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How To Set Content Marketing Goals That Matter to the Business

How To Set Content Marketing Goals That Matter to the Business

Marketing goals often use soft, fuzzy language like “brand awareness,” “credibility,” and “education.”

They’re nice things for the business, but they aren’t easy to measure, and worse, they don’t speak to what’s important to the business.

For marketing to get the recognition (and budget) it deserves, set goals that incorporate the language of your executives and sales colleagues. Use verbs like generate, grow, reduce, and retain. Not only will you set marketing on a different level in your organization, but you’ll also set your brand’s marketing apart from the rest.

Brand awareness has been (and likely will remain) the most common goal of content marketers. In the most recent CMI research, brand awareness ranks at the top, with 87% of marketers naming it as a goal of their program.

On the opposite end, less than half of marketers (49%) say generating sales/revenue is a goal.

Yet, scrutinizing what the most successful marketers say, their goals are more likely to contain those verbs loved by executives and sales teams:

  • Generate demand/leads (89% most successful vs. 49% least successful)
  • Nurture subscribers/audiences/leads (77% vs. 36%)
  • Generate sales/revenue (65% vs. 26%)

To change the conversation and gain the respect and budget marketing deserves, focus on these four goals:

1. Grow subscribers

Unlike a customer database, a subscriber database contains customers, prospects, referrals, and potential referrals. These people see your content as valuable enough to provide their contact information. In doing so, they also give you permission to subtly market to them.

When it makes sense

If you regularly publish content, such as a newsletter, podcast, video channel, etc., subscribers are essential. It lets you contact them without an intermediary gatekeeper like social media or pay-per-click advertising.

More specifically, adopt subscriber goals when your business wants to penetrate a new market, compete with a high-profile market leader, or begin the content marketing journey.

Profitable actions to track

Measure progress by the number of subscribers to an owned channel (email newsletter, blog alerts, magazine, podcast, etc.)

Compare the subscriber sales conversion rate with the general audience conversion rate. You can also compare those two groups in terms of total sales value and lifetime sales value.

Go deeper into the subscribed audience as a goal:

2. Generate leads

Great content can encourage consumers to convert into prospects by signing up for a demo, registering for an event, or requesting access to a resource center. Unlike subscribers, these leads provide more than an email address. They trade more information about themselves because they see value in the content offered.

For example, they may share their role in the company to get content tailored for their position or complete a quiz to get answers specific to their interests.

When it makes sense

To help the sales team identify or qualify new prospects, this type of content is a must. It can also help nurture leads through the sales funnel.

Profitable actions to track

Measure content’s impact with form completion, downloads, and landing page conversion rates.

Assess conversion rates through the sales funnel. Measure the percentage of marketing- and sales-qualified leads.

To go deeper on tracking lead generation, check out:

CAVEAT: Some leads aren’t really leads. People provide more detailed information to get the piece of content but aren’t interested in your product or service now.  Consider converting these not-really leads into opt-in subscribers who may become more valuable over time.

3. Generate sales through support and enablement

Supporting sales with content typically involves creating pieces that offer proof points to help customers decide to choose (or justify choosing) your product or service. Think of testimonials and case studies that show how similar customers have solved their problems.

When it makes sense

Goals around growing sales or adding new revenue streams benefit from this content. (So, it always makes sense to create it.)

Profitable actions to track

Measure your sales support through lead-to-customer conversion rates, effect on time to close new customers, and revenue generated.

Go deeper on aligning content with sales:

4. Retain clients (and reduce customer support costs)

Though many treat content marketing as a top-of-the-funnel play, content can also work to reinforce the customer’s decision post-sale. How-to and activation content ensures the customer gets value from the purchase — and is likely to buy again (or make a referral).

When it makes sense

To reduce costs (i.e., high volume of support calls), customer support and loyalty content works well.

If the business model involves repeat business or prioritizes upselling or add-ons, this content can help achieve those goals.

Profitable actions to track

Measure the impact by the percentage of existing customers who consume content, the reduction in the number of support calls, the number of repeat customers, revenue from upselling, customer retention rate, and changes in churn rate.

Speak up about marketing’s goals

Once you’ve crafted goals that speak the language of sales and executives, don’t forget to verbalize them to the marketing team, the sales team, and other adjacent teams, as well as the C-suite.

No matter which goal-setting framework you use, incorporate the elements of the FAST framework outlined by Donald and Charles Sull in this MIT Sloan article — frequently discussed, ambitious, specific, and transparent.

And with that, you’ve established an innovative content marketing program tied to business outcomes that will net outcomes any colleague will appreciate.

Updated from a May 2022 article.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Ann Gynn

Ann Gynn

Ann Gynn lives up to her high school nickname (Editor Ann) as an editorial consultant for the Content Marketing Institute. As the founder of G Force Communication, Ann regularly combines words and strategy for B2B, B2C, and nonprofits. Former college adjunct faculty, Ann also helps train professionals in content so they can do it themselves. Follow Ann on Twitter @anngynn or connect on LinkedIn.