What’s Your Marketing ROI?

June 16th, 2008 at 04:31pm Rebecca Kopf

When it comes to marketing, the ability to measure the effectiveness of an initiative – or Return on Investment (ROI) – can be tough.

In very basic terms, we view ROI as whatever ties into a company’s business goals and meets or exceeds the effort, resources or dollars an organization puts into it. For example, if you pay $100 for an advertisement which drives in $200 worth of revenue, you’ve obviously gained an exceptional ROI for that effort. Or if you’ve held a special promotion from 5 – 7 p.m. at your retail shop and also increased the number of employees working that evening, you need to determine if the additional staff costs overcame the hard dollars of promoting it.

But, how can you tell if an advertisement drives in customers or an article raises awareness for your company or product?

Here are some initial ideas that you might be able integrate into your organization to better assess your marketing efforts:

• Encourage employees to ask where customers heard about your organization or product. For example, how many new customers came because they read your company in the newspaper?
• Include discount coupons and track how many are redeemed over a specified amount of time. How much was the total purchased with individuals redeeming coupons? Would these people have otherwise frequented your establishment? Would they have hit your web site?
• Measure attendance or increase in revenue for special promotions by comparing week-over-week, day-over-day or year-over-year numbers.

Determine your measuable goals, let your staff know about them, and share why it’s important to garner this information. Let them be part of the process - and part of your success.

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