Today's marketers think a lot about producing great content for their audiences. But anyone who has done this successfully knows there's more to launching and sustaining a content program than turning out engaging articles, videos and social posts—as if that weren’t challenging enough on its own.
To run content campaigns that move the needle, marketers have to know what data to rely on for their key performance indicators (KPIs), and what data to ignore. Only in this way can they accurately forecast budgets and assess return on investment (ROI). 

"The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing ROI" is a useful manual for anyone launching new content programs or trying to make existing ones more measurable. It contains such gems as "The ROI Cheat Sheet," at right, which explains why metrics like brand awareness, page impressions, and search ranks need to sync up with bottom line concepts of cost, revenue, profit and pipeline.

 The guide also encourages marketers to be relentlessly critical about the “why” and “how” behind their numbers, and to focus on attribution in order to directly connect sales and revenue to specific content marketing programs.

This will be the biggest year yet for branded publishing, and it's easy to get caught up in the frenzy and excitement. That's why marketing teams need practical frameworks to keep them focused on the science and metrics behind their campaigns. Get the full text of the guide here: