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If you’ve ever struggled to explain to leadership how your content contributes to the top line OR you want to know if the agency you hired is actually getting results - this article is for you.
We’ll explain:
The reason anyone invests time and money into content marketing is to generate a positive ROI.
Most blog posts will tell you to track things like:
These are vanity metrics.
Don’t get me wrong these metrics can be helpful. If used as an indicator that tells you if you’re moving in the right direction.
But you can’t take social shares or unique visitors to the bank.
Here’s the secret to measuring SaaS content marketing: measuring the right things.
For SaaS companies your content marketing efforts are only responsible for two things:
That’s it.
So how do you connect your content to these metrics?
You need to set up ‘blog to customer’ analytics. This needs to be a simple as possible to make sure people:
Sound obvious? You’d be surprised how many sites I see that are getting decent traffic but have non-existent tracking.
Proper tracking makes it obvious how your content is contributing to revenue (as well as areas you might need to improve).
The easiest way to track conversions is to use a destination goal for your success page or thank you page after someone signs up or makes a purchase.
For example, Employment Hero (HR software) would have a conversion goal that measures the amount of unique visitors that reach this page:
Which is the success page after someone requests a demo.
Once you have the goal set up, you’ll be able to see which pages are converting users into customers or subscribers.
Repeat this process for every conversion you want to measure. For example, an order confirmation page after someone becomes a paid customer.
You can also assign a value to these goals so you can get an estimate of the revenue that is being generated each time the goal is completed:
This is the bare minimum you need to be tracking on your site. If you don’t have this setup stop reading this article and go do it now (that’s how important it is).
If you sell an expensive or complicated product like B2B software - in most cases readers aren’t going to read a single blog post then sign a $150,000 contract for your product.
The buying journey will look something more like this:
This is why it’s impossible to measure the ROI of your content efforts with 100% accuracy.
But you can get pretty damn close.
There are 7 different attribution models you can use to track conversions.
None of them are perfect. Each come with their own pros and cons.
But if you’re trying to measure your content marketing efforts these are the three attribution models you need to understand:
Last touch is the worst for content marketing as it attributes all the credit to the last page someone visits before converting.
If you sell a B2B SaaS product that costs $10,000 to $100,000 the chances of someone reading an article then immediately becoming a paid customer is low.
We generally recommend using first touch as it will tell you the page that was the “first domino to fall” that led to the user converting.
Regardless of what attribution model you end up using you want to assume the amount of leads that you’re able to track and attribute are underestimating performance.
This is because it’s tricky to measure the impact your content has on offline channels.
For example, there’s no way to track someone who reads one of your blog posts then recommends your product to a friend or colleague who then signs up directly on your homepage.
Note: Check out Chapter 6 of our SaaS SEO guide to learn more about attribution.
Once you’ve set up your destination goals in Google Analytics it’s actually quite easy to compare first, last and linear conversions.
First you need to open the Model Comparison Tool in GA. You can find it here:
Next you need to apply the following settings:
Your GA report should look like the screenshot above.
This will let you compare the three main attribution models side by side.
It can be confusing to work out what these conversion numbers mean if you don’t know what to look for.
Here’s a set of simple rules you can use to understand the data:
So now you know the amount of leads being generated by your content. The next step is figuring out how many leads you need to generate to breakeven.
This is essential for any SaaS company investing in content marketing.
Especially if you’ve hired an agency to increase revenue. This is how you can keep them accountable and set clear goals.
This is the first thing we do before starting work with a client. If you’d like to learn how we could help increase the ROI of your content marketing fill out this form to get started.
To calculate the amount of leads you need to breakeven you need the following numbers:
Let’s go through an example.
Here’s how to calculate the numbers above:
Average value of a closed deal (ACV) = The sum of all your annual contracts divided by the total number of customers.
Close rate (CR) = Add the total amount of deals made in a year and divide that amount by the number of leads in your pipeline over that time period. Multiply that number by 100 to calculate your close rate percentage.
Average value of a lead (AVL) = ACV x CR
Cost of content marketing (CCM) = the salaries of your content marketing team, plus any agency/consultant fees, software tools and any other costs associated with producing and publishing content. Divide this figure by 12 to give you the monthly cost of content marketing.
Leads per month needed to breakeven = CCM / AVL
Once you have these numbers you can work backwards to figure out how much traffic you need to generate per month to hit your lead targets.
This model gives you an idea of how much traffic you need with different conversion rates.
Your conversion rates can vary a lot depending on the type of content you’re producing.
If you’re writing a lot of top of the funnel content conversion rates will be low (around 0.10%).
If you’re writing high intent conversion focused bottom of the funnel content you could see conversion rates between 1% to 2% for those page.
Note: Shoutout to Cameron Brown from G&C for the spreadsheet above.
The only metrics SaaS companies should be using to measure their content marketing are: the number of qualified leads generated and the number of free trial signups/booked demos.
To track this in Google Analytics you need to make sure you have your destination goals setup.
Once that’s done you can use the model comparison tool to compare how different attribution models affect your conversions.
You then need to compare the average value of a lead and the cost of content marketing to calculate how many leads you need to breakeven.
Finally, use these figures to calculate the amount of traffic you need to generate in order to hit your lead targets.
If you have any questions or comments you can tweet at me here.
