So much data is available that it can be easy to get overwhelmed when deciding what to focus on when it comes to your content marketing. So how can you show ROI? Learn how you can tell whether your content marketing is truly paying off with this eBook. To help you maximize your content's ROI, we are re-releasing this eBook, which was sponsored by Curata and developed by TopRank Online Marketing in partnership with the Content Marketing Institute.

2. he Queen looked at Alice. "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six
impossible things before breakfast."
Before she followed the White Rabbit into Wonderland, Alice would have
never believed in a hidden fantasy world. Afterward, she had no doubt.
Proof is everything. All the work that goes into creating a strategy,
developing an audience and creating engaging content means little if you
can’t the measure the return on your content marketing investment.
To provide you with insight into content marketing ROI that’s more than
fantasy, TopRank®
Online Marketing and Content Marketing Institute have
partnered with 10 marketing experts to produce this eBook: Showing Real
ROI for Your Content Marketing.
Be sure to read all four Content Marketing in Wonderland eBooks featuring
over 40 major brands and thought leaders presenting at #CMWorld.
Do You Believe in Magic?
T
Lee Odden, CEO
TopRank
®
Online Marketing
Joe Pulizzi, CEO
Content Marketing Institute

3. Oh, the Magic of Results! From
Strategy to ROI, experience all
that Content Marketing has to
offer with these 4 eBooks:
•! Content Marketing Strategy
•! Audience Development
•! Visual Content Marketing
•! Real Content ROI
The insights provided by top
industry experts in these eBooks
are the ideal prerequisite for the
magic of Content Marketing
World conference, Sept 8-11,
2014 in Cleveland.
Content Marketing in Wonderland
!"#$%&'$ !"#$((&'$
!"#$()&'$ !"#$*+&'$

4. ROI Content Marketers

5. “Content marketing is
more than a trip down the
rabbit hole. It's the thing
that will save marketing
itself.”
Michael Brenner @BrennerMichael
#CMWorld

6. #CMWorld
In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice blindly jumps into the rabbit
hole in striking similarity to how many marketers jump into content
marketing.
And like a foolish child struggling to understand the world of grown-ups,
most marketers fail to ask what the rabbit hole really is, and why it exists.
If the rabbit hole is content marketing, then the rabbit is the search for
ROI. The rabbit checks his watch, records the time and scurries about
worrying about appointments. But he doesn't know why these things are
important.
The marketing question about content marketing ROI is an important
one. The pursuit of understanding the return provided by content
marketing is more than just a trip to Wonderland.
But we must understand ROI for what it is: a math equation. And like "the
rule of 42" that declares that Alice must be executed for “being a mile
high,” we need to make sure that we can answer with precision.
Start Small, Start Now
Michael Brenner
@BrennerMichael
Head of Strategy at NewsCred
#CMWorld Panel:
Is the Death of Content
Marketing Imminent?

7. #CMWorld
Here are 3 things to consider to determine the ROI of your content
marketing:
1.! ROI starts with a solid understanding of content cost. How many
marketers know the cost of the content produced by their firms?
2.! Sirius Decisions has reported that as much as 60-70% of content goes
completely unused. How many companies know their content utilization?
3.! Content marketing ROI needs to define the business value of the
outcomes it generates. How many businesses calculate the business
value of any of their marketing outcomes?
When someone asks you the ROI of content marketing, smile like the Cheshire
cat. Then ask these questions seriously. And help your business answer them.
Content marketing is more than a trip down the rabbit hole. It's the thing
that will save marketing itself. Because it works. Because we can track the
cost. We can measure the results. And we can trace them to business value.
But remember, Alice was often most effective when she was very small. So
start now to help your business to define its own content marketing ROI.
Start Small, Start Now
Michael Brenner
@BrennerMichael
Head of Strategy at NewsCred
#CMWorld Panel:
Is the Death of Content
Marketing Imminent?

