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Are you doing everything you can to maximise ROI in your marketing?

4 mins read

ROI — that one metric you constantly lose sleep over as you try to strike a balance between your marketing efforts and that elusive sale. It all revolves around measuring how much you gained (or lost) compared to how much you spent on your marketing activity. Obviously, the aim is to maximise ROI, but knowing how to go about it can be tricky.

If your ROI is suffering and you're constantly scratching your head about what changes you should make to see if it improves, here are some top tips designed to help maximise your marketing's ROI.

 

 

Establish goals

You can't cut any corners when trying to prove ROI. Start by establishing your goals so you can track progress to see how you're getting on. When setting ROI goals, make them SMART, so they're specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely.

  • Specific: Don't create a vague goal. 'Increase ROI' doesn't help anybody, but 'increase ROI by 20%' makes the goal more specific
  • Measurable: Collect the right data using suitable reporting methods so you can measure your progress
  • Achievable: Don't be overly ambitious. Keep your goals realistic, so you have goals you can genuinely achieve
  • Relevant: Your ROI goals should relate to what your business is trying to achieve. It's no good analysing Twitter likes and trying to link them to increased sales
  • Timely: Select a timeframe and stick to it. This should be the hard deadline of when you want to reach your goals by to give the goal some importance

 

Avoid vanity metrics

Don't bother racking metrics that distract you from your business goals. Page views, likes on our social media channels, how many times someone shared your latest press release — these don't tend to correlate with marketing ROI, so put your energy elsewhere.

chris ignoring vanity metrics

Yes, these metrics offer insight into how your marketing is performing, but it doesn't directly impact revenue and offer little value. Instead, focus on the metrics that matter, such as:

  • Conversion rate
  • Const-per-acquisition
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Direct traffic
  • Referral traffic

Measuring the correct metrics will let you know how you can improve ROI in your marketing,

 

Don't be afraid to experiment

Without experimenting, you'll utilise the same tactics repeatedly even when it's clear they don't work. That's a sure-fire way to see an unfavourable ROI and receive an even smaller marketing budget next year. Experiment regularly as it'll give you fresh opportunities to accelerate growth in your business and it gives you a higher chance of securing a positive ROI.

For example, if you haven't ever delved into personalisation, why not experiment with personalised emails to begin and see the results? Or, why not A/B test subject lines and then landing pages. There's a great deal you can do.

Set aside some of your marketing budget for experimenting. Whether it's adopting a new channel so you can push out marketing activities and compare results or investing in particular software, start by picking one area to focus on. Use that one area and continue experimenting until you can't improve anymore.

Has an experiment failed? Cool. At least you know what doesn't work, so don't sulk and move on to another focus area and experiment again. Over time, you'll find the perfect formula for what's working and what you can leave behind.

 

Use a marketing automation platform

Today, marketing automation isn't a nice-to-have, especially with the market set to grow to $6.4 billion by 2024. It's central to any successful marketing strategy because it engages with buyers at every stage of the buyer's journey. Once you have your leads, your marketing CRM platform — like HubSpot — will automatically add them into a workflow. 

By leveraging a marketing automation platform to perform repetitive tasks like managing email lists, you can focus on more complex strategies that require more effort and creativity. By adopting a marketing automation platform, you benefit in several ways, including:

  • Save valuable time
  • Increase revenue due to enhanced customer retention
  • Help possible customers across multiple marketing channels with little effort
  • Improve accountability
  • Keep your buyers engaged
  • Nurture your prospects better
  • Automatically guide prospects along the buyer's journey

A marketing automation platform is key to marketing and maximising ROI. if you're brand new to it but know automation is what will boost your ROI, here's a quick run-through on how you can create your automated marketing strategy:

  1. Understand your customers. Find out what their pain points are and what they'll engage with. This knowledge will help you create emails that are likely to successfully engage with them as they'll feel like your solutions will help their problems. A good first step is creating buyer personas to understand your target market
  2. Learn more about inbound marketing. Once you have your personas, find out more about the inbound methodology, so you know where your personas fit in the buyer's journey
  3. Use a marketing CRM like HubSpot. Find the best CRM for your business where you can create automated emails and workflows to nurture leads into customers

 

Have visibility over your essential data

Along with a marketing automation platform, you need something that will pull through all of your valuable data into one centralised location. Having visibility over this data and knowing when you need to pivot is how you can begin to maximise your ROI.

Again, HubSpot's CRM platform is a great option. When using it to its potential, you can access rich insights to help you grow better. It combines powerful features that your entire team can use — from marketing and sales right through to service. As all of the tools are natively built, a platform like HubSpot can keep all the data aligned too.

will using hubspot for data analysis

Picked the metrics most valuable to you and find them instantly. Then, use that data to make the necessary changes towards maximising your ROI.

Work with a specialist marketing agency

Chances are you currently have many plates to spin but no time to focus on every marketing channel. Can you go all-in on content while managing the lead gen side of the business? Plus all of the social media stuff that goes with it, your PPC strategy, managing the website — it can get a bit much.

Putting 50% effort in each due to a lack of time and resources means you only get 50% of the results, which isn't the best strategy when you're trying to boost your ROI. One sure-fire way to maximise your ROI is by working with a specialist marketing agency whose priority is to prove your investment with them is worthwhile.

They're focused on getting results. They have departments filled with experts that put their complete focus on your campaigns to drive results.

Agencies, CRM platforms, automation and everything mentioned in this blog will help you maximise your ROI and grow better. If you need immediate proof of your ROI, why not try our conversion calculator for free?

 

Start proving the ROI of your marketing campaigns

Proving ROI isn't always an easy job, especially if you're responsible for managing the ROI of all marketing channels. Our conversion calculator is an effortless way to track overall campaign ROI where you can input data unique to you.

The best part? It'll only take a few minutes to complete as the calculator is pre-formatted with only the most relevant equations to help you work out your ROI. Try it for free today using the button below.