How to Use Data to Create MORE Customer-Centric Content
How to Use Data to Create MORE Customer-Centric Content
How to Use Data to Create MORE Customer-Centric Content
Are you trying to create more customer-centric content, but not sure the best place to start?
In the good ol’ days, creating content your audience loved meant “going with your gut.” But over the past decade, data tracking software has made it easier to record how well your content engages your readers.
And the best part is that the methods for gathering the right data haven’t simply increased, but they’ve even gotten easier.
That means you can start using data to create a more customer-centric content marketing strategy with minimal time, money, and headaches.
So, in today’s post, we’re going to talk about 9 metrics you should track to keep your content customer-centric.
Before we get there, though, let’s get clear on what customer-centric content is and why it matters.
What Is Customer-Centric Content (& Why Is It Important)
Customer-centric content is content that focuses on the needs and wants of your customer first and foremost. It’s a core component in any customer-centric marketing strategy.
Traditionally, companies would plan their content based on the products or services they offer. They’d look for their USP, describe the best features of their offerings, and design their messaging around these things.
In other words, they’d take a brand-centric approach and create content that focused on the company’s need to sell.
The trouble with this approach is that people tend not to buy products or services. Instead, they buy solutions to their problems. And this is where customer-centric content comes in.
Instead of starting with your own products or services, customer-centric marketing creates content that speaks to the needs and interests of your target audience. You start by understanding the issues and challenges they are facing, then show how your brand can help them solve those problems.
This means creating content that gives plenty of value to your customers. Customer-centric content is highly relevant and engaging because it is tailored to the specific needs of your target audience. As a result, it is effective in building trust and customer loyalty.
Of course, to be successful in creating great customer-centric content, you’ll need to know a lot about the people you’re targeting.
As well as basic demographic information, you must gather as much data as you can about your audience – what are their likes and dislikes? What tone of voice do they prefer? What are the challenges they want your brand to solve?
The more you know about them, the better you can tailor your content to meet their needs.
Now that we understand what customer-centric content is, let’s look at 9 metrics you can track to improve your marketing strategy.
9 Metrics that Lead to Customer-Centric Content
In-depth market research is vital to get a proper understanding of your customer base. Surveys, focus groups, and one-to-one interviews can all help you to build rich buyer personas to guide your content.
But you shouldn’t ignore the amount of insight you can get when you keep a careful eye on the metrics from your digital marketing platforms. There’s a lot this data can tell you about what your audience wants from your brand.
We’re going to look at three main areas of content creation and discuss the metrics you need to track to support your customer-centric content strategy. These categories include:
Blog
Email
Social Media
Let’s dive right into our first category: your blog.
a) Your Blog
Your brand’s blog is more than just an SEO tool. It also provides you plenty of information about what your audience wants to read about and what will have them bouncing right back off the page.
Fortunately, Google Analytics provides plenty of useful data to help you understand how people respond to your blog content. The three main metrics to track from your blog are:
1. Page Views
Perhaps the most obvious metric for the popularity of your content, page views show how many website visitors have landed on each blog post.
Of course, just landing on the page doesn’t mean that visitors have stayed to read and digest your content. But it is a good starting point to see what your customers are interested in.
Plus, a high number of page views combined with a low time-on-page might indicate that your content ideas are good but that the delivery needs some work, helping you refine your approach and tweak your tone of voice.
2) Time On Page
If people are engaged with what they are reading, they’ll spend longer on the page as they absorb and digest your blog content.
Look for the blog posts with the highest time-on-page and those with the lowest. This will give you an indicator of which topics your customers are interested in, and which leave them cold.
Over time, you can use this data to build a picture of the likely needs of your customers and develop more content that focuses on meeting those needs.
3) Bounce Rate
The bounce rate tells you how many people landed on each blog post and then bounced back off your site without visiting any other pages.
A high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily indicate the content itself is boring or irrelevant – it is entirely possible for someone to read to the end of your post without exploring your site further.
However, it does suggest that your interlinking and calls to action need some work.
