A Better Way to Calculate the ROI of Your Marketing Investment
“Marketers have access to data [today] that allows them to track individuals’ various interactions with a brand before their purchase, and better understand what role each interaction … played in the eventual sale.
This approach, called “attribution modeling, ” allows companies to attribute appropriate credit to each online and offline contact and touch point in a customer’s purchase cycle, and understand its role in the revenues that ultimately result.
Developing an attribution model is a gradual process. You can’t get there all at once. There are four key stages in the journey:”
Sales Renewal’s insight:
The authors lay out an excellent road map, but like most things in life, the devil is in the details. Sales Renewal, as Growth Spurt readers know, focuses on small businesses and the details are particularly devilish for them since they don’t have the technical & financial resources of the big boys.
Almost all small businesses rely on Google Analytics (GA) for the authors’ Step 1 because it’s free and will tell them what marketing activity to credit for bringing the visitor to the site (ad click, natural search, etc), which pages they clicked through, and whether in the end they converted into a lead or sale. The challenge small businesses face therefore isn’t “data in different databases” but the limits of GA.
For example, imagine a visitor who comes to a site by clicking an online ad, clicks thru pages 1, 2 & 3 and then purchases something. So using a simple attribution model, you might think GA will credit the ad campaign for the sale. It turns out, however, that it does not: if takes more than 30 minutes for them to click from page 2 to page 3, GA loses track and considers the page 3 click to be an entirely new session. GA will report 2 different visitors (the first who came from the ad, the second who magically started out on page 3) and so does not attribute the sale to the ad click.
Sales Renewal’s business model (sharing the risk & reward) makes us very big believers in ROI-focused marketing but it’s a very challenging thing to do, especially for small businesses. That’s one of the reasons, for instance, that we’ve been developing our SR Analytics system for 6 years.
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15 Mind-Blowing Stats About Generation Z
While many marketers still struggle to figure out the Millennials, a new generation-Generation Z-is growing up behind the scenes.
Members of Gen Z, born after 1995, are quite different than their Millennial counterparts, with their own set of expectations when interacting with companies.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
You might not realize it but more than 25% of Americans belong to Gen Z, and with 361, 00 babies born in the U.S. every day the segment is growing fast.
All of their 15 stats are interesting but we found these 2 to be the most intriguing … and scary:
- Millennials use 3 screens on average, Gen Zers use 5 (smartphone, TV, laptop, desktop, iPod/iPad)
- The average Gen Zer has the attention span of about 8 seconds.
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The Increasing Importance of Content Marketing in 2015
A new infographic from ExpressWriters nicely illustrates Content Marketing’s increasing importance to growing your sales and brand.
Some factoids we found particularly interesting:
Sales Renewal’s insight:
A new infographic from ExpressWriters nicely illustrates Content Marketing’s increasing importance to growing your sales and brand. Some factoids we found particularly interesing:
- Coca-Cola now spends more money creating content than on television advertising
- Marketers invest over 25% of their marketing budget on content
- 77% of marketers plan on increasing content production in 2015
- 61% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that shares custom content
- 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing
John Wanamaker Would Die for This: We Now Know Which Half is Which!
There is a popular saying which goes “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Over the years, I have heard many a CEO/CFO substitute the word “marketing” for “advertising” as they lament about all the money they are spending on brand awareness and demand creation with little demonstrable return on investment. But those days are over.”
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Thanks to analytics, trackable phone numbers, trackable emails and marketing automation software you can now know which half of your marketing budget is working and which half is not … and adjust your marketing activities and budget accordingly. The author provides a few interesting examples of the old and new ways of marketing.
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Cost of Marketing: What Is the Average Budget?
As today’s savvy businesspeople know, to have a strong business people have to know who you are and what you offer. You need good marketing. The first step is a marketing budget to help you figure out practical steps to achieve those goals. But, how much should you spend?
Sales Renewal’s insight:
We agree, this is the best way to think of your marketing budget if you’re a small business:
“Allocating a specified percentage of sales revenue is one of the most popular methods for developing a marketing budget. The average allocation usually ranges between 9-12% of the annual budget, while the smallest businesses may go as low as 2%. … The main advantage to using a percentage of sales is that the marketing budget will increase, or decrease, with the sales revenue of the company. The marketing budget will never spin out of control and deplete sales revenue.”
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B2B Beat: What Is the Frequency, Blogger?
The debate began in January with a Tweet from Moz’s Rand Fishkin. In that Tweet, Fishkin, who is known as the Wizard of Moz, noted that HubSpot had posted 49 blog posts in a single week.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
There’s no right answer to the question of how frequently to blog. This article looks at A/B tests from Moz and HubSpot and concludes that the right number of posts per week will be different for every business. While it’s generally based on your readers, your content, and how consistently you post, it can take several years to find your “sweet spot.”
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Beyond Digital Analytics Metrics – Analytics & Optimization
In this post, Pere Rovira discusses COGS (Cost Of Goods Sold) and LTV (Lifetime Value), two fundamental business metrics that can help web analysts be more meaningful and influential with their analysis.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
This articles does a nice job of starting to explain why a typical off-the-shelf analytics platform (including Google Analytics) may not provide you with useful data, even though it seems like it does.
