Increase Your Digital Marketing ROI: Know These 5 Powerful Steps to Take

Ready to dial up your digital marketing ROI with campaigns that get results? Try performance-based marketing! No more throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks – we’re here to create marketing that actually works.
How do you actually do that? Let’s dive right in.

Step 1: Define your marketing goals

Document your desired outcomes with SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound). This ensures they’re realistic and meaningful for you. Plus, you’ll be able to quantify your progress, successes, and lessons learned. You need those, to find the holy grail in business strategy: actionable insights.

In some cases, you may need to clarify your brand messaging foundations, or your website branding strategy, before tackling any actual marketing. A first SMART goal in that scenario could be, “Schedule a free consult for next week with The Right Path Marketing!”

Step 2: Identify your target audience

You need to understand your audience well, to create messaging and content that resonate with them (and get them to take action).
Let’s start with quantifiable data you already have access to.

Understanding your current audience

Market research. Survey or interview current customers to learn more about their needs, references, and behaviors. Ask them what they were looking for before they became a customer, what they were thinking and feeling, what helped them decide to pull the trigger, and how they feel about the whole process in retrospect. You’d be surprised what actionable insights you can gain from honest feedback!
Analytics. Consider tools like Google Analytics, as well as the native analytics in social-media, website, and other platforms, to define the audiences you’re currently reaching. You’ll learn about their demographics, interests, online behaviors, etc. Which means you can leverage look-alike audiences for better reach, highly targeted ad messaging for higher conversions, and so on.

Finding the audience you really want

Now that you understand your current audience, where do you go from here? It’s time for some uncomfortable questions. For starters:

Do you want more of the same kind of followers, visitors, and customers, or do you need to reach a different market?
If you need a different audience, what do you know about them and their needs?
Is there something about your messaging or brand that’s engaging poorly-qualified prospects?
What does your ideal audience need from your marketing that you’re not yet providing?

These can be sticky questions to answer honestly on your own. If you’re having trouble, make sure to talk to a messaging strategist for some help.

Step 3: Choose the right marketing channels

It’s a cliche because it’s true: you need to meet your people where they are. But you also need to show up where it makes sense for your business. That sweet spot between your needs and your audience’s needs is where you need to be.

For example, if you’re a relationship-based B2B company targeting young professionals, LinkedIn and Instagram may be effective channels for you. But if you’re a B2C business and need to reach a large consumer base, you may have more success leveraging the advanced ad targeting available through Google, Facebook, and YouTube.

And don’t forget to consider your budget, preferences, and bandwidth. If you hate social media, and aren’t ready to outsource consistent content marketing, that’s probably not a good platform for you. Or if you (or a team member) are really into writing, but not design, you may find that going all-in on a consistent blog and email marketing keeps new qualified leads rolling in. If you have the budget and inclination to outsource, well, you’ll have more options!

Step 4: Track and report your marketing results

Remember those SMART goals you decided on? Pull them out and identify the corresponding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to watch, as your campaigns guide people through the AIDA process. Then choose the monitoring tools that provide those measurements (e.g. Google Analytics for website performance). And definitely set up your process, in-house or through a contractor, to make it routine. Now, you’ll be able to make data-driven decisions about your digital marketing strategy and profitability, on an ongoing basis.

Step 5: Optimize marketing performance

To really get the most ROI out of your digital marketing, you (or your marketing team) need to monitor performance, report, analyze, and optimize on an ongoing basis. So even if you hadn’t planned for this kind of ongoing support in your initial budget, the increasing return you’ll get from already-launched efforts definitely makes it worth considering.

For example, if an ad campaign isn’t hitting conversion goals, you don’t have to chuck it and go back to the drawing board. You can just test different copy, images, or targeting options. Or you may find that the ads themselves are doing their job well, but people bounce from the landing page. It can be tricky to identify where your funnel has gaps or bottlenecks, so don’t be afraid to call on an expert for a free evaluation.

When you find the combination that gets the best results, that’s the one to put more budget behind and really scale your traffic! But remember that even successful campaigns need to be monitored and regularly reassessed, to keep pace with changing consumer interests and behaviors. Stay agile, and adjust or replace anything that’s no longer performing as it should.

Get the right support to overhaul your marketing ROI

Sold on performance-based strategy, but not sure how you’ll execute it? Whether you know what you’re looking for and just need tactical support, or you can’t tell a page speed score from a bounce rate – The Right Path Marketing can help! Schedule a consult to tell us what you’re working on. We’ll walk you through some strategic options to help you increase your digital marketing ROI.