Pre vs. Post Content Marketing - Referral Analytics Revealed [Data]

As demonstrated in Conversions with Branded versus Non-branded Search, we recently did a thorough 26 month examination of our website analytics. This led to splitting the data in half, pre-content marketing and post-content marketing, in order to compare and contrast the effects content marketing has on a website’s traffic and conversions. This post looks at referral traffic specifically and the associated growth metrics seen through the deployment of a content marketing strategy.

Visits from Referring Websites

As expected, moving from 2-3 blog posts per week to 5-10 had a significant impact on the number of visits from referring websites. Kunocreative.com saw a 309% bump in referral visits after deploying content marketing as a strategy.

Number of Leads from Referring Sites

Lead growth exploded with a 630% increase over the pre-content marketing months. This is a surprising data point because referring traffic only increased by 309%. The most likely reason is an increase in downloads available on the website over the above time span.

Number of Lead Generating Websites vs. Non-lead Generating Websites

The data also reveals 348% growth in lead generating websites and 218% growth in non-lead generating websites driving traffic as a referral source.

Referral Visit to Lead Ratio

The visit to conversion ratio more than doubled after deploying a content marketing strategy. This means that visitors were more than twice as likely to convert to a lead from a referring website after content marketing was deployed.

High Traffic/Lead Generating Referral Sources

The above numbers are nice data points to have. However, there is still some context missing that would help tie the data together. Was all of the growth above due to just a few referring websites or many? Below is the growth breakdown of the number of referring sources based on visits and leads.

As revealed in Conversions with Branded versus Non-branded Search, content marketing has a very positive effect on visits and the actions visitors take on a website. It doesn’t just affect organic traffic either. Content marketing affects every class of visitor to include referrals. Referring traffic also happens to be our most efficient lead source too.

The above data is very convincing that content marketing is one of the most powerful Internet marketing strategies available. So, what are you waiting for? Get to writing. For help getting your content marketing campaign off the ground download our Blog Post Optimization Playbook.