You should also consider your bounce rate alongside the time-on-page. If people are mainly bouncing off after just a second or two, you know they aren’t reading your posts and can tweak your content accordingly.
b) Your Emails
A highly engaged mailing list is a powerful tool for any digital marketer. If you are aiming for customer-centric email copy, there are three essential metrics to monitor.
4) Click-to-Open Rate
The click-to-open rate tells you how many of the people who opened your email then clicked on one of the links in it.
People who click through after reading your email are generally those who resonated with your email content and want to know more. It suggests that your content is sufficiently customer-centric to get their attention.
If you are segmenting your mailing lists (you should be!), comparing the click-to-open rate for the same message to different lists can help you see which groups respond best to which content.
5) Unsubscribes
You should always expect some people to drop off your mailing list. But comparing the percentage of people who unsubscribed after each email can indicate which topics interest your audience and which make them want to come off your list.
6) List Growth Rate and Referrals
Choosing to join your mailing list is a great sign that you have something your potential customer wants.
Granted, that might be a juicy discount code if you are using offers to entice people onto your list. But it might be that they were especially interested in your lead magnet or read a great blog post and want to know more.
Of course, it isn’t just how many people join your list that matters but also where they come from. Track where new subscribers arrive from to see which of your other content is encouraging them to engage with you further.
c) Your Social Media
Social media is one of the best examples of how customer-centric content can boost your brand’s reach. Savvy digital audiences respond poorly to accounts that just sell sell sell. But sharing high-value, relevant content can help you grow your audience.
The following social media metrics will help you create more customer-centric content:
7) Engagement Rate
Engagement is any interaction with your post, including likes, shares, saves, comments, and clicks.
We’re all slightly at the mercy of the social media algorithms for the reach and distribution of our content, so the number of engagements per post isn’t that helpful. However, tracking engagement as a percentage of reach is a great indicator of which content is most popular with your audience.
8) Shares and Saves
Although they fall within the overall engagement rate, it is worth looking more closely at shares and saves when gathering data to inform a customer-centric content strategy.
These two forms of engagement are a particularly good indicator of the value of your post to your audience. If they found it useful enough to want to share it with their own audience or save it for later, you are on the right track.
Again, this will be most comparable if you calculate it as a percentage of the post’s reach.
9) Referral Traffic
This metric is found on Google Analytics instead of directly on the social media platforms. It shows you how many visitors come through to your site from different digital marketing channels, including social media.
Use UTMs to see which specific social media content drives the most traffic through to your website. If someone has seen a post on social media and is engaged enough to want to know more, it is a sign they found your content valuable.
Ok, at this point we’ve seen 9 metrics you should track when you want to build a more customer-centric content marketing strategy. Now let’s briefly look at the easiest way you can track this information in one place.
How to Track Your Marketing Metrics
When it comes to tracking your data, you really only have 2 options:
Tracking everything by hand
Using a report-building tool to propagate the data for you
The first option is tedious, tiring, and honestly ends up being more expensive in the end. That’s because putting together data by hand can lead to errors that affect your strategy. Plus, you simply need to pay for the time it takes someone to compile all that data.
The best option is to use a report-building tool like Metrics Watch:
Metrics Watch allows anyone to quickly and easily create reports from their favorite marketing channel, including:
Google Analytics
Google Search Console
Google Ads
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Mailchimp
This allows you to track metrics for customer engagement from your blog, emails, and social media accounts in one place.
And with a drag and drop builder, you don’t need any coding or “tech skills” to build your reports FAST. Once your reports are built, you can determine who needs the information and when (sent on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis).
That means your entire data collection strategy can be turned to autopilot. But the best part is how this information is shared. Rather than sending your team or clients to a 3rd party dashboard or attaching a PDF, Metrics Watch sends reports directly to their inbox.
This gives people the information they need in a format they already use. And that means you’re more likely to have people use that data for actionable change, rather than having it gather digital dust in some corner of the web.
And that’s all for now! These have been 9 metrics you can use to create more customer-centric content.
We hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, you’ll definitely want to check out the following resources:
These articles will have even more information that you can use to create more content you audience loves.
