10. The Content Marketing Controlling Framework

It must not be confused at this point with regard to levels of observation that although each individual article is assigned a certain classification or category, in controlling the total number of articles with a certain assigned category is considered as a whole or in a certain area (e.g. in a channel)—key figures are therefore considered at the level of the content marketing corpus or segment—and not at the level of an individual content marketing article.

If necessary, a comparison can also be made with an SEO keyword research, search volumes and search intentions in order to gain extended insights for the target-oriented control of content marketing.

Fortunately, there are optimization tools that compress images or videos or audio files for the Internet on the one hand in terms of file size and bandwidth to the smallest possible extent, but automatically avoid optical or acoustic restrictions to the best possible extent. So when using such tools, manual control of the technical image quality is at least not regularly necessary.

A session or a visit/visit consists of several page views by the same browser that must not be more than a maximum time apart. After more than 30 minutes of inactivity (no page view), another visit to the website (session, visit) is often assumed. Analogously, this can be defined for the channel of the voice assistant, if one understands continuous dialogues as a visit, which consists of several individual statements (views). On the other hand, it does not make sense to record visits for e-mail marketing, since e-mails are practically always viewed individually and not in a session. In the statistics tools of the social media networks, visits are usually not shown, but are often focused on reached persons, i.e. unique visitors.

Attention: at this point visits, not visitors.

For the sake of accuracy, it should be noted here that strictly speaking, the number of real people is not actually being measured, but the number of log-ins used, which would result in very similar key figures in practice and therefore this difference is not discussed in detail.

Without providing a complete technical manual here, only the possibility of measuring events should be briefly mentioned, which can be easily configured for download clicks (and other user activities) when integrated via the Google Tag Manager. Other tools such as etracker offer similar possibilities by specially adapting the used download links.

We deliberately refer to the effects here as basic effects, because they are effects of the content on the people, but not yet effects with regard to any objects to be advertised. So it’s not the actual desired advertising effect, which is then considered in Sect. 10.7.

The working memory was previously often referred to as the short-term memory.

Important: At this point in the basic effects, it is only about the awareness of the content and its contents, but not yet about the awareness of an object to be advertised (see Sect. 10.7.1 for this). To make this clear, we speak in the context of this framework of content awareness in contrast to an awareness of an advertised object.

For readers who are interested in more depth, it should be mentioned that, in addition to dedicated levels, generalized scales are also discussed in marketing research. See, for example, (Laurent et al. 1995).

It is also important to make a distinction here with regard to the metrics: If it is about general knowledge, beliefs and attitudes regardless of the objects to be advertised and with regard to the content itself, this is reflected in the metrics mentioned here. Knowledge and belief of the objects to be advertised or attitudes towards these are reflected in the metrics of Sect. 10.7.

And here too, it is necessary to distinguish between an advertising effect in the form of conative effects with respect to objects to be advertised, i.e. for example product information behavior, purchase behavior, etc. (the indicators can be found in Sect. 10.8) and a behavioral effect that is related to the content itself (the indicators in this section).

Of course, the domain name of a website can also be mentioned in a podcast. However, since clicking is not possible and manual input by the listener would be necessary, it is to be classified as a mention, not as a link.

In addition to their importance to people in front of the devices, interactions in social media also have a direct impact on the reach of future posts by influencing social media algorithms—see also Sect. 6.​2.

Monadic = indivisible, unary. A monad is an indivisible unit. Acknowledgements are referred to as monadic here because they are either granted or not granted, but cannot be further subdivided into different levels as with ratings.

The term “likes” is now used not only for the approval like, but often also as a general term for all monadic feedback variants available in the social media channels, such as approval, rejection, laughter, anger, etc.). Accordingly, the term like or likes is to be understood in this book.

From a psychological point of view, various effects are at work here, e.g. a deeper awareness that brings the product or supplier into the consideration set according to Kotler’s 5-phase model, e.g. a sympathy that arises solely through the higher number of contacts, or e.g. by effects by the mere exposure effect. But this is only an exemplary psychological background of how frequent contacts can generate advertising effects and also increase the likelihood of purchase.

Some hints for practice can be found, for example, in https://​www.​mikrofon-test-podcast.​de/​podcast-analytics-abonnenten/​.

The (overall) awareness of a product, brand or company is influenced by many factors and company activities, of which content marketing is only one of many. So, for example, if overall awareness were to increase sharply, no conclusions could be drawn for content marketing from this, as this increase in awareness could have been caused by a TV campaign. Overall awareness is therefore a good key figure for (overall) marketing with all its activities, but it has no value for content marketing. Therefore, content marketing needs key figures that measure the influence or share of this in an overall awareness.

The distinction from the key figures in Sect. 10.5.1 (content awareness) and from an overall awareness or the terminology used for this in this book shall be clarified once again using an example: Let us assume that a company operates an editorial magazine on its website. If one is interested in whether a consumer knows this at all, one would speak of content awareness (on the level of observation of the content marketing posts the awareness of content of the magazine, on the level of observation of the content marketing segments e.g. the awareness of this content marketing channel, i.e. the existence of the online magazine). Something else is the question of how much this magazine and its content have contributed to the awareness of the company (or the brand or products). This influence would be measured by key figures of content-induced awareness. Please note: If it is only about the awareness of the website or an online shop, not the brand or the company, this would be understood as an amplification of the effect of advertising media (key figures in Sect. 10.7.3), even though this of course always overlaps to some extent. If it is not about the influence of the online magazine or content marketing, but simply about the question of how well-known the company (the brand, the product) is overall (regardless of which marketing measures have led to this awareness), the term awareness (or brand awareness) would be used.

For the purpose of this controlling framework, the term image, which is common in marketing, has been chosen for the designation of these key figures, not the term attitude, which is common in psychology. If one were to make a measurement more from the perspective of psychology, one could use the term “Attitude Change” instead of “Overall Image Change”.

The selection of the right semantic differentials aka the adjectives used in them is more difficult for psychologically correct questionnaires than it seems at first glance, as the discussion by Fishbein and Ajzen 2010, pp. 79–82 shows.

For example, a question “Did you know that …?” (which already contains the knowledge to be tested in its formulation) will be answered more often with “Yes” on a yes/no scale, i.e. for questions that do not directly communicate the knowledge in the question.

Determinable, for example, by using first-party cookies.

For best practices for administering IAT, see also Greenwald et al. 2021.

To be precise, it cannot even be assumed that these constructs measure something that really exists in the world, but rather only theoretically assumed constructs of theoretical models for the description (!) of this real world, but not to be understood as a 1-to-1 reproduction of this. This is just a hint for readers who are interested in the science of science.

To make this clear using an example: Even though a customer may have developed an intention to purchase a product, this does not necessarily lead to an actual purchase, because the shop is currently closed or the webshop does not offer the desired payment method. In such a case, advertising has indeed taken place successfully (intention to purchase has arisen), but a realization in a concrete action has come about due to factors that are outside the focus of advertising effectiveness controlling. For this reason, it makes sense to take this distinction (see Sect. 5.​1) between intention and actual action from psychology into account in controlling, whether by means of dedicated key figures for both or at least by taking this knowledge into account when interpreting key figures.

A comprehensive overview of explanation models for the emergence of customer loyalty can be found in Bagusat 2006, p. 77.