8. #CMWorld
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
- Alice’s encounter with the Cheshire Cat, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
If your business can afford to be careless about its direction, then defining
and working toward realistic ROI goals won’t matter. However, we live on
the mundane side of the rabbit hole. When measuring ROI: Get real, stay
real.
We all know content has to be high-quality, relevant and easy to share for
its audience. So why is there still so much ugly content?
Let’s get real. We all need gut checks in our content processes to assess
whether we’re following best practices on quality, relevance and
shareability:
•! How often do you survey your audience or conduct usability testing?
•! What does your listening program tell you about your audience’s
interests and concerns?
•! How are you folding that data into your content strategy?
Begin at the Beginning
Nicole Smith @NicoleSatDell
Managing Editor of Dell’s
TechPageOne
#CMWorld Presentation:
DON’T RUN OUT OF GAS!! How to
Fuel a Sustainable Content
Marketing Strategy

9. #CMWorld
In addition to your gut check, you have to be realistic: Can the content
you’re creating truly foster the conversion that you’re looking for?
No one turns their nose up at a lead, but maybe your content goal should
be about fostering repeat engagement to build better customer
relationships. A more pertinent goal might be higher repeat sales or shorter
buying cycles.
What do you need that content can help deliver on? Consider:
•! A compelling newsletter that allows you to harvest data and permission
to nurture a sales opportunity, or
•! How-to videos that encourage your audience to see you as a partner in
their increased effectiveness, so they turn to you instead of competitors.
Once you establish what you need, then you can set realistic benchmarks
for your content marketing efforts.
“Begin at the beginning,” Alice was told by the King of Hearts. Content
marketers have to pay close attention to the beginnings; the basics. If you
don’t focus on nailing your basics, you’re lucky to have whatever return on
investment that you get.
Begin at the Beginning
Nicole Smith @NicoleSatDell
Managing Editor of Dell’s
TechPageOne
#CMWorld Presentation:
DON’T RUN OUT OF GAS!! How to
Fuel a Sustainable Content
Marketing Strategy

10. “We must start holding
ourselves accountable to
higher level KPIs so we
can stop fighting for our
discipline and start fighting
for more budget.”
Julie Fleischer @jfly
#CMWorld

11. #CMWorld
The only way content marketing will ever really be able to challenge
advertising for serious A&C spend, is to prove its effectiveness with the
same metrics to which other marketing disciplines are held. It's all about
the ROI.
The ROI for lead-generation is easy to calculate, but for B2C marketers, it
can be much more challenging. Sometimes you need to get a little creative
by thinking beyond revenue creation to cost savings and other
contributions to the business.
First, find out if there are syndicated sources or panels you can use to
measure sales lift. Match your database or cookie pool against a matched
sample to calculate sales impact.
For True Content ROI, Get Creative
Julie Fleischer @jfly
Director, Data + Content +
Media at Kraft Foods
#CMWorld Keynote:
The ROI on Content: How Kraft
Learned the True Value of Their
Content and Rebuilt Their
Marketing Around It

12. #CMWorld
If you don't have attributable sales results, look for other ways to
quantify value creation:
• If your content is improving your natural search results, calculate how
much you are saving vs SEM. Remember, your organic results are an
annuity whereas paid search needs to be paid each time its clicked.
• Are you running your content on your owned media or in social
channels? Calculate media savings in terms of CPMs.
• Are you mining data from your content engagements? Calculate third
party data savings.
• Are you garnering insights from your content efforts? Calculate the
savings in terms of the cost of focus groups and quantitative research
studies.
It's time to start holding ourselves accountable to higher level KPIs so we
can stop fighting for our discipline and start fighting for more budget.
For True Content ROI, Get Creative
Julie Fleischer @jfly
Director, Data + Content +
Media at Kraft Foods
#CMWorld Keynote:
The ROI on Content: How Kraft
Learned the True Value of Their
Content and Rebuilt Their
Marketing Around It

