Content syndication helps businesses establish authority in their field, reach more people, attract new target audiences, and generate potential leads. Understanding the benefits of content syndication allows you to leverage the huge readership of established industry publications and content hubs by sharing your content on high-profile third-party websites and blogs, as well as reaching their audience of email subscribers.
However, your content syndication’s true effectiveness and success depend largely on your ability to track and analyze key metrics.
Without tracking and analyzing the right metrics, you risk flying blind. Measuring the true impact of your content syndication efforts is important to optimize your strategies and justify your investment. You gain invaluable insights by focusing on key metrics like lead generation, engagement levels, conversion rates, and overall ROI. These key metrics allow you to fine-tune your approach, double down on what’s working, and quickly pivot away from what’s not.
Key metrics for measuring success in B2B content syndication
We categorize the core syndication metrics into three main areas:
Lead generation metrics
Lead generation metrics are crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of your content syndication efforts in driving potential customers through the sales funnel.
High-quality leads are more likely to convert into paying customers, improving ROI, while low-quality leads can waste resources due to their lower likelihood of interest in your products or services.
In contrast, high-quality leads are more engaged, genuinely interested in your offerings, and more likely to purchase. According to Forbes, companies that focus on generating high-quality leads through content syndication experience a 45% higher sales achievement. Additionally, approximately 30% of B2B firms consider content syndication as one of their most effective lead generation tactics, highlighting its importance in your marketing strategy.
By prioritizing high-quality leads, you can maximize your ROI, ensuring that your marketing and sales efforts target the most promising prospects. This strategy increases your chances of closing more deals and optimizes resource allocation, allowing for better investment in nurturing and converting the leads with the highest potential for conversion.
These metrics provide insights into the generated quantity and quality of leads and highlight the associated costs.
1. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are prospects with a genuine interest in researching your category. They have engaged with your content, maybe by downloading a whitepaper or attending a webinar. These leads are more than just curious. They are primed for further nurturing through targeted campaigns, and MQLs are marketing-ready leads that, with the right approach, can be smoothly transitioned to your sales team for quick conversion.
2. Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
The Sales Qualified Leads are prospects identified from your MQL pool, thoroughly vetted, and ready for direct sales engagement. They meet the four key BANT criteria: budget, authority, need, and timeline, making them prime candidates for conversion into paying customers. Tracking SQLs is essential for assessing lead quality and the effectiveness of your nurturing efforts, ensuring your sales team focuses on the most promising opportunities.
3. Cost Per Lead (CPL)
Cost Per Lead (CPL) measures the average cost of acquiring a single lead through your content syndication campaigns. It’s calculated by dividing the total campaign cost by the number of leads generated. A lower CPL generally indicates a more cost-effective lead generation strategy, helping you optimize your budget allocation. This means paying significantly less may indicate lower quality leads. This metric helps you fine-tune your budget, ensuring you get the best value from your investment.
By analyzing CPL alongside the MQL-to-SQL ratio and other lead quality indicators, you can better assess your content syndication efforts’ true value and potential ROI. High-quality leads, even at a higher CPL, often yield better results and a higher ROI than a large volume of low-quality leads at a lower CPL.
4. Cost Per Opportunity (CPO)
Cost Per Opportunity (CPO) measures the cost of generating sales-qualified opportunities. It calculates the total campaign cost by the number of SQLs or opportunities created. A lower CPO means your content syndication is successfully creating high-quality leads that are more likely to become paying customers. This metric helps you understand how efficiently your campaigns turn leads into sales opportunities.
By tracking key lead generation metrics, you gain invaluable insights into the performance of your content syndication campaigns. These insights help you pinpoint areas for improvement, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your lead generation and nurturing processes.
Engagement metrics
Engagement metrics are crucial for understanding how well your content resonates with your target audience and drives interaction. By monitoring these metrics, you gain valuable insights into the performance of your syndicated content, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns.
1. Asset downloads
Asset downloads track the number of times your gated content, such as whitepapers, case studies, or e-books, are downloaded by prospects. Many asset downloads indicate strong interest in your content and can be a precursor to lead generation. According to Forbes, 82% of B2B buyers use whitepapers to make purchasing decisions, and this metric is a key indicator of your content’s effectiveness and relevance.
2. Inbound web traffic
Inbound web traffic is a critical metric for tracking how much traffic your syndicated content drives to your website. This metric helps you gauge the reach and visibility of your content across different channels and platforms. Increased inbound traffic means more eyes on your content, leading to a higher potential for leads and conversions.
