If a marketing organization defines success by the number of qualified leads it generates, all members within that team should be held accountable for generating leads—including members of the content team.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
Content teams are often responsible for a variety of production quotas and engagement goals. While this may sound well and good, these goals don’t necessarily roll up to the overarching objectives of the organization. In an extreme case, a content writer could meet all of his production quotas and engagement goals without ever producing a single piece of content that influences a prospect’s purchase decision.
For example, take a look at these two scenarios I pulled from our own Kapost data:
- Dan’s “Your 7 Step SEO-Based Content Marketing Plan” has more than double the number of average page views all other Kapost content has. Dan presumably knocked his engagement goal out of the park with this content. However, this content has never been part of a prospect’s journey to becoming a qualified lead. In other words, this content has yet to play a role in converting one of Kapost’s qualified leads.
- Gigi’s “A Close Look at HubSpot’s Brilliant Content marketing” and “5 Steps to Getting the Information You Need for Effective Content” combined have only a quarter of the number of page views Dan’s one post has. Gigi maybe struggling to meet her engagement goals, but these two pieces of content were viewed by two different prospects on their journeys to becoming qualified leads.
If these posts were the only posts these authors wrote, who would you argue is doing a better job of attaining their marketing organization’s qualified lead goals?
Content marketing is playing a larger role in the marketer’s strategy, and it’s central to generating quality leads for organizations. With that in mind, it’s increasingly important that the goals of the content team are tightly aligned with the overarching goals of the entire marketing team.
It’s increasingly important that the goals of the content team are tightly aligned with the overarching goals of the entire marketing team.
If the marketing team’s performance is measured by qualified leads, the content team should be evaluated based on their contribution to this goal. Otherwise, organizations may end up in investing in a lot of highly engaging content that is failing to drive quality leads.
And don’t let the absence of readily available conversion data on individual pieces of content deter you from setting the right goals for your content team. The data is there, you just need to buy your analytics guru a beer and kindly ask her or him to provide it.