This is the fith blog post in our series on “How To Measure Blog Success.”
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It’s the holy grail of web stats: conversion. And with the investments in content marketing, wondering whether all that work actually converts is huge. This blog post will help you get a better understanding of whether your site content converts.
How to Measure Blog Conversion
Measuring conversion is easy than you think. Content marketing, remember, isn’t a hard sell nor is it a soft sell. Your content should resonate with your audience (whether that’s because they want more information, entertainment, thought leadership, etc) but it shouldn’t stop there. Your content should also convert.
Content marketing broadens the net for capturing potential leads on your site. You need to create content to attract vistors, but you need a plan to convert those visitors.
Identify conversion goals
Start simply. Write out the ideal process for converting web traffic. Don’t go right in for a sale. That’s just not going to happen. And for many companies, a sale is a confluence of factors that can’t be directly attributed to a blog post. Visitors may come to your site to read a post, perhaps follow you on social, and leave. Only later when they need your product or service do you get in front of them with a Facebook post or Tweet, they come back, and you have a lead.
That lead isn’t directly attributable to content marketing, but content marketing played a significant role.
Examples of conversion goals
One key note. For all of these, think of the benefit to the customer first. Is this something that they will find useful? Helpful? Scrutinize the offer before hitting the launch button.
- e-Book downloads
- Webinar registrations
- Follows on social channels
- Newsletter subscription signups
- Free trials
- Product demos
- Phone consultations
Make sure they’re measureable
The only way to measure a conversion is to make a conversion measureable. Seems obvious, but people will often wonder why they don’t see value in their content marketing…they’re not measuring ANYTHING.
Always ensure a form is in place to measure emails, phone numbers, and names are submitted.
Integrate CRM ($$)
Customer relationship marketing software makes it easy for you to index anyone who completes a form or submits information on your site. With these platforms, you can market to these parties either based on their preference or via email campaigns, personalized outreach, phone calls, video calls or on-site visits (depending on your business).
The only downside of CRMs? They can get very expensive, very quickly.
Google Analytics (Free*)
Fortunately, there is a free option out there. Google Analytics.
Google Analytics tracks four different types of conversions. Google calls them “Goals.” You can view all of the different goal types.
Tracking Destination Goals in Google Analytics
But for today, we’re just going to focus on “Destination Goals”. Destination goals treat pageviews or screenviews as a conversion.
Goal destination example: If you ask someone for an email address on your blog, the confirmation page a user sees after they submit their email (remember, it has to be on your site not your email service provider’s site to be tracked) would be the URL you want to track on Google Analytics.
Setting Up Destination Goals in Google Analytics
To set up a destination goal in Google Analytics, you first need to create a destination page.
To set up a goal in Google Analytics:
6. Enter your destination URL (for example, if your site is www.blogmutt.com and your destination page is www.blogmutt.com/email-thankyou, just enter /email-thankyou
7. Click “Create goal”
Tracking Conversions and Making Sure Your Goal Works
To make sure the goal is being tracked, simply log in to Google Analytics.
You can also view conversions by traffic source.
If you’re not tracking any conversions with your blog, start now and use this guide to help you along.
You’ll get a ton of satisfaction knowing that your content and CTAs have compelled people to act. As you become more familiar with tracking goals, you can add more and get more nuanced in how you track visitors.
Want advice on ways to improve your blog’s conversion?
