Set KPIs for content marketing

1. Create a spreadsheet with five columns: KPIs, Previous year, Targets, Current year, and Time interval.

In the first column, add three rows: Business KPIs, On-site KPIs, and Off-site KPIs.

2. Add the following metrics under Business KPIs: ROI, CAC, Customer LTV, Revenue, and Number of customers.

Customer LTV = Average customer lifespan * Customer value.  CAC = Total costs / (Traffic * Conversion rate). Total costs include technology costs, salaries, costs with paid ads, etc.  ROI = LTV/CAC.

3. Add the following metrics under On-site KPIs: Number of leads, Conversion rate, Click-through rate (CTR), Drop-off rate, Exit rate, Time on page, Pages read, Visitors.

If you’re tracking leads for different services or products (and different goals in Google Analytics), you can split the Number of leads KPI into: Forms filled, Books downloaded, Newsletter subscribers, etc.

4. Add the following metrics under Off-site KPIs: Impressions/Views, Clicks, Click-through rate, and Shares.

To get more granular data, you can split the Off-site KPIs section into four sub-sections: Organic, Social, Email, and Referrals.

5. Fill in the Previous year column with your metrics from last year.

Get the On-site KPIs metrics from your Google Analytics reports.  Get the Off-site metrics from your Google Search Console reports.  Get the Business metrics from your Sales/CRM data.

6. Fill in the Targets column with the results that you want to achieve this year.

Use industry goals to determine the growth percentage you want to achieve through content marketing. If you don’t have such goals, aim for an increase of 15–25% compared to last year.

7. Add your target period in the Time interval column.

To track the monthly results, split the time interval column into 12 months. For quarterly results, split this column into four quarters.

8. Split each of the columns under Time interval into three sub-columns - TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU - to measure your results per funnel stage.

9. Use the =SUM formula to add up results from the Time interval columns in the Current year (total) column.