Hey friend,

How’s it going? 🌻

As a content marketer (or any marketer for that matter), you need to get hold of your numbers. And, you need to learn to prioritize your numbers.

While you can track 100s of metrics and include those in your content marketing report, how many of those actually make sense? Or let me rephrase this way: Does your founder care about those numbers?

Starting a new series called #KnowYourNumbers. A 3-part series where I will tell you the exact numbers I track as a content marketer in a fast-growing startup.

Let's go!

#1 Website lead conversion

Hands down, the most important metric, in fact, the only metric founders REALLY care about. Your content is generating leads, you are contributing to the pipeline, and you are good.

I use a HubSpot+Factors.ai integration to track website leads:

HubSpot: Forms -> Book a demo form -> Submissions -> Check individual email IDs

Factors: All accounts -> Search for the same domain I found from HubSpot -> Click on the birdview and timeline to check the entire customer journey map

This gives me a detailed idea of how a lead is discovering us, how many landing pages/blog posts they are going through before scheduling a demo, and what topics they are interested in.

Since we typically ask for certain details in the 'Book a demo form', it is easier for me to understand whether it's an SQL or MQL. But we still have a detailed Deals dashboard in HubSpot to track which lifecycle stage a deal is at, which salesperson is handling it, and what the end result.

#2 AI traffic

There is no denying that AI is the future, and it is greatly affecting search types. Hence, I keep a close eye on how our site is performing on AI engines. Here's how I measure AI traffic and channels:

Google Analytics -> Reports -> Acquisition -> Traffic Acquisition -> Session source/medium

You will find the respective AI engines driving traffic to your company. We, for example, get traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

#3 Organic traffic

You already know the importance of organic traffic. It tells you how many visitors are coming to your site without spending a single $$$ on paid ads. As a content marketer, your goal should be to 1—get more audiences to reach your site organically and 2—convert them to users. But first things first, YOU need to learn your site's organic presence so you can take a call on your organic strategy.

I use Ahrefs to track this metric. Simply go to Site Explorer and type your website link to measure your organic search traffic. But there is more to it. You can also measure the following metrics in the same dashboard:

• Traffic by location
• Organic pages and their respective traffic
• Top organic competitors

All these metrics provide you with he following answers:

1. Are people organically visiting my site?
2. Are they visiting from my target country?
3. Which blog posts/landing pages are they reading the most?
4. What is the individual traffic of these pages?

For X blog, if traffic is increasing, the topic needs your audience, and if traffic is declining, you need to investigate if the page requires a content refresh.

There's obviously more to the story, will come back in Part 2 of #KnowYourNumbers series.

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Onwards and upwards,

Sreyashi

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