6 Sales Content Analytics Metrics Marketers Need To Track Success

6 Sales Content Analytics Metrics Marketers Need To Track Success

How often have you been asked how much revenue a specific case study generated? Or rather, how often is the sales team sharing that specific case study?

If you’re making a wild guesstimate, trust us—you’re not alone.

It’s tough when you invest resources to create content and are not even sure if it’s getting read. It’s even worse when it gets read, but there’s no way of tracking its true ROI.

Tracking the “success” of your content can be intimidating, but too often, marketers focus on the wrong metrics.

To help you out, we’ve detailed six sales content analytics metrics that you need to track. It’ll help you make informed decisions on what types of content to create and understand the impact of your content.

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Importance of sales content analytics

Gartner defines content analytics as “A family of technologies that processes digital content and user behavior in consuming and engaging with content, such as documents, news sites, customer conversations (both audio and text), and social network discussions, to answer specific questions.”

Essentially, these metrics are focused on your potential customers and give you an in-depth insight into what they want from you. You can figure out their preferences, behaviors, and interests—and create relevant content based on them.

Here are a few reasons why you should measure these metrics:

Identify the most and least used content

You can use content analytics to determine which content gets the most views. The data will show you which types of content are being shared the most frequently. It’ll also reveal which content performs best when shared across different networks.

You can discover what’s being shared the most and monitor its relevance and value over the entire content lifecycle.

If you don’t have a content analytics system, you will _never _know what sales teams are using and which assets are meeting their goals.

Determine how content is being used at each point of the deal cycle

Content analytics helps determine how effectively content is used throughout a buyer’s journey. For example, if you notice that a particular image or topic creates more awareness, you can create more visual content like infographics and videos around the same topic.

Moreover, you also get insights into which assets your sales reps are avoiding or forgetting about. There are several reasons why this happens:

  • They don’t know the content exists
  • They can’t find the content within your inventory
  • They have observed an increase in lost deals when it’s shared
  • They know it needs to be updated with more relevant points

When you dig into the why, you’ll know how to proceed further.

Understand how content influences deal progression

Content performance tools also help companies understand what types of content drive deals ahead or behind schedule. These tools provide insights into what kinds of content are most effective at moving deals along. For example, identify which blog posts encourage free trial sign-ups or which case studies convert the most prospects.

In addition to helping you decide where to focus your efforts, you can identify opportunities for improvement. Marketers can use the information to determine why a piece of content is performing poorly. They can then look for ways to improve the content, such as adding additional calls to action or tweaking the copy.

Uncover what type of content is missing from your organization

Document analytics show you which assets your buyers engage with most. When you observe that a particular topic is getting higher than usual engagement, it indicates that you need more content around this topic. You’ve already validated the minimum viable content—now run with it.

Moreover, inputs from the sales team will give you insights into the current gaps in your strategy or content. All this data helps you make better decisions when formulating your content strategy. Ultimately, it needs to give sales reps a head start.

Content marketing should give sales a head start during prospect conversations

6 sales content metrics you need to track

Now that you know how sales enablement analytics can help you double down on what you have, let’s look at which metrics can help you get there:

Awareness

Content awareness is an important metric to track as it tells us whether sales reps know it exists and whether it’s getting seen by buyers too. But, in this case, we specifically mean content seen by sales reps. Because if they don’t know it exists—your buyers won’t.

The most critical sales content metric is the number of times that a piece of content is read. Why? Because when you’re in a sales role, it’s really easy to get caught up in the idea of “closing” a deal or getting someone to say yes. But selling isn’t about closing deals —- it’s about helping people solve their problems to make better decisions.

It’s also an essential indicator for tracking the effectiveness of any content marketing efforts. If a piece of content is highly shared and viewed, it has created some buzz around itself and generated interest in your company’s brand or product offerings.

Metrics to track:

  • Views – how many times have sales reps viewed your content?
  • Shares – how many times has your content been shared with buyers?
  • Geography – Are buyers only from specific regions viewing it?

Searches

Monitoring content searches help you monitor the keywords your sales reps use to search for specific assets. Plus, you can monitor increased trends for particular search phrases. The former allows you to tag assets with those keywords or categorize them accordingly, while the latter will enable you to create more comprehensive assets around those topic clusters.

