We talk a lot about the importance of measuring the effectiveness of all the content that Marketing creates. It’s necessary to have insights into how those pieces are performing to ensure that resources and time aren’t being wasted. Not only is it important to measure whether Sales is actually using the content, it’s also crucial to understand if materials are moving the needle in terms of closing deals.
Here at Seismic we have partnered with Demand Metric on an upcoming Sales Content ROI Benchmark Study Report. We’re working on the final touches and analysis, but it will be packed full of incredibly interesting and useful data about how organizations currently leverage content metrics and ascertain ROI. The study’s participants are from successful B2B organizations, and three-fourths of the respondents are marketing professionals. The full report will be published shortly, but we’re giving you a sneak peek at one of the most interesting findings within the report.
Within the study, participants were asked about the sales content metrics that they currently track. There were 4 areas that respondents could indicate: None, Basic, Engagement, and Financial
78% of participants indicated that they either track no content metrics or only basic metrics.
This data reveals both a huge problem and opportunity for most organizations. Clearly, tracking no metrics whatsoever is a bad sign and should be rectified as soon as possible. But, tracking only basic metrics is also not nearly enough. The report defined basic metrics as: downloads, impressions, or reach. Simply put, those kind of basic metrics will not serve any purpose in truly aligning Marketing and Sales, nor will it help to improve an overall content strategy. Executives need to know the true ROI of content and basic stats like that aren’t going to provide what they’re looking for.
This one statistic reveals that there is a huge opportunity out there for many organizations to ramp up their content measurement efforts. We can talk all we want about the importance of content metrics but that doesn’t mean that every organization is going to suddenly become content ROI experts. It’s like telling a kid about the importance of eating their vegetables. You can tell them all you want, some of those carrots are still ending up in the garbage. It’s a slow process to begin finally understanding the ROI of content efforts, but it’s a necessary one. Utilizing a sales enablement platform equipped with robust analytics and AI capabilities is a great way to transform your organization into content metric experts.
