Over 90 Percent of Marketers Are Not Confident In How They Are Measuring Content

Apparently, we’re all extremely unsure about how we measure the success our content.

By we, I mean content marketers like myself, and what I’m specifically referring to is a recent research report conducted by Contently titled “A Crisis of Confidence: The State of Content Marketing Measurement.” 

In April and early May of 2014, Contently surveyed 302 marketers split evenly across B2B and B2C businesses about their content goals and measurement practices. In conducting their research, Contently found some rather interesting yet unnerving statistics directly related to the state of content marketers. Their findings include:

90% of marketers expressed uncertainty that their key content metrics are effective in measuring business results.

73% of marketers identified Brand Awareness as a goal of their content.

69% of marketers said that they were using pageviews/unique visitors to measure the success of their content, while less than half are examining time on site. Yet, 50 percent of respondents expressed a desire to be able to measure how much real attention people are paying to their content.

7% of respondents are not measuring the success of their content in any way.

Other interesting findings include:

Only 47 percent of respondents identified lead generation as a goal, even though two-thirds of respondents work in B2B marketing in some capacity.

65% of marketers are using social shares to measure success.

Just 9 percent of marketers said they are very confident their key metrics are effective in measuring business results. However, 45 percent said that they are “kind of confident” in the effectiveness of their metrics.

So what do marketers wish they could measure but currently cannot?

60% said that they wish they could measure how people’s opinions of their brand are changing because of their content.

54% said that they wish they knew how much more likely people are to buy
their products because of their content.

Finally, 47 percent said that they wish they
knew how much overall brand awareness
their content is driving.

Because brands are dedicating more of their budget toward content marketing, and the lack of confidence in content marketers in their measurements is evidently a huge issue, this looks like a problem that is in search of a solid solution.

How confident are you in how you’re measuring your content?

Written by Luke Severn

Luke is a marketing coordinator at Kaufer DMC. He loves the Arctic Monkeys, David Fincher movies, and the Portland Trail Blazers.