How to measure content marketing ROI: Key B2B content marketing metrics

What makes B2B content successful? It’s good to enjoy and take pride in what you’ve created, but content marketing should drive real results for your business, too. 

That’s where B2B content marketing metrics come in, using data to hone your content development and deliver ROI.

In this post, we look at how to measure content marketing ROI and the most important B2B content marketing metrics.

Table of contents

• Why should you measure content marketing metrics?

• Tracking and measuring content marketing success metrics

• How long should it take for content to have an impact?

• How can I track progress toward my end goal?

• How frequently should I track progress?

• Common B2B content marketing metrics and KPIs, and how to track them

  • Measuring brand awareness

  • Measuring organic visibility

  • Measuring organic traffic growth

  • Measuring user engagement

  • Measuring customer journeys

  • Measuring conversions

• Reporting on progress and adapting your strategy

Why should you measure content marketing metrics?

In the world of B2B marketing, not a dime should go to waste. 

That’s why we talk about defining content marketing goals. When you know what you want to achieve with your B2B content, you can better measure your efforts against the goals you’ve set. 

Increasing traffic, generating new leads, and boosting demo requests — these are all good goals for your content marketing, and each has a trackable metric, KPI, or data point attached.

We’ll go into the specifics of content marketing success metrics in a minute. But let’s take a moment to look at the benefits of measuring the effectiveness of your content marketing.

Tracking content marketing metrics can:

• Reveal whether your content is moving prospects through the buyer journey (which you want it to do!)

• Identify which channels or content topics are worth investing more time and budget into 

• Highlight weak spots, like pages that get enough traffic but somehow don’t convert

• Keep your content strategy focused on goals instead of guesswork (or topics you just like writing about)

• Make it easier to prioritize improvements and initiatives that support long-term growth

Tracking and measuring content marketing success metrics

Now that we’ve looked at the why behind B2B content marketing metrics, let’s get into the how. 

A robust approach to metrics includes:

• Having clearly defined goals for your content marketing

• Determining the milestones and metrics that help you progress towards that goal

• Knowing which tools can be used to capture the necessary data 

• Creating a “watch” and an “action” list to keep driving results

How long should it take for content to have an impact? 

Content marketing is a long game. So, when can you expect to see improvements? It all depends on how much authority your website has and how frequently you create new content. 

Three months is the minimum timeframe. If you’ve got a strong B2B content strategy in place — and the right resources to make that strategy a success — you should start to see results from SEO content by the three-month mark. 

From there, it can take up to a year to really fulfill your sales-related goals.

We get that that can be disheartening. You want to see your business succeed — why wouldn’t you want a faster uptick in sales? That’s where short-term milestones and metrics for content marketing can help. 

How can I track progress toward my end goal?

Short-term KPIs make your incremental progress more visible and help you move closer to your long-term business goals.

Let’s say your end goal is to generate more qualified leads for your sales team. In the short term, you might focus on: 

1. Growing your organic visibility for conversion and pain-point-led keywords. 

2. Driving organic traffic to your blog and increasing the amount of time users spend on the page.

3. Getting those blog readers to explore more of your website and move from prospects to leads. 

Breaking up big sales goals into smaller projects is a great way to stay motivated.

How frequently should I track progress? 

At Scribly, we usually report on content performance every quarter — and we recommend our clients do the same. This provides enough time for any optimizations to take effect and for new content to be indexed and start ranking (though not very highly) in the search engine results page (SERPs).

After each performance report, we create two lists: “action” and “watch”: 

• Action list: The action list includes anything we need to action immediately. If a well-performing page experiences a sudden dip in traffic, then we’ll investigate and resolve the issue ASAP. 

  
  

• Watch list: The watch list includes anything that could be concerning if the trend continues, and we’ll monitor it for now. Fluctuations in SERP position do happen — a very small drop in keyword rankings might not be cause for concern. Or if a blog has had only 10 organic views so far but has been live for only a month, those numbers aren’t concerning.

We then use these two lists, paired with a refreshed competitor analysis and keyword research, to adjust our recommended content strategy and calendar for the quarter ahead.

Common B2B content marketing metrics and KPIs, and how to track them

Ready to tool up? Tracking content marketing metrics requires being comfortable with using a few key platforms. These include keyword trackers like SEMRush or Ahrefs, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and Search Console. 

Below is a cheat sheet of the most common content marketing goals, their associated KPIs, and which tool(s) can be used to track them. Keep reading for a deeper dive into each section of the table below.

Measuring brand awareness 

How does brand awareness drive content ROI?

Brand awareness measures how familiar people (and, ideally, target buyers) are with your brand or business name.

It’s an important B2B content marketing goal because it helps expand your reach. The more people are aware of your brand and what you do, the larger your audience becomes, creating more opportunities to generate leads.

Brand awareness often goes up when your content marketing is working. Word might be spreading through earned marketing distribution channels, but chances are if your brand awareness is growing, then you’re doing something right with your content — and achieving ROI.

Tools to measure brand awareness

From an SEO perspective, brand awareness can be tracked through the number of brand searches. If people are heading to a search engine and typing in your brand, then your marketing strategy is working. 

The two best tools for monitoring brand searches are Google Trends and SEMrush (or your keyword-tracking tool of choice). 

