Content analytics helps companies understand the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. However, when combined with actionable insights, businesses can find solutions for improving those campaigns, informing product development, and optimizing the customer experience.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how companies can use content analytics to deliver business results.
Defining Content Analytics
Content analytics involves analyzing content performance to derive valuable information and conclusions. Businesses that harness it correctly can make decisions that enhance content strategy and achieve marketing goals.
Enterprises have found ways to collect terabytes of data but are not always sure or able to do anything valuable with it. Analytics go beyond data and help organizations discover the underlying motivations for customer behavior, new ways of viewing products and industries, and how to boost customer engagement.
The Role of Content Analytics
When companies think of content analytics, they immediately focus on tools that provide data on content performance. These tools include Google Analytics, which tracks web traffic and bounce rate, and newsletter and email marketing tools that show open and click-through rates.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, the five most common metrics to assess content performance are conversions (73%), email engagement (71%), website traffic (71%), website engagement (69%), and social media analytics (65%).
However, the ability to gather content analytics doesn’t equate to content insights. Content analytics provides a foundation for drawing insights and is a key part of the overall process.
That process involves:
- Collecting data on how content is being consumed and engaged with.
- Applying analytics to quantify and appropriately measure that consumption.
- Interpreting insights based on the analyzed data to make informed decisions about content strategy.
Worth Reading: How Content Analytics is Driving Effective Content Management
Tools to Help Derive Content Analytics
To correctly interpret insights from content data, enterprises should have the right tools in their technology stacks. Some of the types of tools to consider include:
A/B Testing Tools
A/B testing tools compare two or more content variations to see which performs better. For example, they can uncover which landing page or color scheme variant leads to the most conversions.
By identifying the better-performing content, A/B testing tools such as Adobe Target offer marketers actionable insights into user preferences, enabling businesses to refine their content strategy accordingly.
Journey Analytics Solutions
Journey analytics solutions track user interactions across multiple touchpoints and channels, providing a holistic view of the customer journey. Tools like Adobe Journey Optimizer fall under this category and can help businesses pinpoint weak points in their customer journeys and optimize them to deliver personalized and engaging experiences. This is especially important for modern companies that aim to provide an omnichannel experience for their customers.
Social Media Analytics Tools
Enterprises are increasingly turning to social media channels such as LinkedIn to distribute their content further and generate demand for their products and services.
In these scenarios, social media analytics solutions such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social have become key tools for content analytics. They can gather surface-level data such as likes and comments but also drill down into the data and uncover insights such as what content resonates the most, audience demographics, and other ways to improve strategy.
Potential Use Cases for Content Analytics
After acquiring the right tools, businesses need to utilize them to draw out valuable content insights. Here are some use cases where content analytics can drive positive business impact:
Product Development
Content analytics can help improve product development by leveraging customer feedback to differentiate between customer wants and their actual needs. This feedback can guide feature additions and product innovation to meet market demands without creating too many unnecessary enhancements.
For example, a fitness app might have volumes of customer data about which features customers prefer using. However, only by pairing that data with conversations on social media would they know that customers aren’t entirely sure how to maximize one of the most recently added features. With content analytics, they can produce content that educates their customers on this feature and improves engagement on the app.
Marketing Campaigns
With content analytics, brands can deliver more effective marketing campaigns. For example, a clothing brand that typically focuses on winter clothing can assess when customers search for their products outside the typical season. They can then launch a social media campaign or newsletter series to advertise an upcoming event during the Spring or Summer season.
Localization Strategies
Businesses can use content analytics to develop localization strategies by segmenting their audience based on geographical or cultural factors. This allows them to create more personalized and relevant content for customers in different regions.
For example, a tech brand considering new markets might discover that customers in South America typically enter their content funnel at a point other than their North American counterparts. The reason is that those customers can find product review videos in their native language from influencers but not from the business themselves. The business can then adjust its strategy to offer localized versions of its website, social media profiles, and a dedicated video channel to appeal to these customers at other points in the funnel.
Optimizing Customer Experience
Content analytics can help businesses to identify the most effective channels for engaging with their audience. Businesses can tailor their content distribution strategies to increase engagement and conversion rates by understanding where and how customers prefer to interact.
For example, if a tech retailer found that their customers were watching video reviews more than reading the monthly newsletter, they could focus on delivering more product-focused videos on their website and adjacent channels.
Pricing Strategies
Content analytics can inform pricing strategies by analyzing customer behavior and market trends. Businesses can use this data to implement dynamic pricing models, adjust prices based on demand, and identify the optimal pricing points that maximize revenue while remaining competitive. For example, a travel marketplace could offer discounted prices during off-peak times to encourage bookings.
Regulatory Compliance
Content analytics can help businesses achieve regulatory compliance by providing a deeper understanding of data handling and customer privacy requirements. By analyzing content and feedback, companies can identify potential compliance issues and implement measures to mitigate risks.
For example, if a fintech company discovers more feedback from customers via their customer service reps and on social media about data privacy worries, they can update their policy to provide more transparency to customers.
Drive Business Results with Content Intelligence
Extracting content insights from content data can help businesses across a number of sectors maximize the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts. However, accomplishing this after only collecting and analyzing data for a long time can be challenging.
Content Bloom offers a content intelligence framework (CIF) that provides real-time insights into your content supply chain. It helps enterprises measure their content performance and uncover trends that can remove process waste and improve content effectiveness. Additionally, as an Adobe partner and digital experience expert, we’re well-versed in tools such as Adobe Journey Optimizer and Target. We can help you implement these solutions and gain more insights from your customer journeys.
If you’re ready to turn content data into insights that produce a return on content investment, contact us to learn more.