But hey, why not see Metrics Watch for yourself? Click below to start your 100% risk-free Metrics Watch trial today (no credit card needed):
Are you trying to create more customer-centric content, but not sure the best place to start?
In the good ol’ days, creating content your audience loved meant “going with your gut.” But over the past decade, data tracking software has made it easier to record how well your content engages your readers.
And the best part is that the methods for gathering the right data haven’t simply increased, but they’ve even gotten easier.
That means you can start using data to create a more customer-centric content marketing strategy with minimal time, money, and headaches.
So, in today’s post, we’re going to talk about 9 metrics you should track to keep your content customer-centric.
Before we get there, though, let’s get clear on what customer-centric content is and why it matters.
What Is Customer-Centric Content (& Why Is It Important)
Customer-centric content is content that focuses on the needs and wants of your customer first and foremost. It’s a core component in any customer-centric marketing strategy.
Traditionally, companies would plan their content based on the products or services they offer. They’d look for their USP, describe the best features of their offerings, and design their messaging around these things.
In other words, they’d take a brand-centric approach and create content that focused on the company’s need to sell.
The trouble with this approach is that people tend not to buy products or services. Instead, they buy solutions to their problems. And this is where customer-centric content comes in.
Instead of starting with your own products or services, customer-centric marketing creates content that speaks to the needs and interests of your target audience. You start by understanding the issues and challenges they are facing, then show how your brand can help them solve those problems.
This means creating content that gives plenty of value to your customers. Customer-centric content is highly relevant and engaging because it is tailored to the specific needs of your target audience. As a result, it is effective in building trust and customer loyalty.
Of course, to be successful in creating great customer-centric content, you’ll need to know a lot about the people you’re targeting.
As well as basic demographic information, you must gather as much data as you can about your audience – what are their likes and dislikes? What tone of voice do they prefer? What are the challenges they want your brand to solve?
The more you know about them, the better you can tailor your content to meet their needs.
Now that we understand what customer-centric content is, let’s look at 9 metrics you can track to improve your marketing strategy.
9 Metrics that Lead to Customer-Centric Content
In-depth market research is vital to get a proper understanding of your customer base. Surveys, focus groups, and one-to-one interviews can all help you to build rich buyer personas to guide your content.
But you shouldn’t ignore the amount of insight you can get when you keep a careful eye on the metrics from your digital marketing platforms. There’s a lot this data can tell you about what your audience wants from your brand.
We’re going to look at three main areas of content creation and discuss the metrics you need to track to support your customer-centric content strategy. These categories include:
Blog
Email
Social Media
Let’s dive right into our first category: your blog.
a) Your Blog
Your brand’s blog is more than just an SEO tool. It also provides you plenty of information about what your audience wants to read about and what will have them bouncing right back off the page.
Fortunately, Google Analytics provides plenty of useful data to help you understand how people respond to your blog content. The three main metrics to track from your blog are:
1. Page Views
Perhaps the most obvious metric for the popularity of your content, page views show how many website visitors have landed on each blog post.
Of course, just landing on the page doesn’t mean that visitors have stayed to read and digest your content. But it is a good starting point to see what your customers are interested in.
Plus, a high number of page views combined with a low time-on-page might indicate that your content ideas are good but that the delivery needs some work, helping you refine your approach and tweak your tone of voice.
2) Time On Page
If people are engaged with what they are reading, they’ll spend longer on the page as they absorb and digest your blog content.
Look for the blog posts with the highest time-on-page and those with the lowest. This will give you an indicator of which topics your customers are interested in, and which leave them cold.
Over time, you can use this data to build a picture of the likely needs of your customers and develop more content that focuses on meeting those needs.
3) Bounce Rate
The bounce rate tells you how many people landed on each blog post and then bounced back off your site without visiting any other pages.
A high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily indicate the content itself is boring or irrelevant – it is entirely possible for someone to read to the end of your post without exploring your site further.
However, it does suggest that your interlinking and calls to action need some work.
