10 ways to Increase your Marketing ROI in 2015

 January is a great time to take a look at your marketing plan and make some changes.  With the new year, each of us make some New Year’s resolutions that will help make our lives easier and better than the last.  We have decided to make a list of marketing resolutions that will help increase your ROI in 2015.  Here are several ideas that could really make a difference:

1. Identify your goals.
   1. Get specific with your goals.  Making specific goals and action items are critical to creating a solid marketing plan.
   2. Write them down – Most people fail to write down their goals and subsequently forget about them.
2. Create a marketing plan and calendar.
   1. List campaigns and link them with a calendar of when things should be done.  A calendar can help you determine seasons in your business and when certain campaigns should start and end.  This is a great way to save money on ads that are no longer relevant or outdated.
3. Determine your budget.Most companies should have budgets between 2-10% of their gross sales.  Basing your budget off of gross sales is a great way to adjust your marketing budget as your sales grow or shrink.  This also allows you to easily forecast expenses and break even analysis.
4. Constantly tweak your campaigns.
   1. Make sure you constantly update your campaigns after implementation.  Most online campaigns need constant attention if you are trying to maximize your ROI.
5. Start a Social Paid ad campaign.
   1. Look at converting some of your print and phone book budget to Social paid ads or pay per click campaigns.
      1. Facebook paid ads can be about ¼ the cost of a Google paid ad for most industries?
6. Optimize your PPC campaigns.
   1. Constantly update your negative keywords.
   2. Update your ad wording.
   3. A/B test your ads.
   4. Add your phone number and link tabs to your ads.
   5. Add your pin marker to your ads.
7. Start a Google remarketing campaign.
   1. Re-marketing or re-targeting ads allow you to target those visitors that have already been to your website and have not converted to come back to your site again.
      1. These ads are like having an online billboard that continues to brand your company during a clients buying period.
      2. They are very cost effective and can help your company stay on the minds of web visitors.
8. Start a Facebook Re-marketing Campaign
   1. Facebook offers the same great re-targeting campaigns that are used on google.  You can target those Facebook users that have been to your website with display ads inside of individual feeds on Facebook.  This really helps with brand awareness and clients perceptions of your company.
9. Measure your Goals and ROI.
   1. Install Analytics on your website and setup Goals.  See how your ads are doing on a weekly basis.
10. Monitor weekly and Stick to your budget and goals.  –  One of the most important rules is to determine a budget and stick to that budget.  This means that you need to make sure you spend that budget each and every month.  Don’t be tempted to cancel your marketing becauseyou are not seeing the specific results on day 2 of the campaign.  It can take some time to optimize your campaign.  Stopping a campaign prematurely can really affect your ROI in a negative way.  Don’t stop the campaign, but tweak it to make it better!

We will be writing specific blogs on each of these bullet points throughout the year, so make sure you check back!