Companies invest thousands of hours in building an online portfolio and establishing a web presence. They use social media, community forum participation, professional networks, blogs and online storefronts for this purpose, but they need to be able to track the tactics that work and toss out the ones that don’t.
ROI tracking may seem an elusive task since there are so many facets to inbound marketing and consumer interest. However, a number of software tools and web services are available to help you monitor total online reach, followers and conversion rates.
Consider these five ways to measure ROI during an inbound marketing campaign.
1. Analytics
Any web-savvy business presence should be deploying SEO and keyword tactics to draw in new customers and renew interest among old clients. Web analytics can provide important metrics for businesses and help them to identify key demographics of people interested in their product or service.
Webmasters can view popular landing pages, see which content drives business, and use that information to replicate success. Many companies will look to advisors to improve web presence and strategies. Analytics may be interpreted and filtered into actionable tasks for companies to extend their online success.
2. Engage with comments
User feedback and blog comments offer an excellent source of information to get a handle on purchasing concerns and experiences. Feedback surveys and commenter profiles may allow you to discover where customers learned about a particular product or service.
Polling customers on whether they reached a storefront via a professional online profile, blog entry, community forum or other means can identify the effectiveness of a marketing campaign.
Comments and email feedback may require a level of moderation, though, especially if users are submitting remarks publicly on a blog. Webmasters can establish filters for spam or vulgar language, and thereby protect brand image while collecting valuable data.
3. Count social media fans
An active social media campaign can enlist scores of fans to drive a guerilla marketing campaign. Facebook, Twitter and other social media followers can spread the word on promotions and products offered by a company. This can dramatically increase the number of promoters, and open the way to trackable clicks and data. Facebook Insights is just one tool you can use to measure your social media influence and viral potential.
4. Track with offers and coupons
A common tactic favored by many marketers is the use of specific offers, coupons, phone numbers and even URLs to track the ROI of specific campaigns.
An offer with a specific promo code, link or other identifier may be used exclusively on a blog. That enables the business to identify every time a customer uses the promo code. You can track how much revenue is generated solely by the blog. This same strategy may be used with email lists, social media promotions and other inbound marketing strategies.
Brick-and-mortar storefronts may explore the option of scannable barcodes to see how many people redeem coupons from a specific source. These methods provide better ROI tracking and benefit customers who want to try a product or service.
5. Examine conversion measurements
Businesses that hope to monitor campaign success can get in-depth reporting on consumer behaviors by viewing conversion measurements. Some social media platforms such as Facebook provide integrated solutions to help companies monitor the tactics that create the greatest response.
Learning if a customer has followed an advertisement or blog post to a storefront or registration page can demonstrate the healthy ROI of a particular marketing campaign. As more blogs, social media and professional networks incorporate conversion measurements, these statistics will become easier to access and decipher.