You should also consider your bounce rate alongside the time-on-page. If people are mainly bouncing off after just a second or two, you know they aren’t reading your posts and can tweak your content accordingly.
b) Your Emails
A highly engaged mailing list is a powerful tool for any digital marketer. If you are aiming for customer-centric email copy, there are three essential metrics to monitor.
4) Click-to-Open Rate
The click-to-open rate tells you how many of the people who opened your email then clicked on one of the links in it.
People who click through after reading your email are generally those who resonated with your email content and want to know more. It suggests that your content is sufficiently customer-centric to get their attention.
If you are segmenting your mailing lists (you should be!), comparing the click-to-open rate for the same message to different lists can help you see which groups respond best to which content.
5) Unsubscribes
You should always expect some people to drop off your mailing list. But comparing the percentage of people who unsubscribed after each email can indicate which topics interest your audience and which make them want to come off your list.
6) List Growth Rate and Referrals
Choosing to join your mailing list is a great sign that you have something your potential customer wants.
Granted, that might be a juicy discount code if you are using offers to entice people onto your list. But it might be that they were especially interested in your lead magnet or read a great blog post and want to know more.
Of course, it isn’t just how many people join your list that matters but also where they come from. Track where new subscribers arrive from to see which of your other content is encouraging them to engage with you further.
c) Your Social Media
Social media is one of the best examples of how customer-centric content can boost your brand’s reach. Savvy digital audiences respond poorly to accounts that just sell sell sell. But sharing high-value, relevant content can help you grow your audience.
The following social media metrics will help you create more customer-centric content:
7) Engagement Rate
Engagement is any interaction with your post, including likes, shares, saves, comments, and clicks.
We’re all slightly at the mercy of the social media algorithms for the reach and distribution of our content, so the number of engagements per post isn’t that helpful. However, tracking engagement as a percentage of reach is a great indicator of which content is most popular with your audience.
8) Shares and Saves
Although they fall within the overall engagement rate, it is worth looking more closely at shares and saves when gathering data to inform a customer-centric content strategy.
These two forms of engagement are a particularly good indicator of the value of your post to your audience. If they found it useful enough to want to share it with their own audience or save it for later, you are on the right track.
Again, this will be most comparable if you calculate it as a percentage of the post’s reach.
9) Referral Traffic
This metric is found on Google Analytics instead of directly on the social media platforms. It shows you how many visitors come through to your site from different digital marketing channels, including social media.
Use UTMs to see which specific social media content drives the most traffic through to your website. If someone has seen a post on social media and is engaged enough to want to know more, it is a sign they found your content valuable.
Ok, at this point we’ve seen 9 metrics you should track when you want to build a more customer-centric content marketing strategy. Now let’s briefly look at the easiest way you can track this information in one place.
How to Track Your Marketing Metrics
When it comes to tracking your data, you really only have 2 options:
Tracking everything by hand
Using a report-building tool to propagate the data for you
The first option is tedious, tiring, and honestly ends up being more expensive in the end. That’s because putting together data by hand can lead to errors that affect your strategy. Plus, you simply need to pay for the time it takes someone to compile all that data.
The best option is to use a report-building tool like Metrics Watch:
Metrics Watch allows anyone to quickly and easily create reports from their favorite marketing channel, including:
Google Analytics
Google Search Console
Google Ads
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Mailchimp
This allows you to track metrics for customer engagement from your blog, emails, and social media accounts in one place.
And with a drag and drop builder, you don’t need any coding or “tech skills” to build your reports FAST. Once your reports are built, you can determine who needs the information and when (sent on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis).
That means your entire data collection strategy can be turned to autopilot. But the best part is how this information is shared. Rather than sending your team or clients to a 3rd party dashboard or attaching a PDF, Metrics Watch sends reports directly to their inbox.
This gives people the information they need in a format they already use. And that means you’re more likely to have people use that data for actionable change, rather than having it gather digital dust in some corner of the web.
And that’s all for now! These have been 9 metrics you can use to create more customer-centric content.
We hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, you’ll definitely want to check out the following resources:
These articles will have even more information that you can use to create more content you audience loves.