There are many metrics that are important for managers in a data-driven organization both tactical (cost per click, click thru rate) and business (cost per lead, return-on-marketing-investment). Your analytics platform must provide both types in easy to understand ways so that the decision makers can deploy resources towards the programs that will generate the most profit, not just the most revenue.
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Jump Start Your Marketing with Sales Renewal’s Marketing Essentials Solution
Six-Month Program Grows Leads and Sales Through Better Marketing & Sales-Enabling Technology While Providing Hands-On, Personalized Training.
Concord, MA, July 23, 2015 – Sales Renewal, committed to bringing affordable, comprehensive marketing solutions to small business, today announces the immediate availability of the Marketing Essentials Solution . Marketing Essentials is a comprehensive, easy-to-adopt solution that first improves a business’s marketing & technology “assets” and then provides the ongoing, active assistance and expertise needed to cost effectively grow its leads & sales.
Marketing Essentials is ideal for businesses that want to grow by improving their sales and marketing scope and effectiveness but aren’t sure what they ultimately need or how to do it. Smaller firms might find it sufficient, while larger firms can use it as a solid foundation to build upon.
During the initial six-month trial program, Marketing Essentials clients enjoy weekly coaching sessions that cover Web & content marketing, SEO, email marketing, social media, blogging, in-person networking, strategy and management. Sales Renewal also manages the included search advertising and inbound link building (search optimization) services provided by third-party experts.
This makes Marketing Essentials quite different than comparably priced do-it-yourself or self-service solutions where you are provided tools and help pages but are on your own for how best to use them. While Marketing Essentials also includes useful tools its most valuable aspect is the proactive, real-world guidance provided by its weekly coaching sessions that teach, help accelerate through learning curves and provide a knowledgeable sounding board for the inevitable issues that arise. Importantly, it also includes two critical services–advertising and link building–that are best left to the experts.
“Marketing today is challenging for most small businesses, ” says Keith Loris, Sales Renewal President and CEO. “With all the techniques and technologies available, figuring out where to start and which tactics to use can be confusing. That’s why, while Marketing Essentials is growing your leads and sales during the first six months, it also trains you on and allows you to become proficient in a broad, universal mix of marketing tactics and programs that can help every business grow. By the end of the six months, businesses will truly know what works best for them and can make an informed decision about what’s next: (1) take their new found expertise and marketing in-house, (2) continue using the Marketing Essentials Solution or (3) upgrade to the custom JointSourcing Solution that shares risks and rewards.”
About Sales Renewal Corporation
Sales Renewal offers two growth solutions-the JointSourcing Solution and the Marketing Essential Solution -that help small businesses grow their leads and sales. Both solutions begin by developing a growth plan specific to the business and both provide all the people, expertise and tools needed to implement the plan and grow sales without having to pay full-time salaries, benefits or management time. Learn more at www.salesrenewal.com.
Media Contact:
Audrey Trieschman
Sales Renewal Corporation
508-529-4300 ext 104
atrieschman@salesrenewal.com
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Concord, MA, July 23, 2015 – Sales Renewal, committed to bringing affordable, comprehensive marketing solutions to small business, today announces the immediate availability of the Marketing Essentials Solution . Marketing Essentials is a comprehensive, easy-to-adopt solution that first improves a business’s marketing & technology “assets” and then provides the ongoing, active assistance and expertise needed to cost effectively grow its leads & sales.
Marketing Essentials is ideal for businesses that want to grow by improving their sales and marketing scope and effectiveness but aren’t sure what they ultimately need or how to do it. Smaller firms might find it sufficient, while larger firms can use it as a solid foundation to build upon.
During the initial six-month trial program, Marketing Essentials clients enjoy weekly coaching sessions that cover Web & content marketing, SEO, email marketing, social media, blogging, in-person networking, strategy and management. Sales Renewal also manages the included search advertising and inbound link building (search optimization) services provided by third-party experts.
Free Marketing Management Course from MIT
15.810 Marketing Management is designed to serve as an introduction to the theory and practice of marketing. Students will improve their ability to develop effective marketing strategies and assess market opportunities, as well as design strategy implementation programs. In addition, students will have the opportunity to communicate and defend their recommendations and build upon the recommendations of their peers. We will explore the theory and applications of marketing concepts through a mix o
Sales Renewal’s insight:
This and 2, 200 other classes are available from MIT OpenCourseWare which “makes the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT’s subjects available on the Web, free of charge.”
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What Skills to Look for When Hiring or Assembling a Marketing Team
Since our beginning in the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, Sales Renewal has been extolling the importance of hiring a broad and deep team to grow a business' revenue (aka, Marketing). While we understood that there would always be need for brand-focused and creative people, we also understood that the Team would have to expand beyond the boundaries of traditional and digital Marketing to include business analysts, marketing strategists and a fair number of technologists too.