There are lots of different marketing campaigns you can use for your business, which is why it’s important to know which ones give the best results. That’s where ROI (Return on Investment) comes in, as an important factor for measuring the success of a marketing campaign. Of course, some businesses will have a better ROI with social media marketing, while others might hit the mark with SEO. But going through the most important marketing campaigns will give you a valuable insight into which campaigns you can use or even combine to increase your revenue. This list will highlight some of the best marketing campaigns you can use, as well as how to easily calculate their ROI.
Traditional Marketing
The trouble with traditional marketing is that it’s extremely hard to actually calculate its ROI. Let’s say you gave a hefty sum for a TV commercial and it aired 10 times in the past 3 days. The only way you can get any data out of it is if there’s a big spike in sales, at which point you can calculate the increase in revenue against your costs of having a TV commercial. The difference would be your ROI, but the trouble is that you’d have to ignore every other aspect of your marketing and attribute it to your TV commercial. It’s highly unlikely that you’d only be advertising through the TV at that time, and it’s quite impossible to ask all of your buyers what impacted them the most to make their decision.
The biggest problem with traditional marketing is that it’s not targeted enough. It’s almost impossible to control who’s going to see your ad, which is why internet marketing has seen a huge rise in popularity. It’s easy to target your audience and it’s even easier to calculate the exact ROI that you’re getting out of it. That said, there’s no denying that some forms of traditional marketing are still one of the best ways to boost your brand’s awareness.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign
PPC campaign is run by paying to appear on the top of your SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages) for certain keywords. You’d do a full keyword research and choose a keyword that suits you the most (balance between how popular it is with searchers against the cost to get it). Basically, you’d only be paying for every click that goes through, whether you convert it into a sale or not. This is why PPC is by far the easiest campaign to calculate. If you’re paying $2 per click and 10 people clicked to get to your website, with only 1 of them making a purchase of 40$, this would put your ROI to 100%.
Basically, your ROI is calculated by dividing your profit with the money you invested. In this case, it would be 20$ ($40- $20 you paid for PPC) divided by $20, which puts your ROI to 1.00, or 100%.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is another option for your internet marketing campaign and is quite different than the PPC. Instead of paying to get to the top of your SERPs with a sponsored ad, you can just try to get along with Google’s set of rules and get to the top the natural way. There are many elements to SEO, from quality link building to having killer content, so there’s no single thing to point at.
It’s cheaper than PPC, but also can’t guarantee you instant traffic like PPC can. Rather, it will take some time for SEO to kick in and get you through the rankings. You can use Google Analytics to get an idea about your ROI, by going to Acquisition > Organic Traffic and calculate the data the same way as we showed on PPC example.
Social Media Campaign
Marketing on social media is no longer all about “like and share” campaigns. These campaigns were very successful, but that was years ago, and the trends have moved away from them. Today, social media campaigns are all about customer relations, getting out there talking to your customers and doing it on a personal level. Social media lets you communicate with your customer base on a level that’s much more personal than any other type of campaign.
Shares are still extremely important, but you’re getting them not by forcing your customers to share, but by making them want to share.
However, running a campaign on multiple social media channels can prove quite expensive and time-consuming, which is why it’s best to focus on a few platforms that work the best for your industry. If you’re in the design business, it might be better to run a campaign on Pinterest or Instagram, rather than Twitter. That said, social media campaigns are the ones with the lowest risk for your investment, as most of the time, your ROI is going to be pretty good.
Email Campaign
While many people believe that email campaigns are on the decline, they are still quite popular and can pay off really well if you targeted your audience well enough through email segmentation. It’s also quite easy to check your ROI, as you’ll get all the data for email open rates, as well as click-through rates to your website. Email campaigns depend the most on the content that you send to your targeted audience, so don’t make the mistake of sending ads and expecting it to work out. The key is to take your leads on a customer journey and turn them into buyers, which should be done one step at a time.
It’s also worth noting that no campaign will mean much if your bounce rates are high, which means that your customers clicked through but left the website upon entering. This is why web developers from Websitesthatsell recommend investing into UX design (User Experience Design).
Guerrilla Marketing
This type of marketing is most suitable for really small businesses, or individuals who want to promote their website. The idea is to think outside of the box and getting more traffic by being creative, instead of paying for it. It can be anything, from holding free webinars to promote your website to giving out free copies of your e-book. In any case, guerrilla marketing campaigns are either completely free or extremely cheap, which is why they usually have a high ROI, at least percentage wise.
Conclusion
Most businesses can’t rely on a single marketing campaign to get them to the top, which is why it’s vital to combine the campaigns for the best results. However, knowing which campaigns show up with the best ROI is important if you’re going to do that successfully, which is why we made this guide. Generally speaking, best ROI usually comes from SEO, social media and email campaigns. But if your niche is better suitable for traditional marketing, by all means, go for it. Or if you want to instantly increase your traffic – go for PPC. So instead of investing heavily into one single campaign, it might be a better idea to experiment a bit with all of these campaigns and check the ROI that they bring to the table, before focusing your efforts.