These days, content creation is expected from almost all brands and businesses. However, many struggle to justify the investment. Between content marketing and performance marketing, only the latter brings immediate financial returns. If you’re working with a limited budget, why wouldn’t you spend more on strategies that can generate income quickly? However, you can’t negate one for another: both marketing strategies are integral for sustainable long-term growth.

So, if you’re worried about budget constraints or simply don’t want to sacrifice immediate returns over long-term growth (or vice versa), a good middle ground is content performance marketing. To help you implement content performance marketing for your brand, we will discuss metrics, tools, techniques and best practices.

What is Content Performance Marketing?

Like the name suggests, content performance marketing is a hybrid of content marketing and performance marketing, combining crucial elements of both into a single campaign or strategy.

This means that with content performance marketing, your goal is to draw attention to the brand and generate measurable conversions through the content itself. Here, your content should not only build awareness but also drive sales. Because of this, content performance marketing assets are highly strategic, doing more than just retaining your presence through entries in your calendar.

Key Components of Content Performance Marketing

To increase the likelihood of success, each of these components should be present in your content performance marketing campaign.

  • High-quality content: You need relevant material that provides value to your target audience and considers the conversion capabilities.
  • Carefully selected platforms: Your content must be placed where your audience will see it.
  • Tools for content performance marketing: To monitor your KPIs, evaluate results and modify your existing content easily, you need the right tools.

Most importantly, your talents are your most valuable resource. You’re in charge of making sure all the components work together to generate both engagement and conversion.

Content Performance: KPIs and Metrics

Since content can be an element of performance marketing, there are three main metrics to determine the effectiveness of the strategy, and in terms of content performance marketing, the KPIs you use to assess outcomes will also be applicable here.

However, the distinction is that it doesn’t just evaluate conversion activities. Measuring content marketing performance success also involves looking at numbers that don’t necessarily have anything to do with moving prospects down the funnel within the same interaction. Want to learn how to measure content marketing performance? Look into engagement, conversion and traffic-related metrics.

Engagement Metrics: Views, Shares and Comments

Engagement metrics are indicators of how users interact with your work. Knowing how to measure the performance of your content marketing efforts in bringing the target audience to the top of the funnel involves monitoring the following:

  • Views: The number of people who have seen the content;
  • Shares: The number of people who have shared across different platforms — especially relevant for word-of-mouth marketing;
  • Comments: The number of comments on a specific piece of content — a good indicator of what resonates with the target market.

Between performance marketing and content marketing, these metrics will generally apply to the latter.

Conversion Metrics: Leads, Sales and ROI

Conversion metrics assess the capability of content to drive business profitability. If you’re curious about how to measure performance to improve your content marketing results, understanding the importance of leads, sales and ROI is just the beginning. There are many relevant and related metrics that you should be evaluating. To get a sense of how profitable your campaign is, learn how to measure content performance marketing data.

Leads

Leads are important metrics because of what they represent: an engaged audience that is easier to convert. To determine the effectiveness of your content performance marketing in generating leads, you should consider the following:

  • The number of leads: The amount of leads generated by the campaign;
  • Lead conversion rate: The percentage of leads that convert into paying customers
  • Cost per lead: Ad spend divided by the number of leads;
  • Lead quality score: An assigned numerical value based on the likelihood of conversion; the higher, the better.

These content marketing performance metrics should be looked at very closely for both the top and middle of the funnel.

Sales

Since conversions are all about delivering profitable outcomes, sales-related content performance marketing metrics should be considered. Here are a few metrics that you should pay attention to:

  • Average order value: The average revenue generated per transaction;
  • Sales conversion rate: The percentage of leads that end up making a purchase;
  • Revenue attribution by content type: Content marketing performance tracking, based on the type of material

By monitoring these metrics, you can refine your strategy to boost your conversions.

ROI

Return on Investment (ROI) refers to the direct profitability. Here, you want to find out whether your content performance marketing efforts are generating enough income. With these metrics, you can also determine where you need to optimize your strategy:

  • ROI: The percentage of profit generated relative to the total cost of a content performance marketing campaign: [(Revenue - Cost) / Cost] × 100;
  • Customer lifetime value (CLV): The projected total revenue a client will generate over their relationship with the brand;
  • Cost per acquisition (CPA): The total marketing and sales expenses required to gain a new paying customer.

