The Blueprint To B2B Content Metrics

The Blueprint to B2B Content Metrics
Table of Contents
Analytics versus Insights
The Three Pillars of Content

Measurement
1. THE HEALTH OF CONTENT PRODUCTION

6
Measuring Content Production FAQs............................................... 9
2. THE TOTAL REACH OF YOUR CONTENT
10
Measuring Content Reach FAQs......................................................14
3. THE CONVERSIONS YOUR CONTENT GENERATES
17
Measuring Content Conversions FAQs...........................................22
Time to Build Your Content Metrics

Dashboard
23
heres an old saying in marketing and

advertising, derived from the words of
business pioneer, John Wanamaker. It goes
like this:
Half the money I spend on marketing is
wasted; the trouble is, I dont know which
half.
Theres truth in that jokeespecially when
it comes to modern marketing. As more
marketers begin to realize that content fuels
their marketing efforts, the haziness around
measuring the return on content is a growing
concern. Seventy percent of B2B enterprises
are creating more content than a year ago,
with 52% planning to increase spending on
content, according to research from the
Content Marketing Institute.
But measuring and proving the value of all
that content is a major hurdle. Fifty percent
of B2B enterprise marketers cite the inability
to measure content effectiveness as a
challenge.
In other words, most marketers dont know
which half of their content is working.
Metrics need to deliver insights
ANALYTICS VERSUS INSIGHTS

The reason so many marketers struggle to prove the
impact of content is largely because they dont know what
to measure. Dont get me wrong: you can dig up plenty
of analytics. But analytics alone cant inform or aid you in
optimizing content effectiveness. Metrics need to deliver
insightsinsights that inform the health of the entire
content lifecycle.
Why Content Insights Matter
Top companies are

58% more likely to
track how specific
content is performing.
Often, in an attempt to quantify the impact

of content, marketers look to vanity metrics
that dont give a full picture of contents
performance with their target audiences
and prospectsif they have any way of
tracking content at all. Seventeen percent
of marketers in a Demand Metric study said they have no
content effectiveness measurements in place, and 49% are
using only basic metrics such as clicks or downloads.
But content fuels marketing, and tying it to revenue is the

most powerful way to show real results and to optimize for
more effective content moving forward. In fact, research
conducted by the Aberdeen Group found that top companies
are 58% more likely to track how specific content is
performing, and more than twice as likely to have a welldefined attribution model in place for content.
But external metrics are only part of the story.
Building and tracking efficiency in content operations is a

critical aspect of smart, strategic marketing efforts. $0.25 of
every dollar spent on content in the average mid-to-large
B2B firm is wasted on inefficient content
operations. Thats one-quarter of the money
80% of salespeople
and resources dedicated to content, gone.
Without technology or metrics to help
reported being satisfied
you understand how content is produced,
with content quality, but
and where these inefficiencies lie in your
only 20% were satisfied
processes and operations, it will continue to
go to waste.
with content findability
But, then, how is the content that does
get produced being used? Up to 70% of
B2B content goes unused because content isnt strategically
mapped to buyer interests and topics they care about, but also
because content cannot be found by sales. For example, when
Kathleen Pierce of Illumina surveyed her sales team, she found
that while 80% were satisfied with content quality, only 20%
were satisfied with content findability. They couldnt access the
content they needed to successfully selland Pierce had little
insight into how content was performing and supporting her
internal stakeholders.
To gauge contents success across the lifecycle, to ensure its
supporting your internal stakeholders, you need access to
internal metrics as well.
If content is what fuels our marketing, then we need to
measure the impact of that content across marketing.
Content metrics should not only explain performance, they
should deliver insights that help marketers make data-driven
decisions.
Anything less is just noise.
THE THREE PILLARS OF

CONTENT MEASUREMENT
So, what metrics should be applied to marketing content?
Here are the three basic pillars you need to track to build
a valuable, holistic dashboard for performance across the
content lifecycle.
1. THE HEALTH OF CONTENT PRODUCTION

This is the most ignored area in content
measurement, so we put it first. Content
has become the product of marketing, so its
important to improve your process for getting
it to market. The only way to do this is by
tracking your content production cycles.
There are four areas marketers need to
measure to understand how content flows
through the production pipeline (and remove
any clogs that pop up).
They are (1) average length of production,
(2) on-time delivery rates, (3) bottlenecks in
workflows, and (4) content coverage gaps.
Measuring Health of
Content Production
1. Average Length of
Production
2. On-Time Delivery Rates
3. Bottlenecks in
Workflows
4. Content Coverage Gaps
Average Length of Production

