3 Ways Agencies Should Measure Marketing ROI

Do you want to provide value to your clients so they will keep you on retainer?

If so, one valuable piece of data you could provide for your agency’s clients is the return on investment (ROI) for specific marketing strategies.

Demonstrating how your agency provides value to clients is especially important as small business owners continue to contend with the ongoing effects of the pandemic.

The more your agency can help them navigate the new normal and the resulting impacts on their marketing efforts, the better.

In this article, you will learn three ways to help agencies measure the ROI of marketing.

Why Measuring ROI Matters To Your Clients

For businesses that generate leads online, it’s crucial to know which marketing activities drive the most leads. While there are free website analytics tools, they are limited in their ability to track certain referral sources – especially when it comes to inbound phone leads.

Knowing the specific sources of leads allows your clients to allot their marketing budget to the most effective strategies. Being able to pinpoint the source of your client’s most qualified leads ensures that their sales team spends more time with higher converting leads – and that your agency is providing valuable data, which can lead to a renewed contract.

How important is measuring ROI? According to a study from CallRail, small businesses love working with agencies that do the following:

• Review analytics with their consulting partners (46%)
• Use call tracking to show the effectiveness of specific strategies (39%)
• Help SMB owners understand their customers (31%)
• Provide good transparency into ROI (31%)
• Improve the quality of leads generated (26%)
• Generate a positive ROI (23%)

Taken together, these survey responses tell a compelling story.

Clients are eager to hire and form lasting professional relationships with agencies who will go beyond the typical engagement parameters. We’ll give you the tools to not only create content but give clients the ability to measure performance to make informed choices on where to invest and pivot their strategies.

1. Measure The ROI Of SEO

Most businesses know the value of incorporating search engine optimization (SEO) into every aspect of a marketing plan, from your website and content to online ads.

Studies have shown that search engines drive more than 50% of web traffic to websites in most industries, with Google bringing in eight times more traffic than all social networks combined. This makes sense considering that Google has over 92% of the global search engine market share.

Track SEO Strategy Results

There are several ways to track the results of your SEO strategies.

You can start with SEO tools like Semrush or Ahrefs that monitor changes in your keyword rankings, number of inbound links, and overall website authority score. These will give you insights into how well your SEO efforts are increasing your visibility in search for your top targeted keywords.

Track Conversions

Small businesses that use Google Analytics with conversions setup can also determine whether organic search is driving traffic to their website that converts. 93 percent of small business owners say they invest time in their website analytics to determine the best marketing strategies to pursue.

• Using the Channels report under Acquisition > All Traffic, you can compare the conversion rate of organic search traffic compared to direct, referral, social, paid search, and email traffic.
• Under the Source/Medium report, you can determine which search engine is driving the most traffic and conversions to your website. Beyond Google, most businesses may spot traffic from search engines like Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.

Use Call Tracking Software

While you can get some guidance, there are still several blind spots to contend with in the data in Google Analytics, so you shouldn’t rely on information gleaned from this tool alone.

This includes the specific keywords that drove organic search users to your website and the number of people who chose to call your business after finding it in organic search.

Using call tracking software, agencies can demonstrate the value and effectiveness of specific SEO tactics. For example, when you can attribute the specific keyword used in a search by a qualified lead, you can set up an SEO strategy that focuses on the keywords that are most likely to convert.

Questions that can be answered using call tracking and marketing analytics software include:

• What are qualified leads searching for?
• What questions are asked most often by qualified leads?
• What pain points are qualified leads looking to solve?

Once you can answer these questions for small business owners, you can assist them in creating more content to attract qualified leads, answer their biggest questions, and help solve their pain points.

2. Measure The ROI Of PPC

Small business owners investing in pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns need to know more than which ads get the most clicks. They need to know which ad campaigns and keywords result in the most phone calls or form submissions on their website.

What is missing from Google Analytics is the ability to follow the converting visitor throughout the buyer’s journey. What happens after the visitor submits a form or makes a call?

Track Exact Conversion Keyword Combinations

If your agency can demonstrate results in terms of which keyword, ad copy, and landing page combination drives the most qualified leads, you can help small business owners make the most of their PPC budget.

In addition, you can analyze specific details about ads that convert:

• Does a particular ad extension increase the number of clicks through to your website?
• Does a phone number with a local area code perform better than a 1-800 number?

Getting the answers to these questions and combining them with the best keywords, ad copy, and landing pages can help your small business clients drive a higher ROI from their paid search and social media campaigns.

3. Measure The ROI Of Social Media Marketing

The top metrics monitored by the leading social media platform analytics tools measure the growth of your social media audience and their engagement with your social media content.

While this data can help you build your social media profile, it doesn’t help you determine what social media activities drive the most ROI.

Discover Which Social Media Networks Drive Site Traffic

Tracking visitors from social media to conversion can be tricky. You can use Google Analytics to see which social networks drive the most traffic and conversion using the social reports under Acquisition.

But if you are trying to separate whether it was a lead from your most recent post on Facebook versus a link in a Facebook story, you’ll have more of a challenge. Tracking calls from your social media will be even trickier.

At most, you have Facebook Insights, which counts the number of clicks/taps on your call-to-action button. This still won’t give you the complete picture, like whether the click into the CTA button results in a revenue-generating lead.

Attribute Phone Call Leads To Specific Social Media Campaign Pieces

With call tracking software, your agency can use different phone numbers for your clients’ social media efforts. When someone calls a particular number, you will be able to show your small business client exactly where the lead found the phone number, whether it’s in a social media profile, post, or ad.

With these kinds of call insights, you can help small businesses invest in the right social media efforts.

For example, you may find out that people who call after finding a business on LinkedIn are more likely to convert into a qualified lead versus a visitor from Instagram or Facebook.

You can also use different numbers to get even more specific about social media marketing efforts like whether posting your phone number in a story is more likely to convert a qualified lead over a phone number in a post.

Take The Mystery Out Of Proving ROI With CallRail

If you want to provide lasting value to small business clients, your agency needs to focus on ways to prove ROI across marketing channels. Google Analytics can offer a glimpse into what channels and tactics lead to the most traffic and conversions on your website.

For businesses that need to know exactly what is working to drive qualified leads, your agency needs tracking tools to get a full picture of your qualified leads’ journey – from how they found you to what is said on their call.

To learn more about how call tracking can help you determine ROI for specific marketing efforts, download The agency marketer’s guide to proving ROI.