ROI is an important marketing topic, but what should you reasonably expect?
Your return on investment (ROI) has the power to dictate the ultimate success (or failure) of your marketing strategy. Defined by the amount of revenue generated by your marketing activities in excess of your expenses, a campaign with a positive ROI is always worth what you invested, while a campaign with a negative ROI can eat away at your marketing budget fruitlessly.
The question is, what’s a “good” ROI for your marketing campaign? And is merely being positive enough?
Different Types of ROI
Different types of marketing campaigns will naturally lend themselves to different types of ROI. Take, for example, a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign. Here, you’ll pay a fixed amount of money for each click you generate, and you should be able to easily calculate how many new sales you’ve generated from the campaign. It’s a one-time exchange, and a short-term one. Provided you’re targeting the right keywords and have a persuasive call-to-action (CTA), you can expect a modest ROI, and immediately after you launch the campaign.
By contrast, take content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). These campaigns are less cost-intensive to start, but you’ll be paying the costs of them on a recurring basis. In the first few months, you might not see much activity, but as you scale your efforts and accumulate more value, you’ll see better and better results—both in the form of direct traffic and onsite conversions, and in the form of higher brand awareness. Here, the end ROI is demonstrably much higher than a PPC ad campaign, but because it takes longer to generate, it’s not ideal for all companies or all goals.
Baseline ROI
That said, you can generally assume that any positive ROI is good, but it’s nice to shoot for a 3:1 ratio of revenue to expenses or higher. On top of that, almost any marketing and advertising campaign results can be improved with a better understanding of your strategy, so always push for more.
If you need help improving your marketing ROI, contact Quez Media for a free consultation today!