But hey, why not see Metrics Watch for yourself? Click below to start your 100% risk-free Metrics Watch trial today (no credit card needed):
Are you trying to create more customer-centric content, but not sure the best place to start?
In the good ol’ days, creating content your audience loved meant “going with your gut.” But over the past decade, data tracking software has made it easier to record how well your content engages your readers.
And the best part is that the methods for gathering the right data haven’t simply increased, but they’ve even gotten easier.
That means you can start using data to create a more customer-centric content marketing strategy with minimal time, money, and headaches.
So, in today’s post, we’re going to talk about 9 metrics you should track to keep your content customer-centric.
Before we get there, though, let’s get clear on what customer-centric content is and why it matters.
What Is Customer-Centric Content (& Why Is It Important)
Customer-centric content is content that focuses on the needs and wants of your customer first and foremost. It’s a core component in any customer-centric marketing strategy.
Traditionally, companies would plan their content based on the products or services they offer. They’d look for their USP, describe the best features of their offerings, and design their messaging around these things.
In other words, they’d take a brand-centric approach and create content that focused on the company’s need to sell.
The trouble with this approach is that people tend not to buy products or services. Instead, they buy solutions to their problems. And this is where customer-centric content comes in.
Instead of starting with your own products or services, customer-centric marketing creates content that speaks to the needs and interests of your target audience. You start by understanding the issues and challenges they are facing, then show how your brand can help them solve those problems.
This means creating content that gives plenty of value to your customers. Customer-centric content is highly relevant and engaging because it is tailored to the specific needs of your target audience. As a result, it is effective in building trust and customer loyalty.
Of course, to be successful in creating great customer-centric content, you’ll need to know a lot about the people you’re targeting.
As well as basic demographic information, you must gather as much data as you can about your audience – what are their likes and dislikes? What tone of voice do they prefer? What are the challenges they want your brand to solve?
The more you know about them, the better you can tailor your content to meet their needs.
Now that we understand what customer-centric content is, let’s look at 9 metrics you can track to improve your marketing strategy.
9 Metrics that Lead to Customer-Centric Content
In-depth market research is vital to get a proper understanding of your customer base. Surveys, focus groups, and one-to-one interviews can all help you to build rich buyer personas to guide your content.
But you shouldn’t ignore the amount of insight you can get when you keep a careful eye on the metrics from your digital marketing platforms. There’s a lot this data can tell you about what your audience wants from your brand.
We’re going to look at three main areas of content creation and discuss the metrics you need to track to support your customer-centric content strategy. These categories include:
Blog
Email
Social Media
Let’s dive right into our first category: your blog.
a) Your Blog
Your brand’s blog is more than just an SEO tool. It also provides you plenty of information about what your audience wants to read about and what will have them bouncing right back off the page.
Fortunately, Google Analytics provides plenty of useful data to help you understand how people respond to your blog content. The three main metrics to track from your blog are:
1. Page Views
Perhaps the most obvious metric for the popularity of your content, page views show how many website visitors have landed on each blog post.
Of course, just landing on the page doesn’t mean that visitors have stayed to read and digest your content. But it is a good starting point to see what your customers are interested in.
Plus, a high number of page views combined with a low time-on-page might indicate that your content ideas are good but that the delivery needs some work, helping you refine your approach and tweak your tone of voice.
2) Time On Page
If people are engaged with what they are reading, they’ll spend longer on the page as they absorb and digest your blog content.
Look for the blog posts with the highest time-on-page and those with the lowest. This will give you an indicator of which topics your customers are interested in, and which leave them cold.
Over time, you can use this data to build a picture of the likely needs of your customers and develop more content that focuses on meeting those needs.
3) Bounce Rate
The bounce rate tells you how many people landed on each blog post and then bounced back off your site without visiting any other pages.
A high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily indicate the content itself is boring or irrelevant – it is entirely possible for someone to read to the end of your post without exploring your site further.
However, it does suggest that your interlinking and calls to action need some work.
