Your Need for Tracking Is Destroying Your Content Strategy

Trying to track your content strategy to the last detail will destroy it.

Why?

We post a lot of content for Project 33. On LinkedIn, on YouTube, on our website, in a newsletter. Text posts, image posts, videos. A lot of content.

Not just for myself but also Jay and other people on our team. 70-80% of our customers come from it.

How do we track which piece of content generated which customer?

We don’t.

The problem is that people don’t watch one of my videos on LinkedIn, then go to our website, book a demo, and close.

We’re in B2B. Our solution costs around $30,000. People don’t impulse-buy these things.

This is what people *actually* do:

1. They might watch one of my videos on LinkedIn, maybe watch half of it, and keep scrolling.
2. After a couple of days, they might see another video, watch a little bit, and move on.
3. Maybe after some time they see one of Jay’s videos.
4. This happens a couple of times, maybe stretched out over weeks. Eventually, they’re curious and go to our website, skim through it, and go on with their day.
5. A couple of weeks later, when the topic of B2B content is brought up in a meeting, they remember us and tell their colleague, “I found these guys called “Project 33” on LinkedIn. Go check them out.”
6. That colleague googles “Project 33”, and our website shows up in the search results, they click and book a demo because they are the actual decision-maker.

In our website analytics, that shows up as Google traffic.

In fact, more than 40% of our website traffic comes from Google.

Does that mean I should focus more on Google SEO because, apparently, 40% of our customers come from Google Search?

No.

The source is still our content; I just can’t track it precisely.

How do I know it’s the content and not Google? Because customers tell us.

So here’s where Marketing teams go wrong:

When you’re in this mindset of tracking *everything* to ensure ROI, you put a tracking link in every piece of content.

And you assume that a channel only works if people click that link in a piece of content in that channel, end up on your website, book a demo, and close. If they don’t, you get rid of that channel.

You miss the bigger picture:

- In B2B, buying journeys are complex and non-linear
- They take weeks and months
- Multiple decision-makers are involved. The person who discovers you and does the research might be different from the person who books the demo and signs the contract
- When people are ready to book a demo with you, they usually go to your website directly or google your company name

That’s why tracking your content to the last details leads to the wrong decisions and destroys your content strategy.

Btw, that doesn’t mean you can’t assess how your content impacts your sales process. Once people get on a sales call with you, just ask them how they found out about you.