3. Click-through rate
The CTR measures the percentage of those who click on your syndicated content from the source platform to your website. A higher CTR indicates that your content is compelling and resonates with the target audience, driving them to engage further. A 2024 Smartinsights research suggests an average click-through rate (CTR) in B2B content syndication is approximately 0.5% from cold web traffic. However, this metric increases dramatically when you include retargeting and email marketing tactics. This benchmark helps gauge your content’s effectiveness in capturing interest and prompting action.
4. Time on page
Time on page measures how long visitors engage with your syndicated content. The longer they stay, the more captivating and valuable your content proves to be. This increases the likelihood of converting visitors into leads. Tracking this metric reveals how effectively your content holds the audience’s attention and delivers relevant information.
“Average time on a whitepaper download page on www.insightsforprofessionals.com is 3:29 which is far above the average of a website services page. Ideally you want to create an immersive experience where clients want to binge multiple pieces of relevant and actionable content.”
Ross Howard, Product Marketing Director
5. Bounce rate
Bounce rate indicates the percentage of visitors who come to your site from syndicated content and leave without exploring further. A lower bounce rate means your content effectively keeps visitors interested and encourages them to explore your site. For B2B websites, the average bounce rate is about 60%, according to Databox. This benchmark helps you gauge how well your content engages visitors.
By closely monitoring these engagement metrics, you gain valuable insights into how your syndicated content performs. This enables you to make informed decisions, optimizing your campaigns for better engagement, lead generation, and conversions.
Conversion metrics
Conversion metrics are essential for assessing how well your content syndication campaigns drive desired actions from your target audience. The three key conversion metrics are conversion rate, return on ad spend (ROAS), and lead-to-customer conversion rate.
1. Landing Page Conversion rate
Landing page conversion refers to the percentage of visitors to a landing page who complete a desired action, such as signing up for a product, downloading a whitepaper, or making a purchase.
The conversion rate (CR) measures the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action (conversion) within a specific time frame. To calculate it, divide the number of qualified leads by the total number of website visits, then multiply by 100. This gives you a concrete percentage that allows you to measure the success of your landing pages.
According to a study by Econsultancy, the average conversion rate for B2B companies is approximately 2.23%. This figure provides a baseline for evaluating the effectiveness of content syndication campaigns.
However, this is before you include tactics that can boost this rate significantly. These include:
- Intent data – targeting an audience that has shown previous interest in this topic area and is currently researching improves the likelihood of conversion.
- Retargeting – if prospects come to your content pages and don’t convert, bringing them back to the page with paid advertising can increase submissions through repetition.
- Email marketing – including your content within email newsletters can dramatically increase conversion rates in comparison to cold web traffic as they are subscribed to receive value from you already.
2. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising or marketing campaigns, including content syndication. A higher ROAS indicates a more profitable campaign. To calculate ROAS, divide the revenue generated by the total campaign cost. Research has shown that companies that achieve an ROAS of 4:1 or higher consider their campaigns successful.
3. Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate
Tracking the conversion rate of leads to customers from content syndication programs is a critical metric. This rate measures the effectiveness of your syndicated content in not only generating leads but also in moving them through the sales funnel to become paying customers. It’s crucial because it directly ties your content syndication efforts to revenue generation, justifying the investment and guiding strategy refinement.
To calculate this rate, divide the number of customers acquired through syndicated content by the total number of leads generated from the same content, then multiply by 100. For example, if your syndicated white paper generated 1,000 leads and 50 of those became customers, your conversion rate would be 5%.
The expected conversion rate to customer will vary by industry and based on your product category. For example, a lightweight business management SaaS product may have a short sales cycle with a single buyer, whereas new data center or large cloud deployment may have very long sales cycles, and many contacts involved in the decision-making process.
Working out your own lead conversion rate and working backwards is a way to create your own baseline. This will also help you discover how many leads you need to generate to hit target. Then you can investigate how accounts are moving through your pipeline based on if they were included in a lead generation campaign to measure success.
Best practices for measuring success in B2B syndication campaigns
Measuring success in B2B content syndication campaigns requires a strategic approach that ties specific goals to relevant metrics. By following these best practices, you can ensure your campaigns are effectively tracked, analyzed, and optimized for maximum impact.
1. Clearly define your syndication goals
Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals from the start. Without clear objectives, it is difficult to track the right metrics, allocate resources effectively, and evaluate your efforts. Align these goals with your broader marketing and business objectives to ensure your efforts are focused and effective.
Are you aiming to generate top-of-funnel leads, nurture existing prospects, or drive conversions and sales? Each goal demands different strategies, content types, and performance indicators.
Clear goals provide a roadmap for your content syndication activities and enable data-driven decision-making. This allows you to assess progress better, identify improvement areas, and make informed adjustments.