You should also consider your bounce rate alongside the time-on-page. If people are mainly bouncing off after just a second or two, you know they aren’t reading your posts and can tweak your content accordingly.
b) Your Emails
A highly engaged mailing list is a powerful tool for any digital marketer. If you are aiming for customer-centric email copy, there are three essential metrics to monitor.
4) Click-to-Open Rate
The click-to-open rate tells you how many of the people who opened your email then clicked on one of the links in it.
People who click through after reading your email are generally those who resonated with your email content and want to know more. It suggests that your content is sufficiently customer-centric to get their attention.
If you are segmenting your mailing lists (you should be!), comparing the click-to-open rate for the same message to different lists can help you see which groups respond best to which content.
5) Unsubscribes
You should always expect some people to drop off your mailing list. But comparing the percentage of people who unsubscribed after each email can indicate which topics interest your audience and which make them want to come off your list.
6) List Growth Rate and Referrals
Choosing to join your mailing list is a great sign that you have something your potential customer wants.
Granted, that might be a juicy discount code if you are using offers to entice people onto your list. But it might be that they were especially interested in your lead magnet or read a great blog post and want to know more.
Of course, it isn’t just how many people join your list that matters but also where they come from. Track where new subscribers arrive from to see which of your other content is encouraging them to engage with you further.
c) Your Social Media
Social media is one of the best examples of how customer-centric content can boost your brand’s reach. Savvy digital audiences respond poorly to accounts that just sell sell sell. But sharing high-value, relevant content can help you grow your audience.
The following social media metrics will help you create more customer-centric content:
7) Engagement Rate
Engagement is any interaction with your post, including likes, shares, saves, comments, and clicks.
We’re all slightly at the mercy of the social media algorithms for the reach and distribution of our content, so the number of engagements per post isn’t that helpful. However, tracking engagement as a percentage of reach is a great indicator of which content is most popular with your audience.
8) Shares and Saves
Although they fall within the overall engagement rate, it is worth looking more closely at shares and saves when gathering data to inform a customer-centric content strategy.
These two forms of engagement are a particularly good indicator of the value of your post to your audience. If they found it useful enough to want to share it with their own audience or save it for later, you are on the right track.
Again, this will be most comparable if you calculate it as a percentage of the post’s reach.
9) Referral Traffic
This metric is found on Google Analytics instead of directly on the social media platforms. It shows you how many visitors come through to your site from different digital marketing channels, including social media.
Use UTMs to see which specific social media content drives the most traffic through to your website. If someone has seen a post on social media and is engaged enough to want to know more, it is a sign they found your content valuable.
Ok, at this point we’ve seen 9 metrics you should track when you want to build a more customer-centric content marketing strategy. Now let’s briefly look at the easiest way you can track this information in one place.
How to Track Your Marketing Metrics
When it comes to tracking your data, you really only have 2 options:
Tracking everything by hand
Using a report-building tool to propagate the data for you
The first option is tedious, tiring, and honestly ends up being more expensive in the end. That’s because putting together data by hand can lead to errors that affect your strategy. Plus, you simply need to pay for the time it takes someone to compile all that data.
The best option is to use a report-building tool like Metrics Watch:
Metrics Watch allows anyone to quickly and easily create reports from their favorite marketing channel, including:
Google Analytics
Google Search Console
Google Ads
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Mailchimp
This allows you to track metrics for customer engagement from your blog, emails, and social media accounts in one place.
And with a drag and drop builder, you don’t need any coding or “tech skills” to build your reports FAST. Once your reports are built, you can determine who needs the information and when (sent on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis).
That means your entire data collection strategy can be turned to autopilot. But the best part is how this information is shared. Rather than sending your team or clients to a 3rd party dashboard or attaching a PDF, Metrics Watch sends reports directly to their inbox.
This gives people the information they need in a format they already use. And that means you’re more likely to have people use that data for actionable change, rather than having it gather digital dust in some corner of the web.
And that’s all for now! These have been 9 metrics you can use to create more customer-centric content.
We hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, you’ll definitely want to check out the following resources:
These articles will have even more information that you can use to create more content you audience loves.
