Nearly all businesses can benefit from marketing, leveraging a combination of strategies to improve brand visibility, increase trust, and ultimately land more sales. But if you want to ensure your marketing is effective, you need to keep a close eye on your return on investment (ROI).

What exactly is marketing ROI? And how do you maximize it?

The Basics of Marketing ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is exactly what it sounds like – a measurement of how much value is provided to you, compared to how much you’ve invested in a given strategy. ROI is a metric that’s used in finance and investing, but it’s also one of the best ways to measure the overall effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

As long as your ROI is positive, you can confidently say that your marketing strategy is effective. The higher your ROI is, the more effective the marketing strategy is. For example, if you spend $5,000 on a marketing campaign and you generate $6,000 in new sales, you can reasonably say the campaign was effective. But it would be even more effective if you generated $12,000 in new sales.

The question is, what actionable steps can you take to maximize your marketing ROI?

Hire a Digital Marketing Firm

Marketing agencies in Long Island and throughout the country are staffed with talented, experienced experts in the field of marketing who can help you plan and execute the most favorable campaigns for your brand. It’s technically possible to plan and launch a marketing campaign on your own, but with the help of an expert advisor, you’ll be much more likely to see positive results.

It’s true that a digital marketing firm is going to cost you money. Depending on the firm and the services you use, you could pay thousands to tens of thousands of dollars every month. But in exchange, you’ll get access to all of the firm’s experts and resources, which can guide you to much better results. The firm will work with you to better understand your brand, your audience, and your goals, and they can put together a comprehensive sequence of strategies designed to get you the best possible return.

Firms are incentivized to get you the highest ROI possible so they can keep your business. They will keep experimenting and improving to push your ROI higher, and if your ROI ever falls, they’ll take intervening action to restore it.

Do your due diligence and choose a digital marketing firm that’s best aligned with your vision for the future of your brand’s marketing. Experience and strong testimonials are excellent indicators of a firm’s capabilities.

Better Understand (and Cater to) Your Target Audience

Ample market research can help you make all your marketing strategies more effective. The goal here is to better understand who your target demographics are, and how they think and feel about the world.

With this better understanding, you’ll be in a much better position to craft messaging that’s perfectly targeted; you can reach out to people in the proper channels, with the most persuasive messaging, and ultimately see better results.

Focusing on a specific target audience, instead of a general one, is also a great way to save money and avoid competition.

Have a Plan for the Competition

Speaking of competition, you should have a plan for how to deal with it. Excessive competition in the marketing space can increase your costs and decrease your visibility.

There are several possible ways to address this, including:

• Brute force. You could overcome your rivals by outspending them. In this brute force method, you’ll tap your budget and pay for the privilege of higher visibility. Obviously, if you’re working with a tight budget, this isn’t a good option for you.
• Niche targeting. You could also target a different niche than your top competitors. If they’re busy focusing on one target demographic, you can focus on a different demographic and avoid them entirely.
• Meaningful differentiation. Another angle of attack is to substantially differentiate your brand. Is your brand higher quality? Is it less expensive? Can it demonstrably show better results? In other words, what makes your brand better, and how do you convince people of this?

Choose the Right Strategies

Some strategies are more conducive to a high ROI than others. The “best” strategies for your brand are going to depend on your industry, your competitors, and your specific goals. But these are some of the most common and effective choices:

• Search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization (SEO) is a strategy designed to help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s relatively easy to get started, with content development, onsite optimization, and link building. It takes time to develop this strategy, but it’s incredibly scalable.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. PPC ads require you to pay for each click you generate. This strategy allows you to immediately generate traffic, and if you’re good at optimizing your ad strategy, it can be highly cost-effective.
• Email marketing. Starting an email marketing campaign is free to inexpensive, yet it can have incredibly powerful results. That’s why it has one of the highest ROIs of any marketing strategy.
• Social media marketing. Social media marketing is associated with many challenges, but it’s free to get started with an organic posting strategy. Any results you see are almost pure upside.

Measure, Analyze, and Improve

Finally, take the time to measure your results, analyze them, and improve upon what you’ve already done. Focusing on the most important KPIs, conducting experiments like AB tests, and cutting waste whenever you find it will all lead you to a better overall ROI.

With these approaches, you can easily assemble a combination of marketing strategies that give you a meaningful return on your initial investment. Just remember, there’s really no such thing as a “maximum” ROI, so there will always be room for optimizations and improvements.

Keep working to see even better results from your ongoing efforts.