By Peter Getman, Principal Brand Director

Internet Marketing is a marketing investment, not just an expense. An expense is a cash outlay you try to minimize, especially in today’s changing business world. When your business makes an investment, it expects a positive financial return. So how do Internet Marketing dollars translate to sales or cost savings and how does your brand manager measure Internet Marketing ROI?

Internet Marketing has an impressive ROI for many brands. After all, The Economist reported in 2006, that Internet marketing totaled $9.6 billion in 2001, $27 billion in 2006 and is expected to top $60 billion next year [which looks now to be a low estimate].

So what’s the ROI for some of these brands?

• Dell attributes more than $3 million in sales revenue directly to Twitter.
• A Cisco study in 2004 found that 43% of visits to their online support forum are in lieu of opening up a support case through standard contact center methods. Cost per interaction in customer support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options, [Forrester, 2006] resulting in substantial savings.
• Ebay found in 2006 that participants in online communities spend 54% more than non-community users.

It’s no wonder that a recent study showed a direct correlation in companies’ financial performance and their online engagement levels. The top 10 companies are Global Leaders in technology – imagine that.

Trackable drivers of Internet Marketing ROI are intensely dynamic and vast, but here are some starters:

I. Establish your brand’s Internet Marketing ROI benchmarks by answering questions such as:

• What’s the current web conversion value [$] of each term in your search word portfolio?
• What’s the current web traffic being generated by each search word?
• What’s the cost per conversion by each search word?
• Is this web traffic data resulting from SEO or PPC initiatives?
• What’s the current conversion value of each Internet Marketing medium / in-bound link into your website (ie any external marketing initiative or link that drives people to your site)? Can you segment these by blogger, viral program, social media, Internet media, partnership website, email and Internet media investment?
• What’s the traffic being generated by each initiative and what are the click-thru rates?
• How many and which of these of these leads convert into new revenues or find the online service you offer that saves your business valuable dollars?

II. Increase conversions with your current website traffic levels via A/B testing of your website, alignment with your sales process and landing page creative that includes:

• Specific engagement/conversion strategies and tactics
• Why-to-buy statement
• User click path scenarios
• Development of tools necessary for users to self-qualify themselves as viable customers/clients
• Demographic / situational targeting to increase brand relevance
• Relevant and branded creative

This matrix gets large fast. Ultimately you’ll end up with increased conversions to new revenues/leads on your current web traffic and you’ll be ready to invest in driving more traffic to the website.

III. Increase web traffic into your newly fine tuned conversion driving website:

• Create marketing content programs around high performing search terms to increase traffic
• A/B test:
  • Pay-per-click creative programs around high performing search terms
  • Internet media investments (ie viral, social media) and determine the cost and value per conversion by media type
  • Blogger outreach programs to entice blogger evangelism
• Leverage A/B test knowledge to create new landing pages to support high performing search terms
• Deploy a series of customer engagement programs in social media [in some cases A/B testing applies]
• Optimize your in-bound link relationships from related websites, hyperlink and optimize your most value search words.

You’re getting the idea. Simply take your most valuable combinations [increased conversions formula + most valuable traffic building programs] and invest deeper in these high ROI formulas. And never stop A/B testing those formulas.

Connect with us today to build a more robust ROI model for your Internet Marketing.