But hey, why not see Metrics Watch for yourself? Click below to start your 100% risk-free Metrics Watch trial today (no credit card needed):
Are you trying to create more customer-centric content, but not sure the best place to start?
In the good ol’ days, creating content your audience loved meant “going with your gut.” But over the past decade, data tracking software has made it easier to record how well your content engages your readers.
And the best part is that the methods for gathering the right data haven’t simply increased, but they’ve even gotten easier.
That means you can start using data to create a more customer-centric content marketing strategy with minimal time, money, and headaches.
So, in today’s post, we’re going to talk about 9 metrics you should track to keep your content customer-centric.
Before we get there, though, let’s get clear on what customer-centric content is and why it matters.
What Is Customer-Centric Content (& Why Is It Important)
Customer-centric content is content that focuses on the needs and wants of your customer first and foremost. It’s a core component in any customer-centric marketing strategy.
Traditionally, companies would plan their content based on the products or services they offer. They’d look for their USP, describe the best features of their offerings, and design their messaging around these things.
In other words, they’d take a brand-centric approach and create content that focused on the company’s need to sell.
The trouble with this approach is that people tend not to buy products or services. Instead, they buy solutions to their problems. And this is where customer-centric content comes in.
Instead of starting with your own products or services, customer-centric marketing creates content that speaks to the needs and interests of your target audience. You start by understanding the issues and challenges they are facing, then show how your brand can help them solve those problems.
This means creating content that gives plenty of value to your customers. Customer-centric content is highly relevant and engaging because it is tailored to the specific needs of your target audience. As a result, it is effective in building trust and customer loyalty.
Of course, to be successful in creating great customer-centric content, you’ll need to know a lot about the people you’re targeting.
As well as basic demographic information, you must gather as much data as you can about your audience – what are their likes and dislikes? What tone of voice do they prefer? What are the challenges they want your brand to solve?
The more you know about them, the better you can tailor your content to meet their needs.
Now that we understand what customer-centric content is, let’s look at 9 metrics you can track to improve your marketing strategy.
9 Metrics that Lead to Customer-Centric Content
In-depth market research is vital to get a proper understanding of your customer base. Surveys, focus groups, and one-to-one interviews can all help you to build rich buyer personas to guide your content.
But you shouldn’t ignore the amount of insight you can get when you keep a careful eye on the metrics from your digital marketing platforms. There’s a lot this data can tell you about what your audience wants from your brand.
We’re going to look at three main areas of content creation and discuss the metrics you need to track to support your customer-centric content strategy. These categories include:
Blog
Email
Social Media
Let’s dive right into our first category: your blog.
a) Your Blog
Your brand’s blog is more than just an SEO tool. It also provides you plenty of information about what your audience wants to read about and what will have them bouncing right back off the page.
Fortunately, Google Analytics provides plenty of useful data to help you understand how people respond to your blog content. The three main metrics to track from your blog are:
1. Page Views
Perhaps the most obvious metric for the popularity of your content, page views show how many website visitors have landed on each blog post.
Of course, just landing on the page doesn’t mean that visitors have stayed to read and digest your content. But it is a good starting point to see what your customers are interested in.
Plus, a high number of page views combined with a low time-on-page might indicate that your content ideas are good but that the delivery needs some work, helping you refine your approach and tweak your tone of voice.
2) Time On Page
If people are engaged with what they are reading, they’ll spend longer on the page as they absorb and digest your blog content.
Look for the blog posts with the highest time-on-page and those with the lowest. This will give you an indicator of which topics your customers are interested in, and which leave them cold.
Over time, you can use this data to build a picture of the likely needs of your customers and develop more content that focuses on meeting those needs.
3) Bounce Rate
The bounce rate tells you how many people landed on each blog post and then bounced back off your site without visiting any other pages.
A high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily indicate the content itself is boring or irrelevant – it is entirely possible for someone to read to the end of your post without exploring your site further.
However, it does suggest that your interlinking and calls to action need some work.
You should also consider your bounce rate alongside the time-on-page. If people are mainly bouncing off after just a second or two, you know they aren’t reading your posts and can tweak your content accordingly.
b) Your Emails
A highly engaged mailing list is a powerful tool for any digital marketer. If you are aiming for customer-centric email copy, there are three essential metrics to monitor.
