When I check how a blog is doing in HubSpot, I have come to the conclusion of not going straight to the traffic figures. A situation can appear to be perfect and yet have a problem hidden in it.
A post can draw in thousands of visitors yet generate only a small number of qualified leads, while another post may receive less traffic but still continually get the right people to progress further in their customer journey. Which is why I have now begun to look beyond page views.
Before I decide if some content is performing well, I first need to know what takes place after a person has read it.
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Are they going on to another page that is relevant?
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Are they converting?
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Are they coming back?
Is it the case that they are becoming part of the audience that we actually want to reach?
HubSpot helps with connecting some of those dots since the content and contact data can be kept within the same platform. In my opinion, the real difficulty lies in determining which of the numbers should receive the greatest attention.
Focusing on the largest figure in a report is something that is easy to do.
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Page views.
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Sessions.
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Clicks.
While those figures are important, they don’t necessarily give the entire story. A page may be carrying out precisely the function for which it was designed, even if it is not the most visited page on the website.
That has altered the way I assess content performance. And so, instead of asking:
How many people are going to read this?
I’ve started asking:
What action did the appropriate people take after having read it?
I’d like to know how other people deal with this in HubSpot.
Which of the HubSpot metrics do you place the most trust in when assessing content performance, and which ones do you think marketers place too great a reliance on?