How to Centralize Content Marketing Analytics

Posted August 1, 2019

Your content marketing team depends on collaboration to come up with campaign after brilliant campaign. As the Content Marketing Institute’s Deborah Holstein puts it, “Great creative needs collaboration.”

I agree. In fact, I would go one step further: Great creative needs great collaboration.

Yet, if your team isn’t all on the same page when it comes to content marketing analytics, they won’t be able to reach the right decisions on each campaign. When you centralize analytics, as Mode.com analytics expert Melissa Bierly points out, you foster collaboration.

Not just among your content team. With centralized analytics, your analytics and content team can work hand in hand to produce better results in less time.

Not only will you improve collaboration, but even more importantly, everyone on the content team will be looking at the same data. No more data conflicts between your New York team and your LA office. No more “oops” moments when your West Coast team blows your content budget because they didn’t have real-time access to the East Coast team’s spend.

Centralizing your content analytics will save your teams’ time and hassle. That’s why, if you haven’t done it yet, you need to centralize your content marketing analytics. Here’s how:

First, Define Your Goals

If you don’t know where you want to go, it’s impossible to find a way to get there. Guesswork isn’t an option.

Before you look for a centralized analytics solution, decide what metrics you need to measure. As my former colleague, Brad Wikstrom advises, “not all metrics need to be actionable.”

But you do, however, need to plan for scale when you set your analytics goals. Look at where you want to be one, five, or even ten years from now. Shop for a solution that will expand to accommodate the metrics you’ll need to measure both now and in the future.

Create an Analytics Road Map to Get You There

As Deloitte’s Jane Griffin and Tom Davenport point out, you need to start by meeting with your content team to assess your current analytic capabilities and needs. Next, outline your best estimate of your future needs.

After you’ve clarified those key details, create a plan that can meet your needs—both now and in the future. Get your entire company on board with the benefits of content analytics centralization—especially an increased capability of cross-functional collaboration.

Look for an Analytics Solution that Achieves Your Content Goals

Now that you have laid out all you need in a content analytics solution, it’s time to start shopping for a content analytics platform that ticks off all your boxes, scales with you, and will bring you the best ROI.

Consider your budget: As content marketing expert Michael Brenner points out, there are often hidden costs when you purchase a platform—such as license fees, training your team, extra hardware, and support needs. Make sure you factor in all the extra costs before you decide.
Evaluate its user-friendliness: Remember, your content marketing team’s main job is to pump out content that maximizes revenue and minimizes your investment, not deal with an analytics solution that only a techie could understand. Find a solution that provides powerful, yet easily understandable insights that help your team produce content that catapults your numbers even higher.
Research support availability: You need the ability to run analyses on content performance whenever and wherever you need to. Before you buy, be sure to ask about their service level agreement, their support availability, and how quickly their help desk responds.
Look at its scalability: The whole point of centralizing your analytics is to grow your business through superb, personalized, and relevant content that solves problems for your customers. That means your company’s going to grow. Don’t choose an analytics solution that you’ll outgrow when you grow.
Ask about integration: If you have existing software solutions that you want to keep on using and pull data from, make sure that your new analytics platform can integrate with them.
Look at its reporting capabilities: Since you’re looking for a comprehensive, centralized solution, you need a wealth of capabilities, such as real-time data reports, campaign ROI calculation capability, and deep insights that you can act on quickly.
Get demos from your shortlist: Nothing gives you the insight that you can get from a product demo. Bring all your key players in on the demo so they can see for themselves how it works, how effective it is, and how well it can adapt to your future needs.

Choose the Most Comprehensive, User-Friendly, and Effective Solution

Too many companies, I’ve noticed, cobble together their analytics from a variety of sources and recreate a report in a spreadsheet or PowerPoint. It’s painful to watch.

Even though all your teams might have access to all the analytics platforms, they still have to hop from one platform to the other, exporting different bits of data to get everything they need, wasting time in the process.

With the right content analytics platform and data integrations, your team will have all that—and more. That’s the kind of analytics that can put your content marketing on a bullet train heading off to Profit Town.

When you review your shortlist of content analytics platforms, you need to look for the following capabilities:

All data in one location: the data at their fingertips in a single location.
Automatic reports for executives: Your C-suite can receive reports automatically, ensuring that they can see the same metrics your content team does.
Thorough performance metrics: Know which keywords, topics, titles, and content have performed overall and within various customer segments.
In-platform report creation: Not only that, but you can also create reports from within the platform itself.

Once You’ve Chosen a Solution, Maximize Its Potential

In her MartechAdvisor article, Datorama CMO Leah Pope cautions companies about being “insight poor” even as they swim in oceans of data. With your new solution, you can make this situation a thing of the past.

Maximize your new centralized analytics platform’s potential by:

Using it to automate the reports that formerly ate up your team’s valuable time
Locating poorly performing keywords and content and replacing them with winners
Creating content that crosses channels and devices to produce a superb and seamless customer experience
Creating long-term content marketing strategies with a content calendar that goes beyond a year.

If you want to take advantage of everything centralized content marketing can offer your business, we need to talk. Get in touch with the DivvyHQ team today to schedule your free demo.

Brock Stechman

Brock is a brand builder, technology entrepreneur, and Co-Founder of DivvyHQ. He has a unique mix of creativity and business acumen, which has helped him build and lead dynamic teams and successful businesses. In 2005, he founded a trailblazing content marketing and website development agency. During that time he worked with over 150 companies. His goal is to help organizations elevate their brand reputation and help them connect, excite and engage with their consumers in innovative ways.