How Do I Increase My Return On Digital Advertising?

I am an entrepreneur and founder of 800razors.com , Raw Beauty Skin Care and several other omni-channel brands.   I have spent a great deal of time and money creating digital advertising campaigns.  I’ve used digital advertising to raise awareness of the brands, current promotions, and ultimately increase sales and profit. The question I always had was what effect the advertising campaigns really have on the bottom line. Measuring return on digital advertising efforts was key to our success.

If you’re going to shell out major money for digital ad campaigns, you want to see a return on investment (ROI). Additionally, you want to be able to take steps to increase ROI. Here are just a few strategies that could help you to make the most of your next digital ad campaigns.

Don’t Forego Traditional Advertising

Digital advertising definitely has the potential to show a higher ROI.  Results are much easier to track than offline advertising efforts.  Don’t get me wrong, traditional forms of advertising like print, radio, and television still have their place. If you want to get the greatest possible return from any ad campaign, your best option is to coordinate digital and traditional efforts.

It’s true that you can get more bang for your buck with digital advertising. However, today you don’t need to take an either/or approach. If you want the most coverage, recognition, and ROI, pairing traditional and digital advertising methods will drive your campaign to achieve the best overall results. You may naturally want to put more money and effort into digital platforms. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater by foregoing traditional advertising avenues in the process.

We had done several television spots driving people to an 800 number for orders. What we found was that the site exploded when we ran the TV spots. And very few orders came to us through the 800 number. TV was great for driving our site visits and ultimately, conversions.

Increase Coverage Without Additional Cost

The digital world offers myriad ways to advertise, from pay per click (PPC) ads to SEO and social media marketing. There are always emerging channels to explore when you’re looking for new forms of digital advertising.  Many of these allow you to get a jump on the competition and reach new markets and customers. Just look at Instagram – once a simple photo sharing app, it has become one of the top three social media sites.  Many businesses are now using it for soft-sell advertising purposes.

If you want to increase ROI without increasing spend, you need to find ways to saturate a variety of platforms for less cost. This could mean seeking free and low-cost avenues for advertising, as well as reusing assets in creative ways.

Emerging platforms, for example, may welcome advertising content and charge less than better-known forums. It behooves you to stay abreast of new channels for advertising that could provide you with greater ROI.

Focus on Traffic and Conversions

Building your brand and establishing long-term relationships with customers is important for ongoing success. However, when you’re talking about ROI related to digital ad campaigns, there are two main indicators to consider: traffic and conversion.

You funnel money into advertising, SEO, social media, and so on so that you can increase traffic. You also spend on related activities like market research, branding, and customer satisfaction to convert visitors into paying customers.

Site traffic and conversions aren’t the only metrics important to your business. In the long run however, they tend to be the most direct and quantifiable of any digital advertising campaign. Paying attention to the numbers generated in response to these efforts can help you to determine the relative success of any campaign, as well as give you insights into how to improve and increase ROI in the future.

Measure Everything

There’s more to metrics that click-thru rates and site traffic. Yes, this data can help you to determine your ROI in an immediate sense, but you also need to find ways to determine overall customer satisfaction once your ad campaign has done its job, bringing new visitors to your site and spurring sales.

You also need to pay attention to time spent on your site, repeat visits, membership signup, surveys, and comments on social media. By tracking a wide variety of metrics, you can not only gauge the immediate ROI related to digital advertising, but you can see the long-term effects of your ads, your products, and your customer service.

Learn to Analyze

One of the biggest problems with seeing a return on investment related to digital marketing campaigns is that businesses have no idea of how to measure ROI properly. Sure, you’ve got a ton of analytical tools at your disposal, tracking metrics and producing reports, but what does it all mean? How can you spot wins and losses and make your data actionable to improve ROI?

Learning to accurately analyze the data stream resulting from your digital ad campaigns can be done, but you might be better off, at least in the short-term, hiring a professional to track and report back to you, offering expert analysis and advice.

In my previous businesses, I have always measured the effect of any advertising we did. No longer can we say that 50% of our advertising is wasted, we just don’t know which 50%. Today, there are so many tools to measure. Use them and focus on the best channel for ROAS