About Measuring ROI Of The Various Forms Of Search Engine And Social Media Marketing

A lot has been spoken about the fact that online marketing is getting priority in the marketing strategies and budgets of the SMEs as well as Fortune 500 companies. It is true that the online behavior of the people is evolving and there is an exponential increase in the no. of people buying online, making online reservations for travel, hotel bookings and searching for information and updates on search engines. Social media sites also have become the source for real time search results. When priority and importance is given to any marketing media, calculating the ROI from that media is the focal point of that campaign. Calculating the ROI from the amount spent on SEO needs a base of atleast 6 months to 12 months of data as a basis. The data that is required to calculate the ROI from SEO is as follows: • The no. Of Inquiries received from the search engines • The no. of Sales closed from these inquiries received • The Amount spent on SEO • The Profit accrued from these sales. If the SEO on the website has been according to the norms of the search engines and is ethical with a long term perspective kept in mind by future proofing it in a way that the rankings are maintained over a long period of time then the amount spent on SEO gets written off with every successful sale as a result of inquiries generated from organic search and in due course the amount spent on SEO ceases to remain and expense but is in reality reflected as an investment made. The same can be said for the paid, sponsored listings got by spending on a PPC campaign but, the benefit from a PPC campaign ceases to exist as soon as you stop spending on the campaign as the PPC campaign does not create any footprints on the web for you which in future any return can be accrued. So, PPC truly remains an expense and does not become an investment in the long run like an SEO campaign. A PPC campaign also has the same potential like an SEO campaign to generate business for your company but you cannot future proof your PPC campaign but you surely can future proof your SEO campaign and have a long term web presence in a truly planned way with every web page of your website targeting for different keywords and with the possibility of ranking on page 1 of the search engines for every product and service that your company offers. When it come to social media , calculating the ROI from the amount spent on social media is still a very relative and approximate – A direct calculation is still not possible as this media is still at the experimental stage and it is still not being used as a focused media for marketing or generating inquiries and thereby sales. But this media surely has great potential to serve as a strong platform for after sales customer grievances & after sales support. It also can be used for answering queries for the to be or potential customers and achieve the main objective of putting forward the right image of the company by voicing the objectives of the products, policies and people of the company. It is a very good link to connect to the customers and potential customers. Nevertheless, as the real time search results are being sourced from the social media sites like twitter, facebook, etc. the posts and tweets on social media surely do have a potential of diverting targeted traffic to your website which again in return serves the purpose of any SEO or PPC campaign. Hence, if you truly want a return from the online marketing budget that your company has set aside , decide upon the best online marketing mix suited for your organization.   July 26, 2010