In today’s digital world, it’s not enough to just talk about ‘Measuring Marketing ROI’. It’s essential for any business. So, how can we really get it right and make the most of our marketing bucks? Let’s check it out and see what we find.
The Rising Importance of ROI in Marketing
In a world where business is always shifting, knowing how well your marketing is paying off is super important. But what’s made it such a big deal?
- Budget Optimization: With tight budgets, companies can’t afford to splurge without understanding the returns. Measuring marketing ROI ensures every dollar is accounted for and spent wisely.
- Strategy Refinement: Continuous evaluation of ROI aids in tweaking and refining strategies, ensuring optimal results with each campaign.
- Stakeholder Confidence: Demonstrating positive ROI bolsters stakeholder confidence, ensuring continued investment in marketing initiatives.
In today’s online world, can businesses really skip out on focusing on marketing ROI?
Going Further: What Exactly is Marketing ROI?
The core idea of ROI doesn’t change, but what counts as a ‘return’ in marketing can differ:
- Direct Sales: This clear-cut metric shows the immediate cash flow from your marketing efforts.
- Lead Generation: Especially for B2B businesses, getting qualified leads can be a big win.
- Brand Awareness and Recall: They might not be physical, but strong brand recognition today could mean more sales down the line.
- Customer Engagement and Loyalty: When customers come back and bring friends, your marketing ROI benefits in the long run.
Tools of the Trade: Beyond Basic Analytics
While tools like Google Analytics offer a starting point, a comprehensive evaluation of marketing ROI requires a broader toolkit:
CRM Systems: Platforms like Salesforce provide insights into customer behavior, lead conversions, and sales metrics. Here are some others for your research:
- Salesforce Sales Cloud - Considered the best overall CRM with powerful sales features and robust customization.
- Zoho CRM - Great for those already on the Zoho platform, with tight integration across Zoho apps.
- HubSpot CRM - Easiest to use CRM with seamless integration for marketing and sales.
- Freshsales - A great basic CRM option with an intuitive interface and key features.
- Zendesk Sell - Integrates tightly with other Zendesk products like support and chat.
- Less Annoying CRM - A simple, affordable CRM perfect for startups.
- Creatio - Packed with sales features ideal for large, complex sales teams.
- SugarCRM - Highly customizable CRM great for tailored workflows.
- Apptivo - Affordable CRM with all the basics, ideal for small businesses.
- Insightly - Designed for growth-stage companies and scaling sales teams.
The CRM platforms listed above represent some well-known options but should not be taken as recommendations. Each business has unique needs, goals and constraints - there is no one-size-fits-all CRM solution. This list is simply meant to provide a starting point for your own research process. We encourage thoroughly evaluating your specific requirements and identifying the platform that best aligns with your team’s workflows and your company’s vision.
At Kief Studio, our experts can advise you through this decision process. We take the time to understand your business, budget and objectives, and then explore the right CRM solution accordingly. This may involve configuring an established platform or even building a custom system tailored to your operations. Our focus is helping you maximize productivity and efficiency by selecting and implementing the ideal CRM to meet your needs today and scale into the future.
The goal is not just putting a software in place, but strategically integrating it to help unify your organization. Contact us to start a conversation and let our team guide you to CRM success.
Social Media Tools: With platforms like Hootsuite and Buffer, track engagement metrics and ROI from social campaigns.
Here are a few more for your research:
Sprout Social: A social media management platform offering scheduling, publishing, analytics, and a unified inbox for streamlined message management.
Falcon.io: An all-in-one tool with content creation, publishing, analytics, and social listening for brand monitoring and community engagement.
Later: A scheduling tool for planning and posting content across platforms, with a visual calendar for organizing.
Iconosquare: An Instagram and Facebook analytics tool providing performance insights and scheduling capabilities.
CoSchedule: A marketing calendar for organizing and planning social media content alongside publishing and analytics.
MeetEdgar: A scheduling tool to post content across platforms, with a content library for organization.
Agorapulse: A management platform with scheduling, publishing, analytics, and a unified social inbox for message consolidation.