To get your content to market efficiently, you need to know
how long it takes to execute a production cycle. A key metric
here is the average number of days it takes to move content
from the idea phase to publication. B2B marketers need to
track this across all contentdown to individual assetsif
theyre going to accurately gauge the health of production
processes.
This cant be limited to the time it takes designers and writers

to complete their tasks; you need to measure how quickly
content moves through revisions, reviews, and approvals.
Ticketing systems are great, but to accurately benchmark
and implement timelines for content creation, you need to
capture the entire flow of production.
On-Time Delivery Rates
Marketers have become accustomed to
Missed deadlines mean
pushed deadlinesits almost a given. The
problem is that marketers usually dont have
missed opportunities
systems in place to quantify the late content
problem. Missed deadlines mean missed
opportunities, so B2B organizations need to
track and improve their on-time delivery rates by capturing
how often they miss deadlines by asset type, contributor, and
more.
Bottlenecks in Workflows
Since workflows guide content creation, marketers need to
pinpoint which tasks slow down production. These could be
big steps like submitting or designing content, or smaller, yet
critical, steps such as approvals or copyedits. To measure
this, compare the average time it takes to complete a specific
task in a workflow against how often that task is completed
late. Armed with this data, marketers can tackle bottlenecks,
many of which are easy to fix but typically hidden.
Content Coverage Gaps
In B2B marketing, mapping content to specific buyer
personas and sales stages is critical; its the only way to
consistently develop targeted, relevant, and timely content.
By aligning content in production to the buyers journey (as
well as other key objectives like regions, business units, etc.),
marketers can locate gaps in coverage and address them

strategically. Otherwise, marketers will continue to rely on
guesswork to fill important gaps, rather than actual data.
Average number
of days to produce
content
Average of content
delivered late / past
deadline
Reported per
asset type
Reported per
asset type

Average
number of
days to complete
workflow task
Number
of assets in
production by
persona and sales
stage
Measured by days
and percentage of time
delivered late
Reported per asset
Measuring Content Production FAQs

How long does it take us to produce our most common assets?
List assets: ____________________________________________________________________
Number of days in production for each asset: ________________________________
How often do we miss deadlines for our most common assets?
List assets: ____________________________________________________________________
Percentage delivered late by asset: ___________________________________________
Which tasks are slowing us down?
List assets: ____________________________________________________________________
List steps in workflow by asset: _______________________________________________
Average number of days to complete task: ___________________________________
Percentage of late task completion by task: __________________________________
Do we have enough content in production to cover each personas journey
through our pipeline?
List personas: _________________________________________________________________
List pipeline stages:___________________________________________________________
Content in production by persona and pipeline stage: ________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
2. THE TOTAL REACH OF CONTENT

Just about every marketer measures reach and engagement
in some way. Page views, clicks, sharesmost professionals
are familiar with these metrics. But most B2B organizations
are missing (1) the ability to track engagement across content
types and channels in a single place and (2) metrics on their
contents internal reach.
When it comes to reach, these are the two
critical areas to capture in your content
measurement dashboard.
Internal Reach
Measuring Total
Reach of Content
Internal Reach
External Reach
Marketing content isnt solely for buyers at

the top of the funnelat least, it shouldnt be. Youre also
producing content to be used by teams internally, enabling
sales teams and equipping customer-facing support teams.
That internal usage needs to be tracked, reported on, and
optimized against.
In a fully functioning marketing organization, internal teams
(such as various divisions of marketing, sales, support, etc.)
serve as distribution channels for content. Theyre not only
able to share assets through broadcast channels like social,
but through direct one-on-one communication channels such
as email, offering relevant content to buyers based on their
specific roles, sales stages, or interests.
In order to facilitate this kind of internal consumption,
distribution, and tracking, marketers need to complete two
steps.
10
First, marketing teams must organize

content in a central, accessible, and intuitive
Only 27% of B2B
repository from which various teams can
marketers track content
access and distribute content. When content
utilization metrics
is organized by critical marketing objectives
such as personas, sales stages, campaigns,
and regions, marketers can easily find assets and repurpose
them, and stakeholders outside of marketing can quickly
identify and distribute the most relevant content.
Secondly, marketers need to track the internal reach of their
content to ensure its meeting the needs of the organization.
This step in content measurement is often skipped or plainly
ignored. As a result, many marketers cant determine which
assets provide value to internal teams as they facilitate
different stages of the customer lifecycle. For instance,
marketing teamsparticularly in field and product marketing
groupsproduce content meant to be consumed and
utilized by the sales team. But few actually know which assets
are gaining internal traction. Only 27% of B2B marketers
track content utilization metrics, resulting in lots of wasted
effort; as much as 70% of B2B marketing content isnt used
by sales teams.
Creating a closed feedback loop from internal reach
to external reach requires marketers to measure and
benchmark the following criteria:
1. How much marketing content is being consumed and
digested by internal teams?
2. Are these teams using that content to facilitate and drive
engagement with buyers?
3. What kind of engagement are we getting from buyers as a
result of internal shares of our content?
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Internal
Consumption
Internal
Shares
# Month over Month internal views of

assets
# MoM internal downloads of assets
# MoM internal shares of assets via email
or social
# MoM referral traffic from internal shares
Referrals
Earned
This kind of closed loop should be reported in your
dashboard. Only when the marketing team can see content
metrics and understand how content is digested and shared
by internal stakeholders, can they pull the right levers to
increase activation. These metrics are a crucial, yet often
overlooked, element of a content measurement dashboard.
External Reach
Reach is a difficult metric to define because