13. #CMWorld
Measure Marketing Through Trends
Google Trends is the most under-utilized marketing measurement tool on
the planet. Hands-down. If you don’t use Google Trends every single day, you’re
missing out on the single largest opportunity to understand, measure, and
move your market.
Google Trends measures search volume over time, relative to the terms you
analyze. So, for example, if you sell conveyor belts, IT consulting, bananas or
beer, you can actually SEE the demand for your product or service. Yes, you can
see it. Google Trends helps you measure the size of your market.
Instead of focusing on measuring your market share, start measuring the size
of your market. Why? Think about this:
If your market’s getting smaller but your market share remains the same, are
you making more money? No — you’re making less.
The inverse is also true. You can try to convince consumers to switch to your
brand, but this is expensive and extremely difficult (especially if they already
like another product or service.) Or, you can focus on getting more people to
buy what you sell.
Andrew Davis @TPLDrew
Author at Brandscaping
#CMWorld Keynote:
Inspired Content: How Brilliant
Storytellers Create a Sudden
Urge to Act

14. #CMWorld
Measure Marketing Through Trends
If your market’s getting bigger, even while your market share remains the
same, are you making more money? Yes.
Change What You Measure
If you want to measure the impact of your content marketing efforts, focus on
creating content that increases the size of the market. The more people you
inspire to go on a journey that ends with your product or service, the more
you’ll sell.
Google Trends will help you understand exactly what moves your market.
Every peak and valley on that Google Trends chart corresponds to a specific
event that inspires people to look for exactly what you sell. Figure out what
creates those peaks and valleys and you can increase the size of your market.
The more you focus on measuring market size instead of market share, the
more revenue you’ll generate.
Instead of measuring engagement (which means nothing) start measuring
something that directly impacts the revenue you generate. Learn how to
manipulate the market with the most under-rated marketing tool in the world:
Google Trends.
Andrew Davis @TPLDrew
Author at Brandscaping
#CMWorld Keynote:
Inspired Content: How Brilliant
Storytellers Create a Sudden
Urge to Act

15. #CMWorld
Make the Impossible, Possible
Ardath Albee @ardath421
CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist
at Marketing Interactions
#CMWorld Presentation:
Advanced Lead Nurturing
Strategy – Sharing the Story that
Sells
Alice: This is impossible.
Mad Hatter: Only if you believe it is.
Content marketing helps marketers and salespeople align with the context of
prospects and customers to interactively build profitable relationships.
Measuring ROI in the B2B space takes creativity due to the length of the sales
cycle and the number of people involved in the decision.
However, when backed with a content strategy and the technology to orchestrate
touch points across the buying process, marketers can prove the payoffs from
content marketing.
Here are two ways marketers can measure ROI along the way to revenue:
1.! Increased Relevance: Let’s say you develop 5 resources to help prospects
reach an objective. A prospect reads the 2 resources about solving a
specific problem and a case study about a company similar to theirs, but
ignores the 3 that take a different perspective.
Now you know exactly what type of information will be relevant to entering
into a dialogue with the prospect.

16. #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421
CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist
at Marketing Interactions
#CMWorld Presentation:
Advanced Lead Nurturing
Strategy – Sharing the Story that
Sells
•! Metric for marketing: How many content assets do prospects engage
with about solving a problem or reaching a specific objective?
•! Metric for sales: How many conversations can salespeople gain
access to with less attempts?
2.! Increased Quality
“These leads suck,” has forever been the response from salespeople to
marketing-generated leads. With increased relevance comes increased
lead quality. But it’s not just lead quality, it’s account quality. B2B buying
requires team consensus.
Marketers who can engage more contacts in the account also provide
more opportunities for salespeople to gain an invitation to the
conversation, as well as an understanding of what interests each party. By
educating more of the buying committee, content marketing can shorten
time to revenue and customer acquisition.
•! Metric for marketing: Number of leads that sales will pursue.
•! Metric for sales: Faster time to revenue, less “no decision” outcomes.
Make the Impossible, Possible

17. “If we don’t know where
the content marketing
ship is heading, it’s
impossible to arrive at the
correct destination.”
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi
#CMWorld

