Healthcare content marketing KPIs

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are crucial for any content marketing strategy, enabling you to measure progress, quantify impact, and calculate ROI. A clear and measurable set of KPIs enables you to gauge the effectiveness of your content, refine your strategy, and achieve your marketing goals. But how do you measure content marketing results effectively? 

At 42group, every campaign is underpinned by clear metrics we agree on, share, and monitor with our clients.

In this comprehensive guide to healthcare KPIs, we will identify some key metrics we recommend you use. If you have the time, budget, and expertise, you should measure as much as possible. The information you collect can help you make better decisions informed by data. Sound good? Then read on…

What are content marketing KPIs? 

Let’s start with a definition: Content Marketing KPIs are measurable values that help marketers evaluate the success and efficiency of content marketing strategies. 

In the real world, these are tangible things you can track. Like that?

KPIs can include SERP performance, audience engagement measures, tracking lead generation, and analysing sales conversions. 

So, what KPIs should you choose? This is 42group’s tick list to help us when we’re selecting KPIs with our clients:

• You can track them each month (or more often)
• Data is easily accessible, can be processed, and presented in a way that non-specialists can understand
• The metrics reflect the impact of our work, not other situational factors
• They have strategic importance 
• Metrics can influence our work and strategy

Some companies will produce 

By measuring meaningful and relevant KPIs, marketing teams – and their clients and customers – can clearly understand what activities and approaches are working and what aren’t. Regularly monitoring healthcare content KPIs enables teams to act, adjust their strategies, and invest in activities that deliver impact and outcomes. Which is what we all want, isn’t it?

You’ll often hear digital marketers talk about “data-driven strategies” – and that’s what this is.

However, not all KPIs are equal, and you’ll often find digital marketing agencies reporting vanity metrics. They’re measurable but don’t matter. 

Before we get too far into that, let’s provide details on some common healthcare content and digital marketing KPIs.

How do you measure content marketing results? 

Measuring content marketing results involves looking at various metrics that assess different aspects of your content’s performance. Not all of these metrics will be relevant to your organisation or campaign, so pick and choose from these to build a KPI dashboard:

We can break KPIs down into five categories:

1. Traffic metrics
2. Engagement metrics
3. Conversion metrics
4. SEO metrics
5. Revenue metrics

Let’s go through these different metrics and highlight some of the key ones you might want to consider for your digital marketing campaigns.

1. Traffic metrics:

• Page views: Tracking the number of views your content receives is a pretty basic KPI and is integral to analysing most content campaigns.
• Unique visitors: Measuring how many individual users visit your content illustrates how many additional new visitors are coming. 
• Traffic sources: Traffic sources show where your clicks are coming from (organic, direct, social, or referral). This highlights where people are most engaging with your content – and can help you prioritise channels.

2. Engagement metrics:

• Time on page: Visitors are great, but not if they leave immediately! Time on page assesses how long visitors stay on your content. (The longer, the better.)
• Bounce rate: Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave without interacting with your site. A high bounce rate spells danger, and you’ll need to act. 
• Social shares and comments: An increasingly important metric for many healthcare clients, you should monitor how often your content is shared or receiving comments on social platforms. You can see what content resonates with your audience and what’s being ignored.

3. Conversion metrics:

• Conversion rate: The conversion rate measures the percentage of visitors who do something you want them to do. This could include signing up to a list, purchasing a product, or filling out a contact form. 
• Lead generation: We all want more business, right? Lead generation is about tracking how many leads are generated through your content. This should be direct tracking (from a contact form on a landing page, for example).
• Cost-per-lead: Cost-per-lead is a crude metric that simply divides the total campaign budget by the number of leads generated. For example, if you spent $1000 and generated 10 leads, the cost per lead would be $100. It’s not a great metric for many healthcare campaigns, but it’s one that we have used in the past.

4. SEO Metrics:

• Keyword rankings: If increasing your search engine performance is key, you can monitor where your content ranks for relevant keywords. You can do this through a range of tools, including our current favourite, SE Ranking.
• Backlinks: Backlinks are like digital affirmation you’re doing the right thing and will boost your website performance. You can count and monitor backlinks if this is a core part of your approach. 
• Organic search traffic: Organic search traffic tracks the number of visitors coming from search engines, which we can assume have been attracted by your content. This is a key metric for many healthcare digital marketing campaigns.

