Content marketing is still on the rise, everything from blogs to sharing on social media and more. As with any strategy, perfecting the avenues for success is vital when reaching out to our online audience. According to Forbes magazine, these are the ten ways in which content will continue to evolve in 2015:
- Visual materials will continue to dominate.
- Personalization will increase in importance.
- Mobile-friendly accessibility is an absolute must.
- More concise narratives will replace white papers.
- Customers will be used as storytellers.
- Marketing on social media across multiple channels.
- The use of interactive applications for product descriptions.
- Guest blogging and collaborative marketing.
- Ways of sizing up the competition.
- Content campaign measurements and results.
Number ten brings us to the subject of this article, using analytics to create the perfect strategy for online content marketing. Currently, two-thirds of companies are not using analytics to formally evaluate and examine the success (or shortcomings) of their marketing strategies, but despite this statistic, money spent on marketing analytics is set to increase by 73 percent over the next three years.
There are plenty of free and low-cost options available for marketing analytics in the online universe. Here are four of the most popular methods being effectively utilized to fine tune content strategies while still remaining on a budget:
Google Analytics
One of the most popular platforms for analysis, Google offers a wide variety of tools to their online users. To make it even easier, they have plenty of resources available for learning to use their methods, everything from an Analytics Academy to seminars and video training. They are geared towards assisting anyone from the introductory novice, to the intermediate and more advanced users.
Free and premium services available
Piwik
Similar to Google analytics, Piwik allows you to examine pageviews and ecommerce statistics in real time. You can customize your dashboard, create plugins and choose from different reports. There is also the ability to automatically track downloads on your site to better understand which is your most popular content. This is very useful when it comes time to create new content, since you are more familiar with which topics and information are most relevant to your readers.
Clicky
Another free option, Clicky looks at both the number of total visitors on any given page and it also tracks their actions. Onsite monitoring lets you see whether your users are new and unique or are repeat readers. Even further, you can examine individual user actions, history and view associate data such as user names and email addresses. You can set up alerts to be notified when a customer performs a certain action, like downloading material or logging into an account.
Free and low-cost platforms available
CrazyEgg
This low-cost method offers more than a look at where your customers are going on your website, it examines how they are interacting with those pages. This more comprehensive approach will show what drives users to perform which functions and features on your site.
These results will show where consumers intentions are more geared and offer a more realistic view of which content is getting the most attention.
Prices range from $9 per month for basic up to $99 for Professional
Now you can see that there are many free and low-cost options when it comes to using analytics for better content marketing strategies. Using these tools will give you a better understanding of your online readership.
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Nick Rojas is a business consultant and writer who lives in Los Angeles and Chicago. He has consulted small and medium-sized enterprises for over twenty years. He has contributed articles to Visual.ly, Entrepreneur, and TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter @NickARojas, or you can reach him at NickAndrewRojas@gmail.com
