Marketing return on investment is absolutely vital to the success of any small business. If you're not performing marketing tactics that generate leads and bring in customers, then you're going to go out of business before anyone knows who you are and what you offer.
But, how do you measure marketing ROI? What tactics bring in the biggeset ROI for the least amount of money? Why should all this matter? As long as things improve, it's all good, right?
Well, a recent stufy from the Columbia Business School found that 82 percent of marketers did not consider both financial return and spending as part of marketing ROI. A whopping 37% did not even mention financial affecs. So, how are these people determining marketing ROI? Over 35% said they used brand awareness, and 60 percent of them ONLY used brand awareness as a metric. Other metrics used include recall, purchase intention, and willingness to recommend.
No wonder digital marketing tactics like social media, content marketing, and business blogging are still difficult to sell on their value. It's nearly impossible to measure purchase intention from Facebook fans, or willingness to recommend from a few blog posts. It's also curious how the companies these marketers work for intend to increase business or get more out of their marketing dollars. With metrics so vague, and so tough to measure with online marketing and promotion, it's nearly impossible to know what works and what doesn't, or even if any spike in web traffic or purchasing is a result of the marketing dollars spent.
Marketing ROI should be measured by the leads and customers those tactics bring in. That's the big picture end goal of any marketing campaign, and of the business. The great thing about online marketing tactics is that there are more ways to measure the effectiveness of those tactics, whether its web visitors, bounce rate, blog comments, social shares, form conversions etc. versus traditional marketing methods. At the very least, your analysis of your marketing ROI should show you whether or not your marketing campaigns are successful at meeting the goals of those campaigns. If your not successful, or you don't know if you are successful, then you could be squandering precious financial resources.
To find out what kind of marketing ROI you currently have from your current online marketing tactics, participate in our FREE web assessment and see how well you are doing, and how you rank against your competitors:
