Why Every Successful Business Should Track ROI for Marketing Campaigns

Tracking and measuring the return on your marketing investments (ROI) is essential to understanding how much money you're making from your efforts and whether or not you should pursue the marketing activities you are paying for. Knowing the actual return you receive from your investment allows you to ensure that you're making wise spending decisions, optimize campaigns for maximum efficiency, and measure success accurately.

Understand Your Goals and Objectives
Before you can track and measure the ROI of your marketing campaigns, it’s important to understand your goals and objectives. This will help you determine what metrics are the most important to measure, isolate which campaigns are working the best, and make better decisions moving forward. Once you’ve set goals and objectives, you can use these as baselines for tracking ROI across channels. This will help ensure that you’re focusing on the initiatives that are having the most impact.

Identify Your Target Audience
Before you can begin measuring return on investment (ROI) in marketing, it’s important to clearly identify who your target audience is. Knowing exactly who you are trying to reach will help inform the types of marketing tactics that you use and give you an idea of where potential customers may be located. It is important to look at both demographics and psychographic data when determining what the most appropriate audience is for your campaign. Once you know this information you will have a better idea of which campaigns will work best for your target audience.

Track Your Campaign Results Regularly
As your marketing campaigns are running, it is important to track the performance of each regularly. This way, you can make changes if needed in real time and adjust your strategy based on the data you receive. Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts across multiple campaigns allows for better optimization and an overall higher ROI. Also, don’t forget to set benchmarks for success and review them periodically, so you know where you stand and what goals need to be met or revised. Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track the success of your website. Use the reporting section of your email marketing platform to understand open and click rates. Use the analytics section on your social media platforms to understand likes and followers as well as impressions and custom button clicks.

Analyze Your Findings to See What Works Best
After analyzing your findings, you’ll be able to quickly differentiate between campaigns that are thriving and campaigns that need to be reevaluated or changed. From there you can determine what techniques are working best for your ROI goals and double down on them. As your marketing strategy evolves, don’t shy away from testing out new tactics. Utilizing analytics tools will help you understand where the highest return is coming from across different channels.

Maximize Return on Investment With Continuous Adjustments and Improvements
Once you’re able to track ROI and make meaningful comparisons, it’s possible to maximize your return on investment by making the necessary changes and improvements. Through continually analyzing the data, you can adjust campaigns in order to maximize your ROI. When elements of a campaign are not performing well, get creative with different solutions so that you can optimize your approach over time. Embrace continual optimization to stay ahead of the competition. But remember, no marketing campaigns are successful overnight, so be sure to give enough time to make an intelligent decision on whether or not the campaign failed or there simply wasn’t enough time to make it successful. Give each campaign at least 3-6 months before deciding to eliminate it.