There are many ways to do a B2B content marketing audit. In general, you want to take stock of all your marketing assets, like blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, landing pages, and more. You’ll conduct a review of them to evaluate how effective each asset is; for example, if you have a gap in some sort of content (i.e. white papers on trending topics, etc.), you can fill that gap. You can also fulfill the overall strategy for impact, efficiency in creation, etc. You should set routines and remind yourself to do regular audits to maximize impact and make any adjustments you feel necessary. 

Companies that audit, optimize their content can expect as much as 7.8x the organic traffic as companies that do not. More importantly, research, and experience show that to achieve a bona fide Return on Investment (ROI), regular audits are vitally important.  A long sales cycle is a typical B2B scenario, and often this scenario includes several decision-makers. With this type of extended-sales cycle in consideration, marketers have to be more mindful of how relevant some of their content may continue to be when a sale is influenced by several different decision-makers.

How to Conduct a Comprehensive B2B Content Marketing Audit?

B2B content marketing is an important factor for creating leads, building brand authority, and connecting with customers, all of which gain in importance in a digitally dominated world, yet with libraries of content only increasing, brands are challenged to develop deeply engaged audiences and find ways to remain relevant, timely, consistent, and effective within that.  That is why a complete B2B content marketing audit can be an extremely valuable asset. About 65% of high-performing B2B marketers conduct a content audit at least twice a year, generally leading to better lead generation and ultimately better ROI. In this piece we will discuss the need for content audits, provide a guide to conducting your own audit, and provide some relevant statistics, along with some takeaways along the way.

Why Conduct a B2B Content Marketing Audit?

• Improve Consistency: Having consistency of messaging, tone and branding, will help generate trust with prospects. 

• Improve SEO: Work through the gaps of content (e.g., keyword, broken links, duplicate content) to help improve your search rankings and organic visibility. 

• Align with Customer Journey: Review that content fits customer journey stages to allow the appropriate information to be delivered to prospects at the right stage.

• Return on Investment: Regular content audits can lead to 30%  increase in organic traffic and a significant lead generator.

Step-by-Step Guide to a Comprehensive B2B Content Marketing Audit

Define Your Objectives

Start by clarifying the goals of your audit. Whether you are aiming to increase website traffic, or generate quality leads, improve SEO, or enhance customer engagement. Clear objectives will guide your process and help measure success.

Inventory Your Content

Create a comprehensive list of all content assets. This includes:

• Blog posts

• Whitepapers and eBooks

• Case studies

• Landing pages

• Email newsletters

• Social media posts

Categorize content by type, format, and distribution channel for easier analysis.

Categorize and Tag Content

Organize your inventory by Content type (blog, video, case study), funnel stage (awareness, consideration, decision), target persona,topic or theme. This helps identify gaps and overlaps in your content strategy.

Analyze Performance Metrics

Take advantage of analytics tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, or HubSpot to measure page views, unique visitors, bounce rate, average time on a page, conversion rates (form submissions or demo requests), keyword rankings, organic traffic, social shares, backlinks, and compare your results against benchmarks for the 

Assess Content Quality and Relevance

By going beyond the numbers and evaluate 

• Relevance: Does the content address your audience’s needs and pain points?
• Accuracy: Is the information current and factually correct?
• Engagement: Does it encourage interaction and sharing?
• Brand Consistency: Is tone and messaging aligned with your brand identity?

Identify Gaps and Opportunities

Look for missing content for specific buyer personas or funnel stages, outdated or redundant topics, opportunities to update, expand, or repurpose high-performing content

Optimize and Repurpose Content

Instead of creating new content from scratch, maximize what you have; update outdated blog posts with fresh data and examples, convert articles into infographics, videos, or social posts, refresh lead magnets and landing pages to boost conversions.

Develop and Implement an Action Plan

Based on your findings:

• Prioritize high-impact updates and removals
• Assign responsibilities and set deadlines
• Integrate SEO improvements and content repurposing strategies

Monitor, Test, and Refine

Content auditing isn’t a one-time activity. Conduct regular content audits, ideally quarterly or bi-annually, to ensure you keep alignment with business needs and market direction. Continually A/B test content and list element updates alongside ongoing analytics, to measure the impact changes are having on desired goals, and tailor future content strategy accordingly.

Best Practices for Effective B2B Content Audits

• Conduct audits regularly:

 You should conduct an audit at least once or twice a year, or more often in fast-changing industries.

• Use data-driven decisions:

You should assess your metrics and rely on concrete metrics, not assumptions.

• Align with business goals: 

You should ensure that all content supports broader objectives and caters to the set KPIs.

• Focus on quality: 

Optimize existing assets before creating new ones which will result in producing quality content 

Key Metrics to Evaluate Content Performance

When measuring your content effectiveness, you specially focus on the metrics that help you assess how content attracts, engages, and converts your audience. 

Firstly take  a look at your traffic metrics, (sessions, users, page views) to determine reach and visibility. Then examine your engagement metrics (average session duration, time on-page, pages per-session) to measure the engagement your users had while consuming your content. 

A high bounce rate may indicate that users felt none of the content was relevant, or they did not navigate away from the content because they had a poor experience while engaging with it. Scroll depth will show how much of the content was consumed.

Also review conversion metrics such as conversion rate, click-through rate (CTR), and form submissions, to see how well it drove the specific action you desired users to take, such as sign ups or downloads. 

Additionally, SEO metrics, such as organic search traffic, keyword rankings, and backlinks, are a measure of the visibility and authority of your content in search engines. You can also measure social engagement by looking at likes, comments, shares, etc to see how it felt for the user and how much it has spread on those formats.  

Finally, examine how many unique vs returning visitors there were, as well as subscriber growth metrics, to build an understanding of audience loyalty and longer-term impact.  Evaluating traffic, engagement, conversion, SEO and social metrics will give you clear opportunities for improvement to your content strategies to create better content and achieve better outcomes. 

A content marketing audit for B2B is well worth doing if you want to revise and improve your content strategy, increase engagement, and generate measurable business results. Organizations making frequent use of detailed, data-driven audit-based reports realize incredible increases in traffic, leads, and ROI, while those that don’t complete regular, content audits risk falling behind. During a typical content audit, organizations look at how content performs, where it sits in terms of relevance, and how it fits with their overall business goals. Content audits can illuminate opportunities for new efforts and areas of waste to eliminate, providing assurance from the data that every piece of content produced is truly contributing toward the organization’s success. Connect with CDM Media Group to get make content auditing a key component of your B2B strategy, and improve both your results and competitive advantage.