When speaking of advertising, John Wannamaker once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Wouldn’t it be great to know which part of your inbound marketing strategy was actually working so you can make changes accordingly? That is the great thing about measuring your inbound marketing Return-on-Investment (ROI).
Why ROI?
In the recently released report from Hubspot, State of Inbound 2016, organizations were asked if they felt their inbound marketing strategies were effective. Depending on if they calculated ROI, their responses were drastically different.
- 72% were satisfied with their current marketing strategy when measuring ROI
- 49% were satisfied with their current marketing strategy when not measuring ROI
Why You Can’t Afford to Avoid Calculating ROI
“So, what’s the big deal?” you may be asking yourself. Think of the repercussions you may be facing in the near future: You could be investing in a strategy that will see little to no return, or worse, you may accidentally stop a campaign you fear isn’t working when in fact it could bring you the highest return of all your current campaigns combined. Imagine the money you could be saving and making!
Monitoring your ROI could also increase your marketing budget. According to Hubspot, those that measure ROI are 1.6x more likely to receive a higher budget. This can be a great resource as you’re planning your marketing budget for 2017. Of those surveyed:
- Nearly 50% said they will increase their budget after calculating ROI
- Only 30% said they will increase their budget when they didn’t calculate ROI
Learn to live by the words of Thomas Edison: “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness, third, common sense.” This same thinking can be applied to your inbound marketing campaigns as you plan for the marketing trends in 2017.
While measuring your ROI can take time and proper tools to gain the data, it will absolutely be worth it in the end!
