How to Get More ROI From Your Marketing Tools

Your organization probably uses a host of different marketing tools to research your audience and competition, plan and execute campaigns, and even measure your results. These tools also cost your organization money, both nominally and in the form of labor.

So what steps can you take to get more ROI from your existing marketing tools?

The Importance of ROI

For marketers, return on investment (ROI) is everything. If your marketing or advertising strategy is capable of producing a profitable return, it’s probably worth doubling down on, or at least continuing your investment in it.

But marketers rarely turn their ROI priorities on the very tools they used to conduct marketing strategies, despite the fact that it’s important here, too. Put simply, every marketing tool in your arsenal is going to have a functional ROI, estimating the value it brings to your organization compared to how much it costs you. Not only is it important to ensure that all your marketing tools have a positive ROI, but it’s also important to maximize the ROI you get from these tools – and consider other tools through that lens to supplement them.

What are the best strategies for evaluating your marketing tools in terms of ROI and making the critical decisions necessary to increase your efficiency here?

Appointing a Leader

You’ll need to start by appointing a leader in your organization who can take charge of this project and ultimately make the final decisions. Depending on the infrastructure and hierarchy of your organization, you may choose a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or someone with the equivalent marketing ranking.

Of course, if you don’t already have a strong leader within your marketing department, or if your current leader is overwhelmed with other responsibilities, you could always choose an alternative. For example, you can hire a fractional CMO. Fractional CMOs have the leadership and marketing experience necessary to function as a full-time CMO, but they work as flexible contractors and consultants instead.

Whatever you choose, make sure you have a point person in charge with the knowledge and experience necessary to make the right decisions for your organization.

Calculating the Value

To estimate the ROI of a marketing tool, you’ll first need to calculate the value.

• Increased revenue. How much increased revenue is provided by this tool? This can be a very challenging question to answer, especially if the tool assists with something like raising brand visibility, which can’t be directly tied to revenue. Still, do your best to estimate the new exposure and increased effectiveness this tool provides.

• Exposure to new channels. What channels do you have access to because of this tool? And how much traffic, conversions, and revenue are generated by that channel? Consider direct and indirect benefits that come to your business as a result of this.

• Enhancement of other tool value. Also think about whether this marketing tool enhances the value of other tools. Does it provide data through integrations that increase your bottom-line effectiveness?

• Time savings. It’s hard to overstate the value of time savings. If a marketing tool can automate something that would otherwise take 10 hours of time, be sure to factor that into your equations.

If you’re looking to get more ROI out of this tool, what steps can you take to make these values even more impressive? For example, are there any currently unused features that might help? Can you use these tools in a broader way? Can you help employees save more time by training them?

Estimating the Costs

Next, you’ll need to estimate the costs:

• Direct costs. How much do you pay for this tool per month?

• Indirect costs. How much time do you spend maintaining this tool and educating and training staff members to use it?

• Lost or missing potential. How many features are redundant, unnecessary, or wasted, and how does this impact your value equations?

• Areas of redundancy between tools. Redundant expenses are typically wasted money. Pay careful attention to tools that essentially do the same thing as each other.

Are there any ways to mitigate these costs and increase the ROI of the tool? For example, can you negotiate for a lower price? Can you streamline internal training so it takes less time? Can you eliminate points of redundancy or waste?

At the end of your analysis, you should have a ballpark estimate for the ROI of each of your marketing tools. Make sure you also compare them to each other; are there any features or functions that considerably overlap with each other? Are there other tools on the market that might be superior? Getting the maximum value out of your marketing tools is a complicated and long endeavor, but it’s worth it if it means maximizing your overall marketing potential.