THE PROVEN WAYS TO MEASURE ROI EFFECTIVELY AND EASILY
Metrics can’t always give you the full story of the time and effort you put into your marketing efforts. Measuring return on investment (ROI) is the only way to know for sure if you’re using your budget effectively and getting the most out of your marketing spend.
Like we said before, though, it’s important to note the metrics you use to measure your campaigns will depend on which tactics and avenues you’re using in your campaigns.
Defining ROI: What Does It Mean to Me?
The metrics you use to define brand loyalty success won’t be the same as those you might use for email marketing. ROI in its simplest form looks like this.
ROI = Return / Investment
With that being said, here’s a quick list of metrics you can use to measure marketing ROI:
- Blogs and content marketing - Traffic, clicks, time spent on the page, unique visitors, returning visitors, actions taken and conversions.
- Social media marketing - Engagement rates, click-through rate (CTR), conversions, leads acquired and new followers.
- Email marketing - Bounce rate, open rate, unsubscribe rate, CTR and conversions.
This is just a quick guideline to refer to. We’ve gone into more detail below so you can measure ROI more effectively for your campaigns. You’re welcome!
Blogs and Content Marketing
Analysing the ROI of your content is a little different than when you measure the ROI of an event, for example. Even though it’s been making waves in the marketing industry recently, it’s still a challenge to calculate that all-important ROI successfully.
This is mainly because it may take several weeks or months for Google and even your audience to discover your blogs. Content marketing works, it’s just about finding the numbers to back it up to your bosses.
How much did that blog take to produce? Maybe you have a dedicated in-house team or you outsource your content to an agency. Whatever the case - it still has a cost.
What’s the cost to distribute the content? This includes pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or any tools you use like Hootsuite for scheduling.
Sometimes, there’s a clear link between content and revenue, like when people read a blog and then click on your call to action and take action. In other instances, it’s not quite as easy to directly measure the ROI. In the meantime, it does other wonderful things like driving brand awareness and lowering customer acquisition costs.
Social Media Marketing
A staggering 70% of online businesses with social media platforms don’t bother to measure ROI. Some might say measuring it is impossible. However, a lot of companies fall victim to this mentality because they’re too fixated on likes - which are pretty difficult to monetise.
Social media is a challenging beast to tame. Are people commenting and sharing your posts?
Although, metrics like engagement and new followers paired with each platform’s analytic tools will help you get a better idea of how your posts are contributing to your bottom line.
Social media is an excellent platform for developing brand identity and building engagement. So even if you don’t explicitly get leads from it, you’re still getting your brand out there.
Email Marketing
Many marketers have anticipated the fall of email marketing for years, with GDPR most likely emerging victorious. However, when done right, email is considered to be the most effective marketing channel with its average ROI a tidy sum of $38 per email.
When measuring the initial success of your email campaign, you’ll need to pay special attention to the following:
- Bounce rate: Did it actually make it to the person? Make sure there are no inactive email addresses on your list. A high bounce rate makes your overall campaign look ineffective.
- Open rate: Engaging headlines are essential. If your emails are going unread, test out some new ideas and see if they improve.
- Unsubscribe rate: The easiest way to see if something isn’t quite right. If this is high, you’ll need to investigate - don a trench coat and enlist the help of your very own Watson.
- Click-through-rate: Did they engage with your content and images or did they move you straight to the dreaded junk folder?
- Conversions: You might have a high open-rate, but you need to make adjustments if the reader isn’t following the next step e.g. downloading your brochure or getting in touch with your sales team.
Although they're super important metrics to monitor, it could be a combination of this data that details your success. All of these metrics give you a solid summary of your email campaign, giving you the insights you need to make adjustments and record ROI.
Measuring the ROI for your email efforts can get a little complex. What’s the value of each touchpoint? Using email analytics or a CRM, you can track and measure purchases made by consumers after they click on email content, adding the sums of these purchases together to determine revenue.
Email marketing isn’t just great for that initial sale either. It’s also equally important for nurturing customers to make that repeat purchase and become loyal brand ambassadors.
It’s not always easy to calculate the revenue generated by your marketing efforts but we’ve given you some food for thought. It’s difficult, but it’s not impossible. It’s even made easier with a handy little tool we’ve created.
Use Our Campaign Budget Calculator to Measure ROI Effectively
You might have tried your hand at maths and realised you’re much better at marketing. Don’t worry. You can use our handy little budget calculator so you can get some concrete ROIs and solidify your branding budgets.
It’s pretty straight forward and gives you clear figures to take away. Get access to it below.
Topics: Brand Engagement, ROI