It is known that the main goal of business is to make a profit. If there is no profit, the company will not be able to continue its existence. An entrepreneur must pay for labor, purchase resources, invest in promotion, provide equipment, spend money on logistics services, and much more. If you do not invest in your business, you are unlikely to get the expected result.
But despite the need for expenses, you should analyze them. We can’t just spend money and think that we did everything right, so rarely anyone adheres to such tactics. Therefore, it is necessary to track your costs and their effectiveness in order to understand what profit you will get in the future from this, how much your actions have justified themselves. Perhaps you are doing something wrong and you should think about the fact that you need to change something to get, as well as increase income. For this, the business uses the term Return on investment (abbreviated ROI).
ROI
Different formulas can be used to calculate the ROI, depending on the goals set. One of the most common formulas is the following:
Since this indicator is calculated for a certain period of time, you can add this additional value to the formula, then it will look like this:
The value can be either positive or negative. If the ROI is > 0%, then the company earns. If the ROI is <= 0%, then the company is at a loss.
ROI is used for various business lines. Today we will talk about ROI in marketing or, as it is called, ROMI (Return On Marketing Investment). Marketing ROI or ROMI shows how effective your investments in marketing activities were: marketing events, advertising, the use of individual tools, and so on. There is no single formula for success in marketing.
What works for the B2C sector is not always applicable for B2B, what is good for one enterprise in B2B will not necessarily become profitable for another, even if they produce a similar product or service. Any subtleties are important here. If 20-30 years ago marketers used some tools to attract attention and promote, now with the widespread development and use of digital technologies and the Internet, tools have adapted to a different approach, and completely new ones have appeared.
Therefore, in marketing, it is always necessary to try, try and try again. But, unfortunately, marketers do not have unlimited monetary resources for this, so they need to defend their projects, they must be responsible to the top management. And most managers are used to trust the numbers and make decisions based on them. You can show these figures using ROMI.
Marketing ROI (ROMI)
So, based on the formula by which the ROI is calculated, you can make a formula for Marketing ROI. It will look like this:
It is worth noting that for marketing, this indicator is not always easy to calculate. This is due to the fact that marketing uses a multi-channel approach, that is, to sell one type of product, it uses several types of promotion channels that have different payback periods. So you will most likely see the result of the activity from content marketing, not earlier than in six months, and maybe even later. Therefore, this formula should be adjusted to your business, and not to adjust the business to the formula, for example, you can calculate indicators for a separate type of channel or combine several channels with similar indicators.
Let’s try to figure it out with an example.
Internet Promotion ROI
Let’s imagine that Marketing Psycho is a company that produces power semiconductor devices. We need to calculate the ROMI for Internet product promotion, and we have a huge marketing budget to carry that out. To begin with, we will draw up an annual action plan and a budget for it.
| Description | Approximate cost, USD. |
| Internet promotion | |
| Placement of a banner on the website of industrial magazines | 80 000 |
| Placement of a banner on industrial portals | 200 000 |
| E-mail marketing | 142 000 |
| Targeted advertising in professional social networks | 400 000 |
| Total | 822 000 |
First of all, it is necessary to count the effectiveness of banner advertising. To calculate it, you need to use an indicator such as CTR. CTR (click-through rate) is the ratio of the total number of clicks to the total number of impressions and multiplied by 100 %.
Marketing Psycho company has information that for the selected industrial portals, the average number of home page views is about 370,000 per month, that is, 4,440,000 per year. At the same time, based on research data, the minimum CTR indicator for the B2B market is 0.17%.
Thus, we get that during the year of placement of banner advertising, 7548 representatives of industrial companies will be interested in the products of Marketing Psycho (they will click on the banner). Also, taking into account the fact that the conversion rate for banner advertising on the B2B market is about 2.8%, we get that Marketing Psycho will have 211 potential consumers ready to place an order for the year due to this marketing event.
Let’s consider that the average cost per unit of Marketing Psycho products sold over the past year is $ 4,260. As a result, even if you place an order for just one product, the sales amount will be $ 898,860:
Sales amount = 211*$ 4,260= $ 898,860
Over the past year, the average marginal profit of the company’s products was about 50%, which indicates that $ 280,000 invested in banner advertising will bring the company $ 449,430 in profit. This indicates that banner advertising will be effective.
Next, let’s move on to E-mail Marketing, here you also need to take into account the conversion rate.
According to a research company in the field of E-mail Marketing, the conversion rate for industrial production companies is about 2%.
The potential customer base of Marketing Psycho is about 5,000 enterprises, which makes it possible to count on 100 future customers of the company. With a minimum unit order of $ 4,260, the total sales amount will be $ 426,000, and the total profit will be $ 213,000 with an investment in a marketing channel of $ 142,000.
Thus, E-Mail Marketing, as well as banner advertising, will be a justified choice in the company’s marketing plan.
To predict the effectiveness of targeted advertising in professional social networks, it is necessary to analyze data on the conversion of this channel for attracting customers. Based on the data of an agency specialized in this field, the minimum conversion rate of targeted advertising in professional social media is 10%, and the maximum is 20-30%.
For Marketing Psycho with a budget of $ 400,000, the approximate audience coverage will be about 500,000 employees from 2000 companies, potential consumers of power semiconductor devices.
With the lowest conversion rate, the company can count on 200 customers, and with an average of 400. With a minimum order, the sales amount will be from $ 852,000 to $ 1,704,000, and the profit will be from $ 426,000 to $ 852,000 with an investment of $ 400,000. Based on the data obtained, the inclusion of targeted advertising in the marketing plan is justified.
To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed marketing activities, we will use the Marketing ROI calculation formula.
The total minimum revenue of the company for the selected marketing activities will be $ 1,088,430 at a cost of $ 822,000. Then, substituting the data into our formula, we get:
That is, ROMI = 32.4%, which is more than 0%, so investing in marketing for Marketing Psycho company will bring profit.
The numbers provided were fictional so you can understand the method. You can try to calculate Marketing ROI using your own data for various marketing channels.
And keep in mind that every theory has to be tested and verified. It concerns marketing activities as well.
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