You’ve worked hard to get onboard with digital marketing strategies that will help your business soar, but are you getting the best return on investment for all of your marketing efforts? Even if you know a lot about digital marketing, it can be difficult to know what’s working or where to place your focus.
So, How Can You Improve Your Digital Marketing ROI?
While the list below is in no way exhaustive, it’s a good place to start looking at strategies that could boost your ROI.
1. Get SMART When Setting Goals
When you set your ROI goal, be sure your target ratio is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound or SMART.
Your target ratio will depend on many factors so it’s best to aim for success without setting unrealistic expectations. Your chosen analytics should focus on the impact of your marketing efforts on achieving or exceeding that target ratio. Generally speaking, a good marketing ROI is getting $5 in sales for every $1 spent. This 5:1 target ratio is considered strong in the industry, but more importantly, it’s realistic and achievable.
2. Paid Advertising
A paid advertising strategy is effective for most business models, but it can be a little difficult to figure out what Pay Per Click (PPC) platforms are best for a particular industry or business. Also, depending on the industry you’re in the price per click on ads can vary greatly – starting sometimes at a few cents per click and going up to as much as a $200+ per click. Also, paid advertising is somewhat like paying rent versus owning real estate because the money you spend isn’t establishing any equitable position for your business. When you stop funding the ads they are instantly turned off which means the only value you retain is the sales or accounts that remain after the ads are shut down. To ensure you are maximizing your PPC spend, hire a digital agency or PPC expert that understands Pay Per Click Management.
3. Content Marketing and SEO
This is one of the most powerful marketing strategies and you can even get started with little or even no investment.
However, to scale this strategy to a meaningful level requires patience and effort. Content strategies can take months or years before you start seeing results. Once you do though, you’ll recognize the ability of this strategy to scale exponentially over time. In other words, rather than the linear results you’ll see with paid advertising, content marketing and SEO gives you lasting value for your brand. Even if content marketing and SEO aren’t part of your main focus, at least include SEO best practices and have a basic content strategy in place so that you have a digital presence that is growing over time and at least has the opportunity to achieve non-paid or organic rank in search results.
4. Crossover and Multi-Channel Approaches
Are you currently using a multi-pronged strategy that involves social media, content marketing, and pay-per-click ads?
Rather than just focusing on how each individual effort is working, look at how they work together. For example, is there a link on your blog posts that takes your customers to your social media channels? Understanding the path your customers take to conversion is hugely valuable.
5. Marketing Automation Tools
Digital channels keep multiplying and data is out of control.
Marketing automation tools boost your digital marketing ROI by making it possible for your marketing and sales teams to use their time and every dollar wisely. Automation tools can be used to perform repetitive tasks, manage email lists, house documents and images, and perform a wide variety of functions, thereby freeing up your team to do other work.
Where Is Your Focus?
Be sure that the time you spend calculating your ROI isn’t affecting your ROI! Spending too much time on it can translate into lost profits. Remember that you simply can’t measure everything. The key is in choosing the marketing efforts that have the greatest impact and then focusing on those.
And if you’d like some help with your digital marketing efforts, feel free to contact us. We respond to all inquiries ASAP.