Google Trends provides a detailed view of how search volume for your brand and services has changed over time and in which regions you’re most popular. Simply head to Google Trends and search for your brand name in the “Explore” section. 

Similarly, SEMrush allows you to see the average monthly search volume of your brand-related keywords and track their trend.

Measuring organic visibility 

How does organic visibility drive content ROI?

Organic visibility is a strong content marketing success metric. It shows whether your SEO content is gaining traction and can indicate future organic traffic.

Organic visibility also gives you a better understanding of how Google reads your content and the topics it sees you as having authority in.

If Google thinks your expertise aligns with what you sell, then your content marketing is on the right track. If it doesn’t, you need to revisit your content strategy and the keywords you’re targeting.

Either way, your organic visibility reveals opportunities to expand or refine your keyword strategy and topics, which is important for ROI.

Tools to measure organic visibility

Organic visibility can be tracked through your keyword rankings (using SEMRush) and keyword impressions (using Search Console). 

You can then cross-reference these keyword rankings with the total impressions tracked on Search Console. 

Measuring organic traffic growth

How does organic traffic drive content ROI?

On the whole, website traffic is a good content marketing success metric. But it risks being a “vanity metric”: something that looks good on paper, but deserves further exploration.

You want the right people to be visiting your site. To drive ROI, your content should attract new prospects by targeting the right keywords throughout their buyer journey. 

When you get that right, you’ll generate high-quality top-of-the-funnel leads for your sales team (at volume!) and feel confident that your content topics and formats are driving relevant interest.

Tools to measure organic traffic

You can track organic traffic through an increase in organic sessions, users, and new users to your website (using Google Analytics) and keyword clicks (using Search Console). 

Measuring user engagement 

How does user engagement drive content ROI?

User engagement might sound less technical than the previous B2B content marketing metrics, but don’t be fooled. This can be used to identify the types of content that prospects pay attention to and indicates whether your content answers their questions in a clear, compelling way.

Longer user engagement times often mean higher trust and stronger buying intent (hello, ROI!). Search engines value content that users engage with, too, further supporting SEO. 

Tools to measure user engagement

From an SEO perspective, user engagement can be measured using Google Analytics 4. The average time users spend on each page signals user engagement.

Measuring customer journeys 

How does a customer journey drive content ROI?

Done right, a content marketing strategy should help move your customers further down the sales funnel:

• Top-funnel content can grow your brand awareness and build your authority

• Content in the mid-funnel educates and informs prospects about your services

• And bottom-funnel content is all about driving conversions

Understanding how your content performs at each stage of the marketing journey (or funnel) reveals how prospects navigate your site from first touch to payment page. It identifies drop-off points that are costing you sales while spotlighting the pages that perform best to encourage prospects to purchase.

Tools to measure the customer journey

Tracking how clients progress down the funnel can be tricky. Our best advice is to map a user’s journey through your website. This will not only determine which pages they’re visiting, but also how many pages they visit before abandoning the site, and which pages cause them to leave. You can track this through “Path Progression” in “Explore” on Google Analytics. To set this up, try Google’s in-depth tutorial. 

Measuring conversions

How do conversions drive content ROI?

Can we guess what you want to achieve with your B2B content? For most businesses, the end goal is to turn all organic traffic from prospects into leads that your sales team can then convert into customers. That’s where true ROI sits.

In other words, you want prospects to get in touch with you, whether through a newsletter sign-up, a contact form submission, or a product demo request. From here, prospects can be converted into a paying (and hopefully loyal) customer base.

Understanding how well your content converts today means you know:

• Which pages or CTAs inspire the most action

• If there’s friction at any point of the journey (say, where users start but don’t finish a download form)

• How many content marketing-generated prospects become leads

• And, ultimately, how much of your pipeline and revenue total can be attributed to content

Tools to measure conversions

To track conversions, you want to monitor how many newsletter sign-ups, completed forms, and demo requests you get, as well as how many are started but never finished. Google Analytics is great for this.

We also recommend tracking clicks on CTA buttons across your landing pages and blogs — particularly those that lead prospects to the bottom of the funnel (e.g., a form submission or a demo).

Reporting on progress and adapting your strategy

Consistency is key. All of the data and content marketing metrics we’ve covered in this guide can be game-changing if you use them effectively, but measuring your content performance isn’t a one-and-done initiative.

Track your progress in a quarterly report (dipping into the data more often won’t hurt, but you’ll need to pan out for a broader view to get a true sense of what’s happening).

You can then use this quarterly data to inform your future content plan, adjusting your strategy as needed to reach your content goals. For example, you might need to optimize newly identified, poor-performing content or further invest in a topic that’s quickly gaining traction.

Commit to doing this every quarter, and you should see your content marketing go from strength to strength, with ROI worth celebrating!

We can help you measure content marketing ROI (and make your content more successful)

Now you’ve peeked under the hood of a well-oiled content marketing machine, how do you feel? 

We hope you’re feeling energized and ready to put these B2B content marketing metrics to use. 

Measuring the success of your content is really the only way to know what’s working and what isn’t, so that you can achieve your content goals and secure ROI.

But you don’t have to go it alone.

B2B content marketing agencies like Scribly exist to support brands with their content marketing strategy. If you need a partner for high-performing content (and measuring your success), get in touch with the Scribly team today.