70% of companies are actively investing in content marketing, and 60% regard it as an important part of overall strategic planning. These points emphasize the need for a strong content marketing strategy.
A strategy is only as good as its tools. If you have a winning strategy, but unreliable resources to pull it all together, your plan might fall apart at the execution level. The challenge isn't creating a strategy, but rather, finding the perfect tools to help you manage and work through your plan.
You need tools to provide accurate metrics, the insights that will inform better decisions, and come ready with the customization options that will make your dashboard a functional asset.
Here's a list of analytics tools that will help you measure the impact of your content marketing. If you're looking for customizable metrics, social media ROI, team collaboration, and SEO information, these tools are here to help.
Content Marketing Analytics
Your campaigns should be tracked every step of the way — not only for your benefit, but your audiences'. To continuously delight your customers, you have to know what's working and what's not. That's why the tools you're using to analyze results are so important — you get a better picture of who your customers are and how they interact with your content.
Whether it's a Twitter campaign, an email newsletter, or a new batch of offers, your strategy depends on content marketing to connect with customers.
1. HubSpot Marketing Hub
Price: Starts at $40/mo. for Marketing Hub Starter
HubSpot's Marketing Hub was designed with the busy content marketer in mind. This set of tools offers robust analytics software to help you keep track of performance in one place.
For example, you'll be able to track customer lifecycles from beginning to end and configure reports by contact or company. This will help you analyze trends your customers display as time passes.
Additionally, you have the tools to track website activity and analyze web behavior in a page-by-page breakdown. Locate the traffic sources that are most beneficial in bringing in customers with the metrics tool, and if you want to access this data based on a specific region or URL, you'll have those options available.
HubSpot's analytics tools help you figure out how to drive value and target your campaigns so you're performing campaigns that are going to bring you the most benefit. You'll have nearly everything you need to make data-driven marketing decisions.
2. Buffer
Price: Starts at $15/mo. for Buffer Pro
Buffer's content marketing analytics offer you the option to build reports according to your goals. You can add or remove custom metrics on the performance of numerous social media accounts. With these reports, you can export those reports for shareability.
Your reports will be updated on a daily basis, so you can be sure you're receiving timely data. Buffer's analytics are designed to help you see channel performance at a detailed level, from one dashboard.
The software offers engagement metrics for each account individually. This helps you gain an intricate understanding of how customers are interacting with social content. You can measure stories, posts, and hashtag performance, as well as access the demographics of your audience across channels.
3. Google Analytics
Price: Free
Google Analytics has an expansive system of tools for content marketing analysis. For example, you can use the software to access insights that are unique to campaigns you run with the search engine.
The intuitive interface is easy to pick up, and it can be used to understand the performance of your content on multiple platforms. The analytics tool integrates with Google's array of business software, so you can access insights in one place.
4. SimilarWeb
Price: Free plan, or starts at $199/mo.
SimilarWeb provides traffic and engagement industry standards and tells you where your website stands among them. This information is useful for discovering how your performance stacks up against that of competitors'.
With SimilarWeb's software, you’ll be able to break down the numbers of your content by daily active users, sessions per user, use time, and their rank. Discover more information about your audience, like their web behavior and interests, to improve acquisition strategy.
When you have a deep understanding of how to acquire customers using SimilarWeb's tools, you'll know what type of content is most interesting to them.
5. Moz
Price: Starts at $99/mo. for Moz Starter
Moz measures the impact of your SEO-optimized content. You'll gain insight about how your work is ranking among others in your industry and what keywords are the most effective to use in your strategy.
Moz's software will track your site's keyword rank and how visible it is over time to learn what is and isn't performing well among audiences. Additionally, track how competitors are ranking on search engine results pages; This will help you spot how they aren't reaching customers and where you can reach them in your campaigns.
Use Moz’s detailed reports to see how your content is reaching audiences and what you can do to improve that reach.
5. Hotjar
Price: Starts at $89/mo. for 2,000 page views a day
Use Hotjar to track sessions on your site. Hotjar provides heat maps of how and where customers are spending their time when they visit your website. They create real-time videos of how visitors are moving and clicking through your site.
This allows you to hone in on what content is catching your customer’s eye. You can also track conversions and make inferences about which stage in the buyer's journey customers might be leaving.
7. SEMrush
Price: Starts at $99/mo. for Pro
Though this tool is used for SEO tracking, it's super helpful for digital marketers. Use it for tracking keyword performance in your latest campaign or to learn what language is grabbing your customers’ attention.
SEMrush also provides tools for monitoring brand mentions. So if people are talking about your company online, in a LinkedIn post, for example, you'll see that activity. This way, you can monitor the perception of your brand.
Additionally, the software tracks Google rankings and what pages on your website are earning the most traffic. Discovering what is driving visitors to your website helps you adjust the content you're presenting accordingly.
8. Quintly
Price: Starts at $300/mo.
This software provides you with social media analytics to analyze your content marketing campaigns. Quintly helps you make smarter decisions when it comes to social planning. The tools equip you with customizable metrics, so you can learn the insights that will be the most helpful in planning your strategy.
Quintly does a deep dive into all of your accounts to uncover metrics, such as tweet performance. You can also sort the reports by teams, so your colleagues also have access.
Reports can be automated and measured by impact using quintly's machine learning-powered system. Users can access the API, integrate with popular software like Google Search, and learn how to overcome data silos.
Quintly serves as a great source for customizable metrics for you and your team.
9. BuzzSumo
Price: Starts at $99/mo. for Pro
Analyze trends using BuzzSumo. This software shows you real-time views of the most popular trends by location or topic. So if you want to create content that has a great chance of being relevant to your audience.
Trends are also available to be filtered by location, so if you have international customers, you'll have knowledge about what's popular in their regions.
BuzzSumo lets you customize your feed after joining, so you'll only gain data that matters. If you're struggling to come up with content ideas, you can find inspiration on the website. Additionally, you can identify keywords, access content examples that are proven to be successful, and use the data provided by the software to learn how to drive traffic to your content.
10. Kissmetrics
Price: Starts at $199/mo. for Silver
With Kissmetrics, you can put a person behind the data. The software allows you to spot a customer's journey across multiple devices, analyze their behavior on your website, and provides data about conversions.
The conversion metrics provided include bounce rate and time on site. Kissmetrics' software focuses on behavioral analytics — helpful for knowledge about how customers react to your content. You'll learn what's valuable to users and how to keep them coming back.
Content tools are going to make your life as a marketer easier. Software that offers organization, supports collaboration, and gives you creative freedom will help you bring your ideas to life. When you think about how to delight your audience, having the right tools on your side can eliminate the worry of making sure it's all being managed.