With these content performance marketing metrics, you’ll be able to look at the effectiveness of your efforts from various perspectives.

Analyzing Traffic: Bounce Rate, Time on Page and User Behavior

With content performance marketing, there’s a significant chance that you’re going to use your own website to drive eyeballs to your materials. So, you should also monitor these metrics:

  • Bounce rate: Percentage of visitors who landed on the page without taking any further action;
  • Time on page: How long a user stays after landing on the webpage;
  • User behavior: What the user did while on the site, such as which pages they visited.

Content performance marketing wouldn’t be complete without analyzing traffic. After all, what good is an optimized page if there is no one to convert?

Elevating Your Content Marketing Performance Averages: How to Optimize Your Efforts

If the target has never heard of your brand before, your content may only have one shot at making an impression. To take your content performance marketing efforts further, you should look for ways to optimize your materials. We like to point out that your content performance marketing decisions must be based on data. However, you can use this information as a starting point to see how tweaks can impact engagement and conversion rates.

Crafting Compelling Headlines and Calls-to-Action

With content performance marketing, you don’t have to do a complete overhaul every time you want to compare the results of two versions of a message. Why not just focus on these two things?

  • Headline: The headline is the first and potentially the only thing that your audience will see. Make sure it honestly represents what the text is about while still being compelling.
  • Calls-to-action: What do you want the reader to do after consuming the material? This should be clearly stated.

These two considerations have the greatest impact on conversions. So, while there are many other elements that you can tweak, we recommend taking care of the headline and CTA first.

Personalization and Targeted Content Strategies

Personalization is very important in content performance marketing because it allows you to reach the right audience for your materials. Here are a few ideas for targeting that you can try:

  • Segment your content performance marketing targets based on behavior;
  • Use demographic information to create segments;
  • Use predictive analytics to promote relevant content based on past behavior.

The audience for your content performance marketing efforts shouldn’t be thought of as one big group. Given the personalization and targeting options available, generating engagement can be relatively simple.

Leveraging Paid Platforms to Improve Content Marketing Performance

When we think of content performance marketing, websites and social media platforms often come to mind. However, there are other channels to consider. Remember, we are looking to drive direct and immediate action. So, just as you spend money to place ads, you can also invest in improving the visibility of your content performance marketing assets. This is made possible through native advertising. Let’s explore the benefits.

Overview of Native Advertising and Sponsored Content

With native advertising, the goal is to naturally incorporate advertising into the browsing experience. This is very useful for content performance marketing because, while you seek to convert, you also want the audience to engage. By blending into users’ browsing experience, your content performance marketing is more likely to make an impact. From our experience, sponsored content is the best fit here. The brand can borrow not only the publisher’s audience but also its credibility.

Enhancing Reach and Engagement with MGID

MGID is a native advertising platform that helps brands expand their reach by placing ads and content on relevant websites. This allows you to target the right audience. By applying AI-powered distribution, MGID ensures that your content performance marketing efforts generate higher engagement, quality traffic and conversions. Here’s how we make it possible:

  • Working with high-quality publishers in every niche;
  • Using AI and behavioral targeting to determine who is most likely to respond to your content performance marketing;
  • Supporting various ad formats to work with a variety of campaigns.

With our support, you don’t have to rely on your current digital assets to get results from your content.

Techniques and Tools to Measure Content Performance Marketing Outcomes and Perform Analysis

Of course, you don’t have to be 100% hands-on when you run your campaigns. For most kinds of online promotion, it’s a given that you’re going to use tools to automate some of your tasks. This expectation also extends to content performance marketing.

The question is, which tools should you be using for content performance marketing? Among other things, this will depend on the platforms you’re using to achieve your efforts. We’ll discuss the most useful tools alongside a few techniques for accurate measurement in the following subsections.