5. Revenue metrics:

• Sales revenue: If you’re a commercial business involved in selling products, you’ll inevitably be measuring sales. Unless you’re getting direct links through from your content, it’s hard to assess direct impact, but it can be a KPI some businesses use.
• ROI (Return on Investment): Calculating the return on your content marketing investment isn’t a great metric, but many clients demand it. The ROI is a percentage calculation of the revenue directly attributable to content marketing when compared to the budget. Let’s say you spent £1000 on content and made £2000 in sales; that would be a 100% ROI. 

How to track and report content marketing KPIs

KPIs are only useful if they’re effectively monitored and reviewed. We suggest monthly meetings, but the frequency is up to you. Bear in mind that content marketing won’t always move the dial quickly and can take months (or even years) for your organisation to feel the full impact and benefit.

Here are some basic tips to help you with your KPI monitoring:

• Set clear goals before you start: Most healthcare organisations recognise the need to track KPIs but don’t begin the process with clear objectives. Take the time to work to set out clear objectives for what you want your content to achieve. This can help massively in selecting the right KPIs.
• Involve stakeholders: Most of us have a boss who will judge what we do. And they will have a boss, and so on. Involving key stakeholders like C-Suite, investors, and partners in setting KPIs can provide strategic clarity and boost engagement.
• Use analytics tools: Essential monitoring tools include Google Analytics, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and SE Ranking to track digital KPIs. Set these up before you start with your content marketing activities.
• Monitor regularly: Consistently checking your KPIs at pre-set intervals is vital. Make it somebody’s job to do this (and provide training if needed). Regular monitoring can quickly identify successes and failures, enabling you to take advantage of the situation and optimise campaigns. 
• Benchmark your business: Don’t know how you’re doing? Comparing your performance against key competitors, industry-standard levels of performance, or previous content campaigns can provide a helpful benchmark. 

Collating the figures is a big job, but your responsibilities don’t stop there – now you need to process it and put it into a dashboard.

We’ve seen some incredible KPI dashboards incorporating data visualisations and more. But you don’t need to do that (unless you want to). 

You should be able to present your core KPIs on a single page. If you’re not a professional designer, use one of these free dashboard templates.

We won’t go into why data dashboards are the best way to display KPIs, track progress, and drive improvement. But they are. Always put aside some time (or budget) to build a dashboard that’s easy to understand, clear, and accessible.

10 Reasons why healthcare content marketers should measure KPIs:

The best digital marketers, marketing managers, and content pros know that KPIs are vital to any project. But, if you still need some convincing, here are 10 reasons healthcare content marketers must measure KPIs.

1. Align content goals with business strategy: KPIs align your content strategy with your overall business objectives. You must demonstrate the impact content can have on the shared goals of the business. 
2. Performance tracking: Regular monitoring of KPIs enables you to track the performance of your content. You’ll learn what’s working (and do more) and what’s not (stop). Identifying what works and what doesn’t – and acting on it is only possible if you’re tracking KPIs.
3. Calculate ROI: While we’re not huge fans of this metric, KPIs enable you to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of your content marketing campaigns. This can provide a powerful illustration of the impact of digital marketing on your business.
4. Learn more about your audience: KPIs can provide valuable insights into your audience’s preferences and needs. Using standard tools, you can learn about the demographics, preferences, and priorities of your target personas. The more information you have, the better your campaign will be.
5. Optimise content: We’ve said it before, but measuring KPIs provides data on the most effective content types. This powerful information can help you optimise your future content, driving better engagement and results.
6. Allocate resources: KPIs enable you to make better decisions on where to allocate the budget. In an environment where digital marketing and content marketing budgets are under pressure, spending money wisely is essential. 
7. Improved decision-making: Armed with mountains of data (all captured in your dashboard) you can make better-informed decisions on strategy, tactics, and budgeting. 
8. See how you stack up: KPIs allow you to benchmark your performance against competitors, understanding where you stand in the market against the companies that matter most.
9. Identify trends early: Tracking KPIs over time helps you to identify trends and patterns in audience behaviour, content preferences, and more. You (or your content agency partner) can use this information to improve your campaigns. 
10. Increased accountability: Measuring KPIs makes marketing teams, content producers, and partners accountable for their performance. 

Build a healthcare content marketing strategy on KPIs

Content marketing isn’t just about creating and distributing content. Content must have a strategic purpose and push the business towards its key objectives. KPIs provide structure, strategic focus, and clarity for in-house teams and agencies. It’s a circular process based on measurement, analysis, and continual optimisation.

Organisations that use KPIs are more likely to be successful than those that don’t. T

Marketing teams often struggle to capture the value of their work as they don’t apply a rigorous way of measuring it. KPIs, presented in a dashboard, can be shared with everyone and display the impact of your content with total clarity.