How to prove ROI on your digital marketing strategy

Do you struggle to prove ROI on your digital marketing strategy and justify your spending? Many businesses like yours have the same problem. But why is proving ROI so bloody difficult? It could be that you’re tracking the wrong metrics, or not tracking anything at all. Or, you might need to improve the way you report on your marketing metrics.

Whatever it is, we’ll help you understand why proving ROI is so hard, and how to make it easier in the following article.

What is ROI?

ROI stands for return on investment. This is the metric that businesses use to measure the profitability of an investment. In digital marketing, ROI refers to the profit generated from the money spent on marketing activities. It helps measure how effective your campaign has been in delivering value..

Why proving ROI is difficult

It can be tricky to prove ROI on your digital marketing efforts because they often involve complex customer journeys and multiple touch points across different media. This makes it difficult to attribute success to a specific campaign or ad. There are a few other factors to consider too.

Lack of clear tracking

What defines success in your campaign? Is it clicks, likes, sales, email sign-ups or something else entirely? Whatever it is, that’s what you need to be tracking. Without the right tracking, it’s difficult to understand the impact your digital marketing efforts are having. If the ROI is not obvious, you’ll have a harder job of justifying the spend.

Siloed data

Siloed data can impact your ability to access the very metrics you need visibility of to prove ROI. You’ll likely be experiencing inefficiencies and inconsistencies in data if it’s stored in different places. This can make it harder to find the data you need and report on performance accurately.

Incorrect metrics

If you’re reporting on the wrong metrics, it paints a misleading picture of how successful the campaigns from your digital marketing strategy actually are. Reporting on the wrong metrics not only means your ROI will be incorrect, but it could also impact your budgets for the next year or quarter if you don’t appear to be getting results.

For example, reporting purely on impressions or page views could give the illusion of high engagement, while actual conversion rates remain poor. In this case, although your reports may indicate success based on traffic alone, your campaigns might not be genuinely delivering value or revenue, potentially leading your team to invest in ineffective tactics and overlook strategies that drive real business results.

How to measure ROI effectively

There’s a lot you need to implement to effectively measure ROI, and, unfortunately, it’s not a quick and easy one-size-fits-all approach. However, it’s worthwhile ironing out all of the snags that could be affecting your reporting as it could positively impact your ability to prove ROI in the long run.

Attribution models

With multiple touchpoints along the customer journey, it’s important to understand which elements resonate with your customers. There are a number of attribution models that can help you understand what’s having a positive impact on your ROI:

Single-touch models: These are best for short sales cycles, usually generated by a campaign or event. First-touch attribution tracks what marketing activity initiated the sale or interaction with your brand. Meanwhile, last-touch attribution shows you the final interaction someone had with your brand before converting.

Multi-touch models: This type of model is useful for businesses with longer sales cycles, where customers interact with your brand several times before converting. Rather than giving all the credit to just one touchpoint (like a single ad or landing page), multi-touch models aim to share the credit more fairly across the customer journey. There are several types of multi-touch models, like linear, u-shaped, and time decay, each distributing value slightly differently depending on when and how the interaction took place.

Key metrics

Identify the KPIs that are important to your business growth and determine what success looks like to you. Whether it’s click through, customer lifetime value, conversion rate, retention rate, acquisition cost, net promoter score, or return on ad spend, proving RIO will look different to everyone. So, focus on the metrics that align best with your KPIs and track these to ensure you are meeting your goals and proving that the return on investment is having a positive impact.

Tools that provide accurate insights

To get the right insights, you need to use the right tools. Whether it’s Sprout Social to track your social media performance or Hubspot for customer relationship management (CRM), there are plenty of tools you can use to monitor ROI. But, if you have an e-commerce business, there are two tools that you absolutely cannot be without.

Ruler Analytics captures every interaction in the customer journey, identifying leads, tracking conversions and predicting when future investment will stop resulting in revenue.

Google Analytics is essential for e-commerce businesses. Offering a great deal of information about your website performance, Google Analytics is essential for revenue tracking.

How to present ROI to stakeholders

Presenting your data in the right way gives you the best chance of showcasing your success. Alternatively, when analysing your ROI, it can highlight any shortfalls and areas for improvement.

Reports

Presenting ROI isn’t just about showing numbers, it’s about telling a clear story that ties your marketing activity to business outcomes. Here’s how to make it count:

Start with your goals

Remind stakeholders what the campaign set out to achieve (e.g. lead generation, sales uplift, brand awareness).

Show the metrics that matter

Focus on KPIs that align with business objectives like revenue generated, cost per acquisition (CPA), or return on ad spend (ROAS).

Visualise the impact

Use graphs, charts, and comparisons to make the data more digestible and show trends at a glance.

Compare against benchmarks

Contextualise your performance by showing how it stacks up against previous campaigns or industry averages.

Highlight what worked (and what didn’t)

Be honest. ROI reporting is just as much about learning and improving as it is about celebrating success.

By clearly linking spend to outcomes and keeping the focus on business impact, you’ll make your ROI reporting of your digital marketing strategy much more engaging and persuasive.

Case studies

Delivered an awesome campaign with some great results? Create a case study. What was your aim? What metrics did you track? What results did you get? And, most importantly, what was your ROI? When you’ve got success stories that prove your marketing efforts are doing a good job, document them and use them as evidence of your good work. This can help build your case for additional marketing budget in the future if you’ve proven ROI is successful.

Framing the impact of ROI

ROI might not always be easy to prove, especially if you’ve not got the results you were hoping for. But, there’s always a way to put a positive spin on your results. If you’re tracking the right metrics, it’s much easier to evaluate what worked and what went wrong. So, as with all marketing, although you might not always get the results you want, you can always learn from them to improve your ROI next time.

By setting KPIs, consistently tracking the right metrics with analytics and using proper attribution models, businesses can effectively prove ROI from your digital marketing strategy. Presenting data in a structured way with case studies and reports will help demonstrate the impact of marketing investments and could help you to get larger marketing budgets in the future.

Need help improving your results and proving ROI?

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