Content Marketing Performance Analytics Software and Tools

These are some of the tools that you should consider:

  • MGID: A native advertising platform that also helps with engagement tracking, user targeting, performance optimization, lookalike audiences and other related functions;
  • Google Analytics: Useful for identifying high-performing content through insights on bounce rate, referral traffic and session duration;
  • Ahrefs: A keyword tracking tool that can help you implement a more effective SEO strategy to increase organic reach.

In addition, if your content performance marketing efforts involve social media, we strongly recommend using platform-specific tools.

Techniques to Implement as Part of Your Strategy

How confident are you that you’re using the best version of your content performance marketing efforts? The only way to know for sure is through measurement and analysis. Below are a few key techniques that you can incorporate.

  • Split testing: This technique evaluates the measurable impact of two versions of content to help you decide which to use.
  • SEO and keyword performance ranking: Here, you assess the ability of your content performance marketing strategy to reach the right audience organically.
  • User behavior analysis: This can involve the use of heatmaps to see how the user is interacting with the page.

All these tools help you gain valuable insights into your strategy so you can make changes as needed.

Best Practices for a Winning Content Performance Marketing Strategy

Given the rising cost of advertising, you need a cost-effective way to drive conversions. This is where content performance marketing comes in. However, free promotional material doesn’t come automatically. Keep these best practices in mind to improve the odds of your content performance marketing efforts being successful.

Know Your Audience

Now, this seems basic, but you’d be surprised how many businesses create content just for the sake of it. While everything you publish can help improve your visibility online, only a well-crafted content performance marketing strategy designed for your audience in mind can get people hooked on what you have to say. To determine the audience most likely to act, you should:

  • Create a comprehensive customer persona to guide your content creation process;
  • Use the data available to identify and prioritize the audience segments that are most likely to engage and take action;
  • Identify and learn more about new audiences that may be interested in the brand and content.

Content performance marketing won’t be effective if you’re not sure who you’re talking to. When you communicate with a smaller group, you’ll remain targeted in what you say and how you say it.

Don’t Discount the Value of Content Engagement Marketing Performance

It’s always tempting to focus on improving metrics related to profit generation. However, remember that your messaging forms a base from which you’ll convert customers. Therefore, content performance marketing should also attract engagement. Doing this right means:

  • Having more opportunities to experiment with segmentation;
  • Generating more leads and sales, all things being equal;
  • Creating value for the brand, making it easier to gain attention.

So, to boost your overall content performance marketing outcomes, you should also invest in material that your audience will gravitate towards.

Use Multiple Channels to Promote the Same Content

With content performance marketing, you don’t have to come up with original ideas for every platform. In fact, we advise against this because by doing so, you’re losing the opportunity to reinforce your message. By having your content performance marketing efforts felt in all the places your target audience hangs out, you’ll be able to naturally retarget interested individuals. In fact, with a multi-channel approach, you’ll have many opportunities to present information in the way that works best for your target market.

Stick to a Schedule

On your content calendar, make sure that you’re committing to a regular content performance marketing publishing schedule. Your audience expects consistency, so you should deliver this. Here, we recommend that you consider the following factors:

  • The time when your audience uses your selected content performance marketing platforms;
  • A sustainable and realistic publishing frequency;
  • Time zone differences, if you have a global audience.

Fortunately, you don’t have to wait until your chosen time to publish your content. There are content performance marketing automation tools that you can use to schedule everything in advance.

Create High-Intent Content

If you provide SaaS, no one’s going to stop you from talking about the generic features you offer. But how would including this in your content performance marketing plan help you convert? A quick hint: it won’t!

Focusing on high-intent content allows you to capture the attention of users who are ready to take action. For example, don’t describe why people need a CRM or include this in your content performance marketing calendar. Instead, talk about the best CRM platforms. If you’re running an affiliate marketing site, this will give you more opportunities to earn commission.

Use AI as Part of Your Process

Even if you’re running a completely organic content performance marketing campaign, there’s still room to use AI. For example, you could use it to generate a list of ideas or create a rough draft of your content performance marketing calendar. And, if you’re using paid publishing options, AI can help you implement dynamic content optimization. This lets you personalize what the user sees based on their behavior. Of course, don’t take these suggestions at face value. Feel free to refine them or just use them for inspiration.