18. #CMWorld
I don’t believe there’s just one way to show return on investment for content
marketing. Different strokes for different folks. This is key! Don’t plug in a brand-
new formula to measure your entire marketing effort because you are now a
content marketing believer.
Instead, insert measurement into what you already do. This will make it much
easier to get buy-in from the entire organization.
With content marketing, you want positive return. Once you can measure the
return on your content projects, the first key thing to do is make sure it’s positive.
The rest will come in the fine-tuning.
Getting Buy In.
Please don’t show an analytics report to your Chief Marketing Officer. That person
doesn’t care and probably will ask questions that will simply waste your time. The
senior executive only cares about three things when it comes to your content
marketing measurement and ROI:
•! Is the content making our customers happier, thus helping with retention?
•! Is the content driving sales for us?
•! Is the content saving costs for us?
Connect the Why to Results
Joe Pulizzi @joepulizzi
CEO at Content Marketing
Institute
#CMWorld Keynote:
Welcome to the Content
Marketing Revolution

19. #CMWorld
Content marketing is all about developing content that maintains or changes a
behavior. That’s the focus.
To see if you’re on the right path, use the Why? Exercise:
1.! Put “Why?” at the top of a piece of paper.
2.! List all the different channels you are creating content for (e.g. your blog,
website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) down the left side of the page.
3.! List “Why” you’re creating content for that channel. (The Why? needs to be
either sales, savings or customer retention/loyalty.)
We’ve performed this exercise with dozens of billion-dollar brands. Not once has
one of these brands had the Why? for every one of the channels for which they
create content.
This is a problem, and one you can fix.
If we don’t know where the content marketing ship is heading, it’s impossible to
arrive at the correct destination.
Connect the Why to Results
Joe Pulizzi @joepulizzi
CEO at Content Marketing
Institute
#CMWorld Keynote:
Welcome to the Content
Marketing Revolution

20. #CMWorld
As a creative first, marketer second, I used to struggle with how creativity
often takes a back seat to high volume, low effort content. I wasn’t sure how to
articulate the value of creativity to get it a proper seat at the table.
Ironically, it was the need to measure ROI that helped me understand that
creativity and ROI are actually inseparable.
Once I tried to explain which pieces of content drove actual ROI in my career, I
realized: Conversions happen AFTER the click.
Here is the playbook that I’ve found works:
1.! Determine the biggest problem facing your buyer today.
2.! Create a resource that can solve that problem, or at least educate and/or
inspire them to solve it on their own.
A GREAT way to do this is to list all the steps your buyer must take in order
to execute a certain task today, then create content that removes one or
more steps.
Resonate Your Way to ROI
Jay Acunzo @jay_zo
Director of Platform &
Community at NextView Ventures
#CMWorld Presentation:
Ebook Overload: Exploring Other
Content Types that Drive ROI

21. #CMWorld
3.! Create blog posts and other smaller, related pieces as topical tangents off
that resource.
4.! Promote the resource and some of the related pieces through paid, owned,
and earned channels.
5.! Link everything back to the core resource to drive conversions.
6.! Repeat #3 and #4 as needed to grow traffic, or return to #1 and #2 to
tweak things, informing your work with data.
As someone who loves and values quality content and creativity, this was huge
news! In this approach, the mechanics and technology of marketing isn’t used
to churn out more empty “stuff” in the name of short-term traffic gains.
Instead, you build content around a single, core resource whose sole purpose
is to resonate so deeply with an audience, they willingly put in extra effort to
consume it (thus converting).
Hoping to improve the ROI of your content? Aim to resonate, not just reach.
Resonate Your Way to ROI
Jay Acunzo @jay_zo
Director of Platform &
Community at NextView Ventures
#CMWorld Presentation:
Ebook Overload: Exploring Other
Content Types that Drive ROI

22. “To gain insight for more
effective content strategy,
focus on 3 metrics:
performance, operation
and ROI measurement.”
Pawan Deshponde
@tweetsfrompawan
#CMWorld