Loomly: A tool to create, schedule, publish, and analyze social media content with added collaboration features.
Sendible: A management platform offering scheduling, publishing, analytics, and a unified inbox for streamlined messaging.
The social media tracking platforms listed are simply provided as a starting point for your own research. Kief Studio does not endorse any specific solutions - we believe finding the ideal fit depends on each company’s unique needs and goals.
While these represent some popular options, we encourage you to thoroughly evaluate and identify the social tracking tools that align best to your brand’s objectives. Consider aspects like data insight needs, budget, ease-of-use and more during your selection process.
At Kief Studio, our clients benefit from our proprietary social tracking software, Weedly.fyi, as an additional layer of listening. Weedly provides our team consolidated visibility so we can strategically monitor relevant conversations and trends across platforms. This empowers us to complement the standard social tracking included in your chosen tools.
Our aim is giving clients access to robust tracking capabilities tailored to their brands. Contact us to explore how Weedly and our social media experts can enhance your strategic listening - while you determine the best broader tools for understanding your audiences and measuring performance.
A/B Testing Tools: Optimizely and VWO can help test different marketing assets to identify which resonates best with audiences. Here are a few more for your research.
Google Optimize - A free A/B testing software that enables running basic experiments using statistical analysis.
Hotjar - Provides heatmaps, session recordings, surveys and basic A/B testing capabilities.
Omniconvert - An A/B testing tool with additional features like surveys and personalization.
Unbounce - Primarily a landing page builder but with basic A/B testing built-in.
Freshmarketer - An all-in-one conversion rate optimization tool with A/B testing and other features.
At Kief Studio, we recommend using tools that suit your budget and your business goals.
So, are you making the most of these tools to get a full picture of your marketing ROI?
The Evolution of Marketing and Its Impact on ROI
It’s pretty amazing how much marketing has changed over the years. Back in the old days it was all about print ads and billboards. But nowadays we have things like pay-per-click ads and social media marketing. This major shift has definitely impacted how companies need to measure their marketing ROI.
From Traditional to Digital:
When everything went digital, it forced brands to come up with new ways to track performance and quantify their return on marketing spend. They could no longer solely rely on broad metrics like overall sales. Digital opened the door to more granular measurement based on analytics and campaign-specific tracking links.
Rise of Content Marketing:
The rise of content marketing also had a big effect on ROI measurement. As companies invested more in blogs, videos, podcasts and the like, they realized they needed to gauge the value delivered by all that content. So new metrics were developed to connect content engagement to downstream business outcomes.
Personalization and AI:
AI and personalization have added layers of complexity - but also opportunity - to the ROI equation. With marketing messages tailored to specific customer segments, clearly understanding ROI means digging into the performance of each personalized campaign.
So…is your ROI measurement strategy evolving along with the latest marketing trends and tech? If not, it may be time for an upgrade!
Best Practices for Effective ROI Measurement
To stay on top of measuring marketing ROI in this fast-changing landscape, keep these best practices in mind:
- Set Clear Goals: Quantifiable goals are the cornerstone of any good ROI measurement program. They provide focus and benchmarks for gauging performance.
- Review and Refine Regularly: You can’t just measure ROI once and call it a day. As marketing evolves, your measurement approach needs to as well.
- Use a Mix of Tools: A single analytics platform is not enough. Employ a diverse mix of tools to get a holistic view.
- Train Your Team: Ensuring your marketers have the skills and knowledge to track ROI is crucial.
The Way Forward in ROI Measurement
No doubt about it, measuring marketing ROI can be daunting. But in today’s digital business environment it’s also more valuable than ever. For companies wanting to grow efficiently, understanding the returns generated by their marketing strategy is critical.
So even as marketing trends come and go, a commitment to quantifying ROI should remain steady. There will always be new measurement challenges on the horizon. But by embracing analytics, adapting approaches, and equipping teams, companies can stay ahead of the curve.
Maximizing marketing ROI never really ends…which is why it should be top of mind for brands in any era.
What do you think - is a laser focus on ROI measurement crucial for marketing success today? Reach out. We’ll make if easier for you!