Challenges and Solutions in Content Performance Marketing

Even though content performance marketing is a great way to capture attention and convert audiences, you may face a few challenges along the way. To ensure that your efforts are effective, you need to be aware of the potential issues. By taking the time to learn about the possible impediments that lie ahead, you’ll be able to better prepare for them. Let us help you limit the potential setbacks with content performance marketing by exploring how to address them.

Challenge #1: Creating High-Quality Content

It’s relatively easy to create a great piece of content. For many, the problem lies in consistently maintaining the same level of quality. Many advertisers cite the following as reasons for inconsistent or dwindling quality:

  • Lack of inspiration and ideas;
  • Fatigue from having to keep up with a schedule;
  • Changing trends and preferences.

These points could hinder you from realizing the true potential of your content performance marketing strategy. If your talents lie in writing, you may thrive in terms of text but fall short everywhere else.

Potential Solutions

The way you address issues will depend on why you’re having trouble with content performance marketing. Depending on your specific problems, here are a few things that you can do.

  • Look at what your competitors are doing: Get their ideas and implement them better!
  • Prioritize successful platforms: For your content performance marketing strategy, allocate your resources where they will have the greatest impact.
  • Get other talents on board to help with content creation: This way, you can focus your energy where it’s most effective and produce top-quality output.

To keep your content performance marketing strategy interesting, try to incorporate trends when appropriate.

Challenge #2: Algorithm Changes

Whether you’re using your own website or social media platforms for content performance marketing, you’re likely to be affected by algorithm changes. As a result, you may see:

  • A sudden decline in visibility;
  • The need to recalibrate your strategy more often;
  • Fluctuations in traffic.

With these, you may also find it challenging to assess the effectiveness of your content performance marketing efforts. Unfortunately, this is something that you’ll have no choice but to face. Search engine algorithms will always be updated to best reflect what people are looking for.

Potential Solutions

If you’re creating the best possible content performance marketing assets, you’re already on the right path. Still, you need to take care of technical details, including the following:

  • Adhering to EEAT when creating content;
  • Optimizing old material to adhere to the current algorithm;
  • Diversifying your selection of content performance marketing platforms.

Using sponsored content is also a great idea if you’re in the process of incorporating the recent changes into your strategy. This allows you to reach your audience and potentially convert them.

Challenge #3: High Competition and Content Saturation

Companies and brands across all niches right now face the challenge of standing out. For example, in TikTok, 16,000 short videos are uploaded every minute. Now, just imagine how much is published elsewhere on the internet! Many advertisers are finding it hard to make a mark with content performance marketing efforts because their competition is just so high. As so many interactions happen online these days, more businesses are looking to strengthen their online presence. You need to up your content performance marketing game to make the right impression.

Possible Solutions

Here are a few things that you can do to address this challenge.

  • Focus on specific audience segments: Divert most of your content performance marketing efforts to them and create specific messaging for each one.
  • Use interactive content formats: Make it easy for your target audience to engage by using quizzes, polls and other formats that encourage interaction.
  • Use audience insights: Platforms like MGID make it easier for you to identify where your content performance marketing efforts could have more of an impact.

For the sake of preserving your brand authority, we recommend staying away from shady and clickbaity strategies.

Engage and Convert with Content Performance Marketing

Who says that you can’t have the best of both worlds? Creating ads isn’t the only way to move an audience through the funnel. With a strong content performance marketing strategy, you can strengthen the brand and contribute to profitability at the same time. As we’ve seen, native advertising is valuable here because content performance marketing is designed to deliver value to the target market.

By partnering with experts like MGID, you’ll get access to high-level tools, creative specialists and a personal manager who can help make your content performance marketing efforts effective. Sign up today, and let us help you build your brand and profitability.

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Performance Marketing
Victoria Mozolevska
Supervising the MGID blog as a Content Manager, Victoria wears many hats and combines the skills of an eclectic writer, reflective researcher and forward-looking content strategist. She has over 10 years of experience creating diverse content cradled in creativity and backed by tangible goals for B2B, B2C and B2G.