23. #CMWorld
The single most perplexing question for anyone in content marketing is: How
do I measure the effectiveness of my content marketing?
Often marketers fall back on soft metrics like “page views” and “shares,” or
anecdotes about how their content is working from sales or customers.
But content marketing has come a long way in the past few years, and there are
now quantitative content marketing metrics to answer this question.
Measure true content marketing ROI by keeping tabs on 3 metrics:
1.! Performance Metrics are the “Return” in ROI. Metrics under this category
track aspects throughout the funnel like consumption (page views),
retention (subscribers), sharing, engagement, marketing pipeline impact
(leads generated), and sales pipeline impact (opportunities influenced).
2.! Operation Metrics are the “I” or “Investment” in ROI. This class of metrics
tracks aspects of your content supply chain such as production, distribution
and promotion costs.
3.! ROI Metrics combine the above two metric classes. For example, one metric
may be Sales Pipeline Generated per Dollar of Content Marketing Spend.
We’re All Mad About Metrics
Pawan Deshpande
@TweetsFromPawan
CEO at Curata
#CMWorld Presentation:
Content Operations: Practical
Guidance and Real World
Examples to Scale Your
Content Marketing

24. #CMWorld
Once you have achieved clarity about ROI, here are 3 ways that these metrics
can impact your content operation:
1.! Incentivize your team. Your content marketing team, right down to
individual writers, can be held accountable for achieving not only a certain
level of content output, but content performance as well.
2.! Diagnose & Troubleshoot. Content marketing metrics let you effectively
diagnose when things don’t go as planned.
For example, if you can find out that content is effective at the top of the
funnel, but isn’t producing high quality opportunities at the bottom of the
funnel, you might need better call-to-actions.
3.! Build Alignment. If you have a singular focus on one ROI-based content
marketing metric – particularly if team members are compensated on it –
walls between different functions will suddenly come down and they will
work together to achieve it.
As you implement each of these metrics, you will gain more visibility,
transparency and ultimately the insight to make your future content strategy
more effective.
We’re All Mad About Metrics
Pawan Deshpande
@TweetsFromPawan
CEO at Curata
#CMWorld Presentation:
Content Operations: Practical
Guidance and Real World
Examples to Scale Your
Content Marketing

25. #CMWorld
ROI is one of the most misunderstood holes Alice could fall into.
For the Mad Hatter CEO, it means the (somehow) accurate forecast of how
much a given marketing initiative is going to return against the investment.
For the Queen of Hearts, it means identifying whatever measuring stick is
needed to reverse-justify a marketing campaign.
Both are flawed. The former ensures that the marketer makes ever-more
conservative choices – never risking or proposing things that could be a
failure (but never exponentially successful either).
And the latter gives the marketer incentive to place higher value on a metric
that may or may not actually contribute to business goals.
Here’s how a quick sip triple-spout teapot can help:
•! Spout One: Measure Content – Not Teams. If we need HootSuite to tell us
we need people working on a Social effort – we are in trouble. Instead,
let’s measure the efficacy of content on whatever channel it may reside.
Seeking Meaning Over Mediocrity
Robert Rose @Robert_Rose
Chief Strategy Officer at Content
Marketing Institute
#CMWorld Keynote:
Experiences: The 7th Era of
Marketing & The Rise Of Content
Creation Management

26. #CMWorld
This gives different teams reason to work together for the BEST experience
for the customer.
•! Spout Two: Measure Quality – Not Just Quantity. Very often a content
marketing program IS more expensive, or takes longer. But look at what KIND
of customer the content marketing program is creating. Do they spend more?
Stay longer? Are they more engaged?
In today’s world, it’s not just more customers. We can also create a more
valuable customer with content.
•! Spout Three: ROI Is Progress Toward A Goal – Not A Number. Today we
have the power to measure and track everything. But resist the urge to
report on everything. Goals – and our progress toward them – should be how
we report ROI. It’s not about creating a “book of metrics”.
An initiative where web traffic drops in half – but progress toward the
business goal doubles – is positive ROI.
So before it’s “off with our heads,” let’s reboot measurement and ROI as insight
to exponentially develop more meaningful ways to delight our customers.
Robert Rose @Robert_Rose
Chief Strategy Officer at Content
Marketing Institute
#CMWorld Keynote:
Experiences: The 7th Era of
Marketing & The Rise Of Content
Creation Management
Seeking Meaning Over Mediocrity

