Proven Methods for Generating Leads: Content Marketing, Part One

The art and discipline of content marketing is not for the faint of heart. I do a lot of article marketing and video promotion for my clients and one of the most common questions I get is how to track the success rate of your efforts. It’s actually quite easy if you know what to look for.

This is important because many people who try content marketing give up because it ends up being a daunting project with few apparent benefits. The reason for this is usually attributed to the hype generated by internet marketing gurus looking to sell a product. They will usually claim extremely high success rates from one or two items. They seek to convince you that their secret method can make you rich overnight through article marketing.

Let’s take a look at the facts regarding conventional business practices. Legitimate online or offline business owners track their sales and determine their cost per customer as well as their cost per lead. Market-savvy business owners pay close attention to their most efficient and profitable methods of generating leads.

Depending on the return on investment, brick-and-mortar stores can pay upwards of $10 to $20 per lead through the use of radio, newspaper, and yellow page advertising. There is a definite reason why the government gives you a tax exemption for promoting your business; They want you to promote their business to make more money even though promoting your business is expensive.

The first metric to consider is the cost per lead of content marketing. Here’s an example of the cost factors involved in writing articles for promotion. You may be writing the articles yourself or buying them from a writer at a specific price and then submitting them to article directories yourself. Some people outsource the entire process.

If you have a lead capture form on the web page that is linked to the article signature, you will tend to see an increase in subscribers when an article is published. You can also analyze your traffic stats and track article publication dates and compare them to trend lines in Google Analytics. If you build a solid base of articles around a particular niche, over time you become an “expert” in your field.

If you have extensive knowledge in your niche, your accumulated body of work will follow you as people start reading your work. Generating leads now becomes easier for you due to the accumulated material that you have accumulated over time. Of course, you can’t measure the credibility factor very easily, but it’s important, especially when you’re getting into social media marketing.

In the second part of this series, we will go into detail about metrics. Like any marketing strategy, the results must be measurable to duplicate success. Tracking your marketing efforts is not an idle suggestion but an imperative when it comes to running your business. You must be able to control your expenses and maximize your return on investment. This is an essential step in effective business management.