Up to 70% of B2B
the ways marketers track it (impressions,
marketing content
engagement, etc.) often vary from channel
goes unused
to channel and system to system. Whats
important to calculate is how content creates an
engagement (a click, a view, a share, a download, an email
open, etc.) across the channels and tools used to reach
buyers.
Reach metrics become insights when they go beyond simply
counting engagement levels and instead inform which levers
you can pull to drive further growth. The diagram on the next
page describes areas of measurement for external reach.
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CrossChannel
Reach
Engagement
by Category
Top
Engaged
Assets
# Engagements per month by type of engagement (i.e.

views, downloads, opens, etc.)
Traffic by channel category (i.e. Direct, Paid, Organic, etc.)
Referral percentage by channel source
# Engagements by content type (i.e. blog post, video, email,
etc.)
# Engagements by buyer persona
# Engagements by sales stages
10 most engaged assets per quarter
10 most shared assets per quarter
A useful B2B dashboard will track your cross-channel

reach, including engagement metrics such as: email opens
and downloads, which channels are driving the most
engagement, how fluctuations in channel performance
impact total engagement across each channel, and which
assets create the most engagement over a specific period
of time. Again, most marketers are tracking some, if not all,
of these metrics, but in disparate spreadsheets. To provide
a full picture of effectiveness, they need to be in a single
dashboard.
13
Measuring Content Reach FAQs

How often are internal teams (marketing, sales, support, etc.)
viewing and/or downloading our content?
Number of internal views of all content for the past three months:
Month 1:_____________________
Month 2: _____________________
Month 3: _____________________
Number of internal downloads of all assets for the past three months:
Month 1:_____________________
Month 2: _____________________
Month 3: _____________________
How often are internal teams sharing our content
and what engagement is that driving back?
Number of internal shares of assets for the past three months:
Month 1:_____________________
Month 2: _____________________
Month 3: _____________________
Referral traffic driven by internal shares of content for the past three
months:
Month 1:_____________________
Month 2: _____________________
Month 3: _____________________
14
Which channels are driving the most engagement with our content?
Page views from website/blog:_________________________________________________
Downloads from landing pages:________________________________________________
Email opens:___________________________________________________________________
Views on video:________________________________________________________________
Other:__________________________________________________________________________
Which channels are delivering overall engagement for our content?
List channels in use:____________________________________________________________
Total traffic by channel (per month):___________________________________________
Percentage of traffic by channel (per month):__________________________________
Total traffic across channels (per month):______________________________________
Which content types drive the most engagement?
List content types in use:_______________________________________________________
Engagements by content type (per month):____________________________________
Which buyer personas and sales stages are the most engaged?
List buyer personas:____________________________________________________________
Engagements per persona (per month):________________________________________
List sales stages:_______________________________________________________________
Engagements per sales stage (per month):_____________________________________
15
What are the ten most engaged with and shared assets each month?
Most engaged assets per month
Complete the following information for each of the top ten assets
Title:___________________________________________
Author:________________________________________
Content Type:_________________________________
Number of engagements:_____________________
Most shared assets per month
Complete the following information for each of the top ten assets
Title:___________________________________________
Author:________________________________________
Content Type:_________________________________
Number of shares:____________________________
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3. THE CONVERSIONS YOUR CONTENT

GENERATES
Similar to internal reach metrics, measuring how content
performs within your pipeline is a frequently missed aspect
of reporting. Lacking these metrics puts significant stress
on the marketing team when determining
the value of content efforts. Content serves
Content serves all
all aspects of the sales and marketing funnel,
aspects of the sales
helping move buyers through each stage of
the sales cycle. But without conversion metrics, and marketing funnel
marketers are in the dark when determining
the true influence of content within these
stages, and cant optimize future production based on
performance.
Marketers can address this gap head on by reporting the
content score of assets, campaigns, and content categories.
A content score simply uses an attribution model for the
content that generates leads, opportunities, and revenue at
each stage of the pipeline. For instance, if your pipeline is
made up of three stages (marketing-qualified leads, salesaccepted leads, and closed deals), you would track the assets
that generate the most conversions for each of these stages.
The most common way to determine a content score for any
asset, campaign, or category of content (such as a specific
topics or themes, interviews, instructional assets, lists, etc.)
is to evaluate each buyers movement through a stage of the
pipeline and the content consumed during that stage, then
divide the conversion by the number of assets, campaigns,
or categories touched. You can also apply a first touch / last
touch attribution model to each asset within that journey,
giving greater weight to content that brought the buyer into
or through that stage of the pipeline.
17
To explain how this works, lets look at an example of scoring

individual assets that a buyer touches while moving from a
lead to a marketing qualified lead (MQL).
In this example, the lead touches six assets: a whitepaper, an
email, two blog posts, a video, and a webinar, in that exact
order. So the buyers journey from lead to MQL looks like this:
Example of a B2B Buyers Content Journey:

Lead to MQL
Stage: Lead
First Touch: Whitepaper
Second Touch: Email
Third Touch: Blog Post
Fourth Touch: Blog Post
Fifth Touch: Video
Sixth Touch: Webinar

Those six assets served to convert one MQL,
so given equal weight, each asset would earn
a content score of /.
18
Stage: MQL
But when I am using a first touch / last touch attribution

model, providing greater weight for the content assets that
(1) Introduced and (2) converted the buyer at this stage of the
pipeline, 30% is attributed to each of the assets touched at
the beginning and end of the MQL stage, with the remaining
40% spread evenly across the four content assets consumed
between the first and last touch. The content scores for the
assets in this example would be calculated like this:
Scoring the Content Journey with First Touch /

Last Touch Weighted Attribution: Lead to MQL
Whitepaper
Content Score = 0.3
Email
Content Score = 0.1
Blog Post
Content Score = 0.1
Blog Post
Content Score = 0.1
Video
Content Score = 0.1
Webinar
Content Score = 0.3
19
For the purposes of reporting, this operation should be

performed across all buyers at each stage based on their
individual content journeys, and then sorted by individual
asset, campaign (where multiple assets are rolled up under
a single theme or initiative), and category (which can span
several content types and appear in multiple campaigns).
You can also use this model to calculate and assign revenue
contribution when buyers move through the final stage
of the sales pipeline. Performed across each stage, and
averaged across all buyers journeys at each stage, the
reporting model looks like the one below.
Scoring the Content Journey through the Deal Cycle:

MQL to Closed Deal
Stages of
Pipeline
Volume in Stage
Metrics to Capture
MQLs
600
Content Score by Asset

Content Score by Campaign (multiple assets and content types)
Content Score by Category (multiple content types and campaigns)
SALs
200

Closed
Deals
20

Revenue by asset
Revenue by campaign (multiple assets and content types)
Revenue by category (multiple content types and campaigns)
20
As content programs advance within the organization,

so must the reporting. By measuring only top-of-funnel
performance, the content itself will not be seen as valuable
beyond driving traffic and new names into the database.
Content scoring ensures you can prove the value of content
in driving conversions at each stage of the pipeline. It
also enables marketing teams to determine which assets,
campaigns, and categories of content have the most impact
throughout the pipeline. In many cases, successful content
at one stage may not drive results at another. The content
digested at the beginning of buyers journeys may not be the
same as the content that resonates near the end.
Content scoring ensures you can

prove the value of content in driving
conversions at each stage of pipeline
Content scoring allows your teams to discover and optimize
future production based on these patterns. For advanced
marketers, content score is a crucial step in reporting
the impact of content on driving conversions, and should
be featured prominently in the content measurement
dashboard.
21
Measuring Content Conversion FAQs

What stages make up my sales and marketing pipeline?
List each stage:_________________________________________________________________
Which assets are driving the most conversions at each stage?
Name top ten assets based on conversions generated for each stage
(per quarter):___________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
Which campaigns are driving the most conversions at each stage?
Name top ten campaigns (contain multiple assets) based on conversions
generated for each stage:______________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
Which categories of content are resonating with buyers at each stage?
List categories of content your organization actively produces:
________________________________________________________________________________
List each category based on conversions generated for each stage:
________________________________________________________________________________
22
Time to Build Your Content

Metrics Dashboard
For B2B marketers, content development isnt just designed
for top-of-funnel activity. It fuels every touchpoint in the
buyers journey.
A B2B marketing dashboard needs to look at the health
of content production cycles, the internal and external
engagement sparked by content, and how content moves
buyers through the pipeline.
Content is growing up within B2B enterprises. Your reporting
needs to evolve along with it.
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Need insights?
Get the metrics that matter with
Kapost.
Kapost empowers B2B marketers with a complete
dashboard for evaluating and optimizing
performance across the content lifecycle.
Get to Know
Kapost Insights
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The Blueprint to B2B Content Metrics

Analytics versus Insights

The Three Pillars of Content

1. THE HEALTH OF CONTENT PRODUCTION

Time to Build Your Content Metrics