When I got my start in marketing, measuring the effectiveness of an advertising or marketing campaign was difficult. If you weren’t using direct mail or direct response TV, the ability to calculate the ROI of your campaigns came down to guesswork.
Oh, sure, we all claimed we were tracking the results of our campaigns, but the truth was that if you ran a TV, radio, print or outdoor campaign that didn’t have a direct response component in it, then the only way to see if the campaign worked was to measure the lift in overall sales.
That may sound simple enough, but the minute an ad agency said, “We ran a TV campaign last month and year-over-year (YOY) sales increased 5%,” everybody and their uncle claimed responsibility.
The sales team would jump in and highlight the fact that they ran a sales promotion at the same time. And then the public relations people would jump in and talk about their efforts. It seemed like even the people reporting the weather had a claim on the increase in sales — after all, warm, sunny weather can have a very real impact on just about any business.
Only 1/3rd of Marketers Measure the ROI of Their Campaigns
The good news for most marketers is that digital campaigns can be measured much more easily than ever before. If you track the results of your campaigns and know a few simple formulas, then you can calculate the ROI of your efforts pretty easily. (For more on this topic, read An In-Depth Guide on How to Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign on the 60 Second Marketer blog.)
Given the simplicity of measuring the ROI of a digital marketing campaign, it’s surprising that more people don’t do it — in fact, according to some studies, only 1/3rd of all marketers measure the ROI of their campaigns.
With that in mind, we thought we’d share the inforgraphic below, brought to us by our friends at Formstack. It provides some key tips and techniques you can use to calculate the ROI of some of your campaigns.
Enjoy the infographic. More importantly, put it to use!