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Whether you’re running a small, medium or large business, the return on investment for your marketing efforts is an important measurement. How many sales or how much revenue each marketing effort generates validates the need for marketing and allows you to carry over your marketing successes to other marketing efforts. Unsuccessful marketing also allows you to tweak marketing aspects to achieve a higher rate of return the next time around. Tips for Marketing ROI Improvement Test Landing Pages The look and feel of landing pages is an important design element, but more important is what your landing pages say to your visitors. Make sure that each landing page speaks directly to the visitors you’re driving to that page. If you’re not achieving the conversion rates you’re looking for, then make modifications one at a time to test out how the changes affect conversions rates. According to a Marketing Sherpa survey, businesses that modified landing pages to change offers and update wording, 68.2% achieved better conversion rates. Link Direct Mail and Online Efforts Instead of creating hard copy direct mail pieces to stand on their own, link your offline and online marketing efforts. Use a simple direct mail piece, such as a postcard, as the lead-in to driving targeted traffic to your website. Using your mailing list is always more effective than buying lists or cold calling to try to drum up potential customers. Let the direct mail piece do its job—intrigue recipients enough to check out what you’re offering by going to the landing page you’ve created specifically for this offer. Then refer back to tip number one on testing your landing page messaging to increase conversion rates. Use Personalized URLs Whether you’re mailing a postcard or sending out a promotional email, use a personalized URL to drive the traffic to your landing page. Studies show that using a personalized URL boosts conversion rates by about 20%. The reason? Customers feel more comfortable when they see a personalized URL and it’s easier for them to remember than a long and impersonal URL. Use Your Social Media Power Social media allows you to utilize word-of-mouth marketing and viral marketing without having to increase your marketing budget. Social media presents an effective and inexpensive way for you to communicate your messages with your audience and opens up a more interactive approach of communication with current and potential customers. Public conversations can easily build your brand–and it’s a branding strategy worth its weight in gold that cannot be purchased any other way. When you engage in social media, you’re providing the platform for conversations to take place about your company and your industry. You’re also getting involved with these conversations in an effort to better serve your customers’ needs. For example, 1-800-Flowers now allows customers to place order directly from its Facebook Fan Page. This is in direct response to customer complaints of problems getting through on the phone or the website during high traffic times. Tweak Pay-per-click Campaigns Pay-per-click campaigns can be a very low-cost and effective form of attracting and driving the right audience to your business. Testing and tweaking these campaigns to achieve better results can increase ROI. Always run two ads at the same time, changing one item in your test ad to see how it affects your conversion rates. After you run the two ads for one or two weeks, take the better converting ad and make one minor tweak to it. Then run these two ads against each other to see which outperforms the other. Keep repeating the process to make your ads better and increase conversions. ROI is a very important aspect of marketing. It’s a measurement that can make your marketing better over time, increase your sales and make your company more profitable–no matter what size business you’re running. About the Author Copywriter and marketing consultant, Kristie Lorette, is passionate about helping entrepreneurs and businesses create copy and marketing pieces that sizzle, motivate, and sell. She is also the author of Action Marketing: A Step-by-step Guide to Launch Your Business Marketing Plan. For more information, visit http://wp.me/ptLrh-1
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