Why Marketing Matters: Defining ROI

Explaining Why Marketing Matters: Beyond Traditional ROI

How do you define Marketing ROI? Is it Incremental Sales Revenue generated by marketing activities? Is it overall changes in brand awareness? Is it market share or number of leads? Is it how many Facebook followers you have (hopefully not)?

Can?t decide? Perhaps it?s because ROI doesn?t just stand for Return on Investment but also Return on Impression. You can’t simply measure marketing ROI the traditional way anymore.

Marketing Matters: Return on Impression

Return on Impression refers to the number of people who are actually seeing your advertising and marketing material, whether it?s a billboard in Times Square or a newly published blog. Return on Impression includes both a hard metric (views) and soft metric (perceptions). Impressions can increase exponentially, especially through Inbound Marketing. This is due to the number of people sharing and discussing the Content which increases views. Views can be someone who simply skims your material or a person who actually clicks and engages with it.

That?s where perceptions come in.

Perceptions represent added value to how your content is received by the audience and how it then affects brand awareness and attitudes.

If your content evokes emotion related to your brand then it means your efforts made an impact and changed perceptions. The way to measure the success of this type of marketing is by listening to conversations and monitoring social platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to really understand what people are saying about your brand.

Marketing Matters: Return on Opportunity

Return on Opportunity evaluates both direct and indirect marketing potential. While some marketing opportunities might not add to a business? bottom line in the present, acknowledging that it could lead to conversation and engagement online and offline in the future can make the effort worth it.

Marketing Matters: Return on Engagement

Engagement is a pivotal component of overall marketing performance because of the new digital age. Online conversations, word-of-mouth marketing can make or break a business. Online buzz is crucial to overall success. While social shares are important and a good metric to monitor, it is important to evaluate if those efforts are directly increasing leads and becoming sustainable relationships between those leads and you.

Marketing Matters: Return on Objectives

Overall marketing-specific objectives are not all measurable with hard data. Marketing can simply help move a brand in the right direction and assist the company in meeting overall long-term business objectives. Return on objectives work in tandem with return on opportunity and return on engagement to provide a comprehensive, integrated marketing strategy that will deliver real results for a business.

Traditional ROI isn?t enough when determining marketing ROI. Both hard and soft data need to be evaluated and goals need to be set based on the clear picture these measurements provide.

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Marketing Matters Inbound?is an inbound marketing firm specializing in online conversions, content?strategy, call-to-action mapping and traditional media placement. Our experience in?B2B digital?marketing?and traditional media allows us to deliver results through a strategic media mix. We believe in?aligning and merging marketing and sales/operations for optimal return on your marketing investment.