Well-defined goals also foster alignment and collaboration within your organization. When everyone understands the desired outcomes, they can work together effectively, streamlining efforts and maximizing the impact of your campaigns.
2. Align metrics with objectives
Aligning your metrics with campaign objectives is vital for effective measurement and analysis. Each objective requires tracking specific metrics. For instance, if your primary goal is lead generation, focus on metrics like MQLs, SQLs, CPL, and Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate. Conversely, if you aim to boost engagement and awareness, prioritize metrics such as asset downloads, inbound web traffic, click-through rate (CTR), time on page, and bounce rate.
Clearly define the objectives of your content syndication campaign and select metrics that directly align with those goals. This approach ensures you’re measuring the right factors and can accurately assess the success of your efforts. Measuring too many metrics without a clear focus can lead to data overload, making it difficult to extract meaningful insights.
Regularly review and adjust your objectives and metrics to ensure they remain aligned as your campaign evolves. Objectives may shift over time, and your metrics should adapt accordingly. By consistently aligning metrics with goals, you can make data-driven decisions and optimize your content syndication strategy for maximum impact and ROI.
3. Implement UTM parameters and source references
Implementing UTM parameters is essential for accurately tracking the performance of your content syndication efforts. These unique codes, added to the end of a URL, help identify the source, medium, and campaign driving traffic to your website. By incorporating UTM parameters into the URLs used for your syndicated content, you can gain valuable insights into which channels and tactics are most effective in generating leads and engagement.
Establish a consistent naming convention for your UTM parameters that aligns with your content syndication strategy. For instance, use “utm_source” to identify the specific syndication partner or platform, “utm_medium” to indicate the content format (e.g. whitepaper, webinar, article), and “utm_campaign” to track the overarching campaign or initiative.
Similarly, if your lead generation partner is using content syndication then make sure to tag the leads that they send you with a reference in the CRM. Like the UTM structure, this should show you how the lead was generated and who by. Multiple content downloads from the same person should ideally be tracked too, allowing you to score and pass the leads to sales if they engage with campaigns from different suppliers.
Analyzing source data allows you to determine which syndication partners, content formats, and campaigns drive the highest quality leads and conversions. This information can inform your future content syndication efforts, enabling you to optimize strategies, allocate resources more effectively, and maximize your return on investment.
4. A/B testing
A/B testing is essential for optimizing your content syndication efforts. You can test various variables by conducting controlled experiments to identify the most effective strategies for driving engagement and conversions. Key areas to consider for A/B testing include:
- Content format: Experiment with whitepapers, webinars, case studies, and infographics to discover what resonates most with your audience
- Headlines and titles: Test different headlines to find the ones that capture attention and drive clicks
- Call-to-Action (CTA): Play around with CTA placements, designs, and wording to see what prompts your audience to take action
- Landing pages: Optimize conversion rates by testing various landing page designs, layouts, and messages
- Distribution channels: Identify the best syndication channels and platforms to reach your target audience effectively.
By continuously running A/B tests and analyzing the outcomes, you can make informed decisions that refine your content syndication strategy, leading to better lead quality, higher engagement, and improved campaign performance.
5. Continual optimization
Content syndication isn’t a one-time effort. To maximize ROI, continually optimize based on performance data. Regularly analyze key metrics like lead quality, engagement, conversion, and costs per lead or opportunity.
Identify areas for improvement and make data-driven adjustments to your content, targeting, distribution channels, or strategy. Use A/B testing to see what resonates best with your audience. Don’t hesitate to experiment and adjust your tactics based on insights.
Stay updated with industry trends and emerging syndication channels. For example, a lot of B2B marketing teams are experimenting with generative AI to increase the speed of their testing process by creating variations of copy faster. The landscape changes quickly, so what worked last year might not be effective today. Keep learning and adapt your approach accordingly.
Consistency is the key. Set regular review cycles to assess performance, tweak strategies, and monitor the impact of changes. This ongoing process will refine your content syndication efforts, leading to better results and a higher ROI.
Conclusion
Tracking essential content syndication metrics is vital for B2B marketing success. You gain insights into what works and needs improvement by measuring lead generation, engagement, and conversion rates. Focus on lead quality by evaluating MQLs, SQLs, and CPL. This approach ensures your strategies are effective and your marketing efforts yield the best results.
Additionally, adopt best practices such as setting clear goals, aligning metrics with objectives, using UTM parameters, conducting A/B tests, and continuously optimizing your campaigns. This approach ensures you stay ahead and achieve better results.
Remember, tracking key metrics helps you refine strategies, allocate resources effectively, and enhance lead nurturing, ensuring a higher success rate in achieving your marketing objectives.
Want to take your content syndication program to the next level? Outsource it to a content syndication partner like Inbox Insight.
