How to Unlock the ROI of Your Marketing with Analytics

May 23, 2022 | 6 min read

If you are familiar with marketing campaigns, you must have come across the term marketing ROI.

Marketing return on investment (ROI) is one of the essential components that helps in determining the performance of a marketing campaign and simultaneously evaluating the impact and profit brought about by the campaign.

Within the business framework, marketing ROI is essential in identifying whether a marketing campaign has been successful in its efforts and has been able to help the company improve its bottom line.

What is Marketing ROI used for?

Marketing ROI generally refers to determining the impacts of marketing initiatives by attributing their profit and revenue growth against the cost of the campaign. Calculating the ROI generated from a marketing campaign helps an organization to understand if the effort has been successful and, if yes, then how much profit it helped to bring in. Marketing ROI is also often used to justify expenditures and budget allocations and how they can profit the organization in the future.

How to Unlock the ROI of your Marketing with Analytics?

Marketing strategies have undergone profound changes over the last decade with the growing popularity of social media and internet-based platforms that allow interested clients and parties to interact with the company online.

With the amount of data collected from these forums and websites on an everyday basis, navigating through this data and reaching an expected resolution might prove to be a challenge for the senior management of a business. So, while calculating the ROI of your marketing, enlisting the help of analytics can be crucial to set clear short, and long-term objectives to understand and improve profits and resource allocation.

But how do you use analytic insights to calculate your marketing ROI?

With the below-mentioned tips, you can avoid unnecessary distractions while unlocking the ROI of your marketing campaign with analytics and streamline your operation:

– Planning for ROI:

While calculating ROI, it is vital to measure the expected outcomes from your marketing investments. Not only does it give you a fair idea of the value of the marketing campaign, but it also helps you to understand what to measure, as well as when and how to measure it. To get started, it can be really helpful if you have an understanding of your current situation, establish small but achievable steps towards your goal and move along with the process.

The State of Marketing Measurement report says that about 82% of marketers wanted every campaign to be measured for further analysis, but the section that ultimately was able to effectively evaluate the ROI for each campaign was less than a third of the whole. In addition to this, just 48% of the marketers had actually used web analytics tools for measuring ROI and marketing campaign effectiveness.

If you are looking for clarity in your planned objectives, you can get started by accumulating past data to create an initial outline. Historical data have proven to be beneficial in this regard as it helps in identifying market trends and any change in its regulations. You can further use this outline to chalk out a detailed plan that lets you know how to install analytics into your available objectives.

Planning for ROI also helps you in realizing the importance and possible extent to which your marketing campaign can benefit your company. You can measure the effectiveness of your organization’s marketing campaign by:

Using predictive models for analyzing your market data and comparing it with the data observed from past campaigns
Orienting financial goals with respect to existing marketing analytics
Screening social feeds and portals for possible leads and generating customer engagement data

– Avoiding vanity metrics:

Vanity metrics can help you boost your image before your competition or other interested parties, but they do little when it comes to helping you understand your performance and formulate better marketing strategies.

In addition, vanity metrics can end up distracting you and your team from the objectives and goals at hand. Vanity metrics obtained from social media engagements and press release shares might prove to be helpful in creating a positive image for your organization, but it does not sufficiently contribute to earning revenue through your marketing campaigns.

In contrast, being more attentive to the engagement metrics than the vanity metrics can be beneficial as it positively impacts the ROI of your marketing campaign. Once you have sufficient data at hand to conduct an analysis of the engagement metrics, you can use your findings to implement your planned objectives. It not just helps in making better predictions but also saves you time which can be utilized in other aspects of the business. Furthermore, you can use the gathered information to leverage your marketing tools, such as:

Analyzing any data obtained before, during, and after a marketing campaign to understand vital trends
Formulate customized reports for your organization and develop strategies as required by the marketing effort
Tracking and understanding customer behavior through marketing initiatives

– Improving sales:

With information and technology becoming more widespread and accessible than ever, buyers are able to make informed decisions when it comes to purchases based on marketing strategies. The growth of blogs, social networks, and review platforms has immensely contributed to the growth in the number of informed buyers. On the one hand, it somewhat restricts the potential of marketing efforts, but on the other, it also grants you access to the information that is available to buyers. With this information at hand, you can constructively analyze this information and translate it to improve your revenue.

Analyzing this information also helps your organization gather a holistic view of the true ROI that can be generated by your marketing strategies and, furthermore, impact your sales. This data also helps you realize the potential of your marketing efforts and improve sales by:

Understanding customer trends and their decision-making processes and integrating them into your product and marketing campaigns
Discussing the projected ROI with the entire organization can be effective in figuring out strategies beyond sales and marketing teams that can contribute to the overall revenue.

– Conducting experiments:

Conducting experiments in terms of marketing efforts offer opportunities to discover new terrains for your marketing strategies and contribute to your ROI. Testing out marketing campaigns provide meaningful insights, as well as viable alternatives you can explore.

Experimenting with marketing strategies is also an effective way of adopting new approaches to digital marketing without being too expensive. Experimenting with marketing campaigns can improve its optimization rating and help discover the potential and relevance a particular campaign holds in terms of generating ROI. You can set to experimenting with the following tips:

Allocating a portion of the budget for experimentation and testing
Determining a focus area and conducting thorough tests for viable solutions and improvements
Avoid fixating on failed tests and move on to other areas of concern

– Making a confident decision:

For a marketing campaign to succeed, it is important to determine the expected ROI and report it through marketing analytics. This is extremely beneficial in making an informed decision and helps to improve revenue growth. You can also incorporate other members of your organization to be a part of the decision-making process. You can also generate more engagement within your organization when it comes to data interpretation and marketing analytics by:

Setting up definitive boundaries on data collection and analysis
Make sure action items are a part of all analytics reports
Forming subcommittees to review and follow up on decisions and regulations made in response to analytical reports

Final words

With the above-mentioned strategies, you can improve the ROI of your marketing with analytics and help boost revenue growth through marketing initiatives in no time.