27. #CMWorld
"The irony is that while there have never been more ways to reach consumers, it's never been harder
to connect with consumers.” - Brad Jakeman
Your brand lives in your consumer’s mind. The power of your brand is largely
determined by its ability to activate the amygdala in the limbic system.
More than a decade of neuroscience shows that what sticks in consumers’
minds is not beautiful logos, snappy taglines or even great individual content.
What matters is how much these things together, inspire consumers to care.
A contemporary measure of true consumer caring is to measure the emotional
attachment or brand attachment between people and brands.
Here are 3 compelling reasons to consider adding brand attachment to
your brand dashboard:
1.! Attachment leads to sales. Brand attachment has a higher correlation
with brand sales than likes, shares, comments, willingness to
recommend, brand performance, purchase intention or even engagement
metrics.
On with their Heads (and Hearts)
JoAnn Sciarrino @JoSciarrino
Knight Chair, Digital Advertising
& Marketing at UNC Chapel Hill
#CMWorld Presentation:
Can You Measure Storytelling?

28. #CMWorld
A study of more than a dozen brands found strong Pearson correlation
between weekly brand sales and brand attachment (above +0.65).
Conversely, weekly brand sales and brand attachment and likes, shares,
comments, WTR, brand performance, purchase intention or engagement
all yielded low or no correlations (below 0.28).
2.! Successful brands have higher levels of brand attachment. One of the
most interesting comparisons of brand attachment is between brands
within industries. Brands with higher levels of brand attachment had
significantly higher proportions of repeat or loyal customers and higher
CLTV than their direct competitors.
3.! Brand attachment can be monetized. A weekly time series of brand
attachment has been successfully incorporated by many brands in
marketing mix modeling engagements. Marketers can use 2-step, non-
linear modeling techniques to derive the ROI of the emotional attachment
between the brand and its people.
Using brand attachment in models enables marketers to measure the impact
and efficacy of the virtuous circle between paid, owned and earned media on
brand sales.
On with their Heads (and Hearts)
JoAnn Sciarrino @JoSciarrino
Knight Chair, Digital Advertising
& Marketing at UNC Chapel Hill
#CMWorld Presentation:
Can You Measure Storytelling?

29. LEARN EVEN MORE ABOUT CONTENT MARKETING
Join 3,500 industry peers from 50 countries, 100+ speakers,
and leading Fortune 500 brands at:
CONTENT MARKETING WORLD 2015
September 8-11, 2015
www.contentmarketingworld.com
REGISTER TODAY
Use code
“TopRank”
for $100 off
of Main Event
and All-Access
registrations.

30. Content Marketing Services
Ready to find Content
Marketing Magic?
Let TopRank Online Marketing help you
plan, source, create, manage, measure
and optimize the performance of your
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series of eBooks.
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31. Thank You From Our Sponsor
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Is your content taking you on a journey to nowhere?
Many brands don’t understand how to use content to
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This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the
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To view the eBook today, click here

32. Read all 4 eBooks in the Content Marketing in Wonderland series at toprankblog.com
Take A Content Marketing Journey

33. Brand Contributors

34. Adele Ravella
Alan Porter
Andrew Davis
Ann Handley
Ardath Albee
Brant McLean
Brian Clark
Brian Kardon
Bruce McDuffee
Carla Johnson
David Jones
Gurdeep Dhillon
Heidi Cohen
Jascha Kaykas-Wolff
Jason Miller
Jay Acunzo
Jeff Charney
Jeff Rohrs
Jen Dennis
Jesse Noyes
Jim Kukral
Thank You Content Marketers
JoAnn Sciarrino
Joe Pulizzi
Jonathon Colman
Julie Fleischer
Lee Odden
Leigh Blaylock
Maggie Burke
Mark Schaefer
Michael Brenner
Nicole Smith
Pam Didner
Paull Young
Pawan Deshpande
Rebecca Lieb
Rick Short
Robert Rose
Scott Abel
Scott Monty
Scott Stratten
Steve Clayton
Tim Washer