ROI of Digital Strategies

Digital marketing is always changing, this has been caused by Google’s algorithm changes and higher competition from businesses using the internet for marketing promotions.

Digital marketing includes search engine optimization (SEO) and social media to promote a business and its website, gone are the days when a campaign could be measured by the amount of visitors the site has produced. Whilst these are fairly easy to report on and measure they do not entirely show the marketing contribution to the bottom line.

The marketing department is increasingly being asked what the return on investment (ROI) is from their digital marketing campaign. How do you report that the digital marketing campaign is working, what the return on investment (ROI) is.

To understand what the ROI is, we need to understand what the goals or aims of the company are, what they wish to get from a digital marketing campaign and then measure these goals. For this we need to look at the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the goals for each one.

Here are some types of key performance indicators:

• General Performance – Traffic, leads, Reach.
• Channel Based – Website, blog, social networks, search engines.
• Source based performance – Direct traffic, Organic search, referrals, email, PPC.
• Campaign based performance – Lead generation, click throughs, conversions, conversion rates.
• Setting realistic and measurable goals.

Once you are agreed on the KPIs, the next stage is to measure these, what style of report and how these are presented. It may be necessary to change the KPIs over time and thus the goals too. The report can simply be an excel spreadsheet with incoming enquiries that result in sales.