Moreover, you can also extend this capability to see if the found assets produced some results. For example, did buyers engage with it? Was it shared widely? Did it result in a qualified lead or paid customer?

Metrics to track:

  • Search phrases in a given period – how many keywords were used in a specific period?
  • Trends for search phrases – has there been an increase/decrease in usage for specific terms?
  • Search phrases for specific topics – which assets were used when searched using particular keywords?
  • No hit searches – what did the team search for but didn’t find?

Usage

You need to track your content’s usage as it can help you determine which assets are used frequently. Based on this information, you can speak to your sales reps and get more insights into this trend.

For example, if buyers are requesting data under a specific category, it could be due to seasonal trends, or they need a specific feature and would like to know more about it.

Based on this data, you can rework your strategy and editorial calendar and create a tailored content strategy that helps you attract more buyers via public channels and convert more leads via sales.

Metrics to track:

  • Views – how many times did your sales rep view a specific asset?
  • Downloads – how many times did your sales rep download a particular asset?
  • Pitches – how many times was this asset shared with buyers in a proposal/pitch?
  • Edits – are sales reps modifying the content before sharing it?
  • Updates – how many new assets are being added to the inventory?
  • Click-through rate (CTR) – how often did the buyers click to view this asset?

Engagement

There are three different types of content buyers consume during the sales cycle.

  • Informational: This type of content provides information about your product or service. For example, a blog post that describes how to use a software program.
  • Engaging: This type of content gets people excited about your brand. A video showing a customer using your software.
  • Emotional: This type of content connects with people emotionally. An article describing why someone chose your product over another one.

No matter the type of content, an excellent way to determine if it resonates is to measure its engagement across the sales cycle.

I look at views, the number of time folks spend with the content, interactions like comments, and so on. These are all indicators that some aspect of the content is or is not working. If a typical YouTube video on the channel gets 10,000 views and this video only received 5,000 views, I’d examine the topic, title, and thumbnail. I’d also review the execution/quality of the content and presentation.

Metrics to track:

  • View time – how long are buyers spending to review your asset?
  • Page views – how many pages of your asset are your buyers viewing?
  • Asset engagement – which assets are receiving the most engagement?
  • Sender engagement – which senders receive the most engagement on what they share?

Relevance

Relevance is an important metric because it can help you determine which assets are the most up-to-date. In turn, you can focus on getting that seen by buyers at the right time in the buying process. You want buyers to find content that helps them—but also shows them you’re the authority in the space. It’s hard to do that with stale content.

It’ll also help you understand if your content is aligned with buyer personas and business goals. The more relevant your content is to the needs and interests of buyers, the more likely they are to view, read and engage with it.

Metrics to track:

  • Publish date – when was the asset published?
  • Refresh date – when was the asset last updated?
  • ICP mapping – is it targeted to the right ICP? (after validation)
  • Buyer stage mapping – is it achieving the specific goal you had set for it? (after validation)

Conversion rate

Content conversion potential is an important metric to track as it can help you determine if it’s creating revenue opportunities. It measures how well a specific content converts visitors into leads and, eventually, customers.

Essentially, it tells you which pieces generate the most revenue. Using this data, you can pinpoint which topics and content formats to focus on for your future strategy.

The metric focuses on middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) or bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content, as these assets are core lead or revenue-generating assets.

Metrics to track:

  • Content influenced won deals – how many sales were closed because of the influence of your assets?
  • Revenue generated – how much revenue was generated using one specific asset?
  • Deal velocity – how fast does the deal progress when introducing this asset?
  • Conversion velocity – how fast does the lead convert when introducing this asset?
  • Marketing pipeline impact – how many marketing qualified leads (MQLs) does this asset generate?
  • Sales pipeline impact – how many qualified leads (SQLs) does this asset generate?
  • Return on investment (ROI) – what does the content marketing ROI look like when considering the resources and investment put into it?

Final thoughts

These content metrics are great for data-driven sales enablement, helping you to focus your content efforts better, so you’re putting out the best possible stuff. A glance at them will give you an idea of how others engage with your content and whether or not it’s worth it.

Optimized content will have much higher engagements and conversions. Ultimately, it will be better suited to meet your sales goals and positively affect your sales funnel.

If you’re looking for a content management tool that helps you track these metrics, start a free trial of Content Camel today.