everyone agrees with. Set these ideas as goals and you can make sure everyone knows what you are trying to do. Clearly outline the objectives you aim to achieve with your content. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, metrics may include social media engagement, website traffic, or audience reach. If lead generation is the focus, metrics could involve conversion rates and form submissions. Example: If your goal is to boost product sales, you might set a target of a 20% increase in online sales over the next quarter through content marketing efforts. Got it??

When creating content, most companies have two main goals: generating awareness and generating conversions in their target audience. This could be represented as metrics by the number of monthly visitors for a blog and lead/MQL/sales conversion attribution to the blog. Of course, this is not 100% true all of the time and can change according to the content we are creating, if we are defining goals for the full strategy, or only one piece of content and other factors as well.

When presenting results to stakeholders it is important to always consider what their pain points and KPIs are. Knowing their motivations can help you present the intel they want to hear. Be the goal brand awareness, lead generation or conversion marry up what your marketing activity has done with the overall business brand and commercial objectives. I find measuring share of voice incredibly helpful - Nielson have cited that there is a direct correlation between market share and brand growth - and presenting share of voice results in a dashboard allows for digestible metrics. Impressions/engagement tell part of the picture but stakeholders ultimately want to see bottom line results and ROI.

Pick something that tells you that your plans are working. This could be if you want to let more people know about something, tracking how many people saw it or shared it. If you're trying to get more people to do something, like sign up for something or get it, you could track how many people do those things. Select key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your goals. Ensure these metrics are both relevant to your objectives and easily understandable by your stakeholders. Metrics may include engagement rates, conversion rates, click-through rates, or return on investment (ROI). Example: If you're focusing on brand awareness, you could track metrics like social media impressions, follower growth, and mentions. Want to know more?

Understand all of the information you've gathered from different places, like Google, Instagram, email, and more. Look at the info in ways that allow you to learn from it and see if you did well. Ask yourself questions like, "Did I do what I wanted to do?" After all of the looking and understanding, you will find out new things that you didn't know before. Share your personal experiences and insights related to the content strategy. Explain how specific content pieces have contributed to achieving goals or overcoming challenges. Personal anecdotes add a human touch and make the data more relatable. Eg: Discuss how a particular blog post led to increased user engagement, citing comments, shares, or positive feedback received. Want more.??

It is imp to show your data to people who are interested. To make it more easy to understand, you can show it in different ways. You can use line charts to show how something is changing over time, pie charts to show how things are split up, or bar charts to show different kinds of revenue. This will help people understand your data and will help tell a story. Transform raw data into visually appealing charts and graphs. Visuals are powerful tools for conveying complex information in a digestible manner. Use tools like graphs, charts, and infographics to make the data more accessible and compelling. Eg: Create a line graph to show the upward trend in website traffic after implementing a new content strategy. Happy to help you learn more!

To help you, you can look at other numbers (like benchmarks) and look at successes (with examples or stories) to help you know your data is important and how to get better. This will help you improve your content! Offer context around the data by explaining external factors that may have influenced the results. Additionally, provide actionable recommendations based on the data to showcase a forward-looking approach. This demonstrates that you not only understand the data but also have a plan for continuous improvement. Eg: If there's a spike in social media engagement, explain how a recent viral trend or a strategic influencer partnership contributed. Recommend continuing or expanding such initiatives. Always keep your eyes open to data!

Content marketing is often poorly understood by the unitiated, so don't use content geek speak when presenting content results and/or data to them. Speak in the audience's language not yours. As any good content should already know.