4) Click-to-Open Rate
The click-to-open rate tells you how many of the people who opened your email then clicked on one of the links in it.
People who click through after reading your email are generally those who resonated with your email content and want to know more. It suggests that your content is sufficiently customer-centric to get their attention.
If you are segmenting your mailing lists (you should be!), comparing the click-to-open rate for the same message to different lists can help you see which groups respond best to which content.
5) Unsubscribes
You should always expect some people to drop off your mailing list. But comparing the percentage of people who unsubscribed after each email can indicate which topics interest your audience and which make them want to come off your list.
6) List Growth Rate and Referrals
Choosing to join your mailing list is a great sign that you have something your potential customer wants.
Granted, that might be a juicy discount code if you are using offers to entice people onto your list. But it might be that they were especially interested in your lead magnet or read a great blog post and want to know more.
Of course, it isn’t just how many people join your list that matters but also where they come from. Track where new subscribers arrive from to see which of your other content is encouraging them to engage with you further.
c) Your Social Media
Social media is one of the best examples of how customer-centric content can boost your brand’s reach. Savvy digital audiences respond poorly to accounts that just sell sell sell. But sharing high-value, relevant content can help you grow your audience.
The following social media metrics will help you create more customer-centric content:
7) Engagement Rate
Engagement is any interaction with your post, including likes, shares, saves, comments, and clicks.
We’re all slightly at the mercy of the social media algorithms for the reach and distribution of our content, so the number of engagements per post isn’t that helpful. However, tracking engagement as a percentage of reach is a great indicator of which content is most popular with your audience.
8) Shares and Saves
Although they fall within the overall engagement rate, it is worth looking more closely at shares and saves when gathering data to inform a customer-centric content strategy.
These two forms of engagement are a particularly good indicator of the value of your post to your audience. If they found it useful enough to want to share it with their own audience or save it for later, you are on the right track.
Again, this will be most comparable if you calculate it as a percentage of the post’s reach.
9) Referral Traffic
This metric is found on Google Analytics instead of directly on the social media platforms. It shows you how many visitors come through to your site from different digital marketing channels, including social media.
Use UTMs to see which specific social media content drives the most traffic through to your website. If someone has seen a post on social media and is engaged enough to want to know more, it is a sign they found your content valuable.
Ok, at this point we’ve seen 9 metrics you should track when you want to build a more customer-centric content marketing strategy. Now let’s briefly look at the easiest way you can track this information in one place.
How to Track Your Marketing Metrics
When it comes to tracking your data, you really only have 2 options:
Tracking everything by hand
Using a report-building tool to propagate the data for you
The first option is tedious, tiring, and honestly ends up being more expensive in the end. That’s because putting together data by hand can lead to errors that affect your strategy. Plus, you simply need to pay for the time it takes someone to compile all that data.
The best option is to use a report-building tool like Metrics Watch:
Metrics Watch allows anyone to quickly and easily create reports from their favorite marketing channel, including:
Google Analytics
Google Search Console
Google Ads
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Mailchimp
This allows you to track metrics for customer engagement from your blog, emails, and social media accounts in one place.
And with a drag and drop builder, you don’t need any coding or “tech skills” to build your reports FAST. Once your reports are built, you can determine who needs the information and when (sent on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis).
That means your entire data collection strategy can be turned to autopilot. But the best part is how this information is shared. Rather than sending your team or clients to a 3rd party dashboard or attaching a PDF, Metrics Watch sends reports directly to their inbox.
This gives people the information they need in a format they already use. And that means you’re more likely to have people use that data for actionable change, rather than having it gather digital dust in some corner of the web.
And that’s all for now! These have been 9 metrics you can use to create more customer-centric content.
We hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, you’ll definitely want to check out the following resources:
These articles will have even more information that you can use to create more content you audience loves.
But hey, why not see Metrics Watch for yourself? Click below to start your 100% risk-free Metrics Watch trial today (no credit card needed):
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