Creating an online marketing campaign is not a tough job when you know your audience well, but what makes every online marketing manager’s job difficult is when the picture of Return on Investment (ROI) arises. ROI is more than just a measurement; it is a process that helps a marketer to improve its marketing performance and profitability by using the insights gained through the effectiveness of the strategies.
Since the major significance of marketing is to increase profit, ROI plays the biggest part in the doing or undoing of a campaign strategy. No matter how much effort a marketer puts in creating a strategic marketing campaign, if the ROI is not what was expected, everything goes down the drain and has to be started from scratch. Improving your online marketing ROI does not come overnight, it takes a lot of effort and patience.
Here I have provided 6 simple methods that will dramatically improve the ROI of your online marketing campaigns:
1. Market what you can measure (or try to make it more measurable):
To improve your online marketing ROI, you have to first of all measure the ROI perfectly and get the true numbers from different sources. Thus, it is always advisable to make your marketing campaigns easily quantifiable. This way it is easier to understand the changing customer behaviour and market changes very quickly.
When it comes to online marketing, it is easier to make the different processes from planning to deployment stages measurable. If you can quantify it, the numbers compared to your expected outcomes will make ROI measurement easy and hence, improve the profit potential. A good measurement plan is always to mix basic tracking with advanced analytics.
2. Inbound over outbound:
Many marketers still have the mind-set that direct interaction is going to get more leads and sales than inbound marketing. The truth is that it is no longer the 80s or the 90s. Customer mind-set has changed and in this age of information overload, no one likes to be pestered with calls and spam mails. An inbound marketing report by HubSpot mentions that there is around 62% lower cost-per-lead through inbound marketing than outbound.
This trend is not only true for B2C but also for B2B buyers. Customers like to research on the product or about the company before availing their services or buying a product. If you are still thinking to increase your inbound marketing budget, it is high time. Ecosultancy reports that the average cost of generating leads through inbound marketing (estimated $143) was half of that for outbound marketing ($373) in 2013.
Recommended: Top 5 Tips to Develop a Powerful Inbound Marketing Strategy.
3. Effective SEO:
It is no wonder that SEO pops up in this list. As mentioned in the HubSpot report for inbound marketing, SEO tops in terms of the percentage of leads generated from all methods of inbound marketing. It is against the misconception that many businesses have that SEO is hard and not worth investing in. If you have the right resources, it will be the most productive and economical ways to generate qualified leads and customers. One thing to be noted, the quality of leads is more important the number of leads generated.
4. Channel your resources to the right audience:
This is another important point to ensure that your investment is going in the right direction and thus, you have a better ROI. You should know how to channel your resources to the right audience. If your company is selling teenage products, it is not worth marketing to all age products. It will be waste of your resources and hence, decrease in ROI as a result of resource misdirection.
5. Social media and blogging:
Social media is becoming popular in generating leads nowadays, with a huge audience presence online. If you can strengthen your social media presence with a good strategy, you can expect a good number of leads.
There is another channel that brings in a lot of leads is the blog. The State of Inbound 2014-2015 Report by HubSpot shows that companies that blogs are 13 times more likely to generate a positive ROI. Even in B2B, there is a huge shift in the preference for articles (around 70%) over ads to learn more about a company.
6. Design and effective call-to-actions:
With the concept that ‘content is like water’, website design plays a crucial part in getting good leads. If your website is not responsive, you are losing a huge amount in sales. Make your website easy to browse in both desktop and mobile devices.
Another important factor that determines the ROI of online marketing is the call to action (CTA). If you have a visually stunning and attractive landing page or a great piece of content, but you fail to put any effective CTA elements, then it defeats the very purpose. So it is important to see that the CTA elements are done such a way that visitors are compelled to perform actions.
Conclusion (Online Marketing ROI):
Hope these points will help you when you think that you are missing out something while measuring your online marketing ROI and finding it not up to your satisfaction. If there are any points that I have failed to mention, please feel free to leave a comment on the comment section.
This article is written by Hasibuddin Ahmed. He is currently working as a writer in naukri.com – one of the top job portals in India. His articles help in making the jobs of online marketing professionals and managers easier and help them in finding a new perspective. He is also a knowledge junkie, foodie and an avid reader. Reach him @ Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn
