Proving & Improving Your Inbound Marketing Spend

Inbound marketing attracts people who are actively interested in your offerings or brand to your business. Using SEO and other inbound tactics, you can bring in audiences more likely to invest in your business, services, and products.

To get the most from your inbound marketing strategy, you must measure the performance of your campaigns. Measurement will involve tracking the right key performance indicators (KPIs) and calculating your ROI, which will help you make the necessary adjustments to your strategy for improved performance.

For more information on measuring your inbound strategies, check out this blog post on optimizing inbound marketing campaigns and spending.

Determining Your Inbound Marketing Costs

When improving your inbound marketing budget, the first step is to determine exactly how much you're paying for your campaigns. Many potential marketing factors can come into play, including software, staff, services, content management, and more. Knowing how much you're spending will give you an idea of how to optimize your budget for better performance.

To accurately calculate your total ad spend, you'll need to properly allocate your spend and account for spending in each element of your campaigns. Knowing how much you're spending on your inbound marketing will ultimately help you measure ROI.

Setting Goals and Benchmarking Metrics

Another critical step in calculating ROI and optimizing inbound marketing spend involves setting clear goals for your campaigns. There are several goals you might set, which will dictate the KPIs you use to measure your campaigns and ROI.

For example, you might have the goal of boosting impressions for your ads and brand awareness, while another goal could involve increasing conversions and driving sales. 

Tracking Performance and ROI

You must be able to effectively measure your campaigns' performance and calculate ROI to continually optimize your efforts. This process will involve using a mix of paid and free analytical tools that collect and present data regarding blog posts, landing pages, ads, and other marketing materials.

Depending on your goals, you might track a variety of metrics, including impressions, views, clicks, session duration, and more, which can help you gauge how well your campaigns are performing against your goals. You may then make any necessary adjustments to optimize your campaign.

Identifying High-ROI Inbound Marketing Activities

You must analyze your marketing performance data to determine which activities lead to the highest revenue and conversions. Some of these channels could include:

• eBooks

• Webinars

• SEO

• Paid ads

• Influencer marketing campaigns

• Email marketing

• Videos

• Backlinks

Based on which elements perform the best, you can determine which areas to focus on more to further improve performance. You might find that your inbound campaigns do better by focusing more on SEO, for instance, or you might determine that webinars are a viable revenue stream for your campaigns. In any case, the biggest breadwinner in your campaigns should be the focus of your budget.

Shifting Budget to Highest-Performing Tactics

Once you identify your business's most efficient inbound marketing channels, you can adjust your budget accordingly. At the same time, you should reduce the budget for aspects of your campaign that aren't doing as well. Doing so will ultimately help you make the most of your budget and ensure it doesn't go to waste. 

When trying to optimize your inbound campaigns, you should also consistently measure and monitor all data and make any necessary adjustments based on performance. In the process, you can continually perfect your campaigns to drive increasingly great performance. 

You have the chance to develop a strong strategy that gets results and increases revenue for your business with the right tactics put in priority. 

Develop a Solid Inbound Marketing Strategy by Gauging ROI

With the right approach to your strategy, you'll be able to make more data-driven decisions and subsequently increase your ROI. The key is to look for the most efficient avenues to channel your spending and get optimal results.

Take the time to focus on campaign measurement and determine profitability to make better choices around your marketing. In turn, you'll reach more people who are eager to connect with your business and purchase your offerings.