How To Measure Online Marketing Campaign ROI

Digital marketing has proven successful across many industries, however, research indicates that up to 25% of businesses don’t know how to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing campaigns.

Chances are that you are already using some form of online marketing such as pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM) or email marketing. Whether you are paying for services or using your own time and energy, running these campaigns cost you money, so it’s important that you measure the results and what’s not so that you can invest in what’s working and pull back or improve what’s not working as well as expected.

Let’s review how you can measure your campaign ROI.

First Step: Create SMART Goals

The first step in measuring campaign ROI is setting goals for your campaigns. Setting clear objectives will help you determine what to measure and setting achievable goals for those metrics will help you set realistic expectations. One way to approach this is to make SMART goals.

SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, relevance, and time-bound. You should be able to measure everything about your campaign. For example, a number of sales, volume of traffic, and amount of clicks.

Obviously, you want goals that are relevant to your brand. For instance, if you’re looking to improve your online presence, you should pay attention to metrics like social media followers, user engagement, and inbound traffic.

Be as specific as you can be. It’s better to have a goal to increase your email list by 15% than to say you want boost email subscriptions.

Once you have your goals in place, you can begin measuring and analyzing your data. Just keep in mind that your campaign is in ongoing development. As data comes in, you will have to make tweaks to improve your campaign ROI.

Analytics Tools to Track Campaign ROI

There’s no measuring the ROI for your digital marketing campaigns without the right tools. The most popular is Google Analytics and the great news is that it’s completely free. You can use this to track data from your website, pay-per-click and email campaigns. In fact, there are so many different metrics you can track, you’ll feel a bit overwhelmed. Your goals will help you organize which metrics are essential.

If social media marketing is a part of your online marketing strategy, then you can track campaign ROI using its built-in analytics system. For instance, Facebook has a built-in analytics tool that tracks a ton of data. This is used to track the success of your Facebook ads and Facebook page. You get to see the typical details, like views and clicks. You can also identify the age, race, location, and profession of your audience and slice and dice the data by the time of day for your posts and which ads are viewed or clicked on. All of this can help you improve your topics for posts and ad copy.

Now, let’s dive into how to measure and analyze data successfully.

Measure Everything You Can

You have your goals set and know the metrics you need to watch. Does this mean you should ignore all of the other data you can potentially collect? No. In fact, your best bet is to measure everything you can. You never know when you’ll get intel that will transform your campaign ROI for the better.

For instance, you may find a traffic coming in from an unknown source worthy of checking out. Whatever insights you collect, make them actionable. For example, if you see a post getting lots of traffic, consider writing more that are similar or more in-depth.

Next, let’s review the different metrics you should track and how to use them to measure campaign ROI.

Digital Marketing KPIs

KPIs, or key performance indicators, allow you to measure campaign ROI. These are essential to all marketing channels – online and offline.

This helps to identify what campaigns deserve more attention and vice versa. For instance, which campaigns need tweaking or elimination and which are performing well and deserve more funding.

Let’s review three categories you should be monitoring.

1. Lead Generation

The key to generating hot leads is to give your audience something they’re asking for. For instance, an online purchase, request for quote or downloading a free e-book about a common problem they face. Or perhaps a subscription to a blog series that teaches them how to improve their life or business.

Here’s how you can measure the effectiveness of lead generation channels.

Monthly Leads

This consists of any leads you get from your email campaigns, website or social media campaigns. Your analytics tools will divulge this data. Just look at the past 30 days for each campaign to calculate the monthly lead count.

If the outcome isn’t satisfactory, you can either boost your budget for PPC ads, create more SEO content or try different avenues.

Cost Per Lead Generated

Having leads is great, but it doesn’t account for much if each lead is killing your budget. One way to measure this is to calculate the amount of time, money and resources spent on your campaigns.

Then compare it with the results of your monthly leads. If it’s not impressive, then try using a mix of free and paid campaigns.

Sharing quality and engaging content on social media is another way to get free traffic and leads.

Cost Per Conversion

Knowing how much your business earns from each converted lead is key to determining campaign ROI. If you have a campaign that’s generating hundreds of leads, but only 2% convert, then that may be an issue.

One way to know is to identify how much your business gets from each customer. For example, if you’re getting thousands of dollars per conversion, then it may be okay to have a lower conversion rate.

Again, determine the expense of time and resources used to acquire leads from a particular source. Look at your Adwords campaign, social media, blog, and website.

Then check which customers from each source converted within the last month. It’s best to monitor each channel separately.

To improve the results, you can create ads and content that’s highly-targeted. Or maybe you can enhance the user experience and give better guides and materials for using your product or service.

2. Website

Your website is your most critical asset for online marketing ROI. You can use the following to track the ROI of your site’s performance.

Monthly Traffic

Here, you want to determine which parts of your website is receiving the most traffic. Is it your homepage, landing pages, products page or particular blog posts?

Next, you want to see which pages generate the most conversions. Google Analytics will reveal all this to you.

One way to boost your site traffic is to spend more on PPC ads or create more SEO content.

Return vs New Visits

Identifying how many visitors are return visitors will determine how engaged your audience is. If people aren’t returning, then this means your content isn’t compelling or relevant.

To improve this metric, you can write better blog posts and landing pages that target your audience’s problems and interests.

Visits Per Channel

You have multiple sources of your incoming site traffic. But which of them are generating the most conversions? Google Analytics can track visits from social media, ads, and emails.

If you see your PPC ads are low-performing, then consider using more compelling images and value propositions.

Then if it’s your SEO, consider interlinking web pages into your content. And make your content more useful.

You can improve social media conversions by making posts that are more interesting to your audience. See which posts get the most engagement to get ideas.

3. Search Engine Optimization

How many people are finding your business using organic search? Well, there are a few ways to find out your SEO campaign ROI.

Inbound Traffic from Search Engines

You can find this out by looking at your Google Analytics dashboard. See what your monthly traffic rate is.

And if it’s not meeting your standards, you can work on improving your rank. This includes writing more optimized content, conducting an on-site SEO audit and writing content that’s valuable.

Conversions from Organic Search

Now, it’s time to see how much of your traffic is converting into customers. One reason you may see low conversions is that your keywords are irrelevant or confusing.

In other words, it’s attracting the wrong audience. Make sure your keywords are strong and then implement a good customer relationship management (CRM).

For instance, one that has categorization options and various other CRM features.

Then try ranking higher using local and highly-targeted keywords. Your blog content should also have topics that establish you as an authority. You can do this by offering actionable insights and advice that your audience can use right away.

Improve and Grow Your Campaign ROI

It doesn’t take rocket science to enhance your digital marketing campaigns. However, it does take experience.

At Improve & Grow, we have successfully managed marketing campaigns for all sorts of businesses. This includes reaching and engaging not just any audience, but the right audience. Take a look at how one roofing company saw a 340% increase in leads from a digital marketing strategy.

If you’re struggling with meeting your campaign goals, then contact us today to schedule a free, 1-hour consultation!