I got to this funny ad on Youtube while read Neil Patel’s new post on How to Spend Your Marketing Budget and had to really laugh out loud. This is so true. Measuring ROI has become a myth and most businesses do not and can not measure the ROI with any degree of accuracy! The reason is partly due to the complexity (or lack of) of the tools available and the steep learning curve that comes with them and partially because of the sheer numbers involved.
Recently, due to some Google Torture (new post coming on that story shortly), one of my sites lost Google rankings and hence I had to depend entirely on social media to drive sales. In the first couple of months, I was just sinking in money into various channels such as Facebook, Pinterest and Youtube with out knowing exactly what the ROI was and how it was effecting my bottom line. But gradually I am beginning to understand and measure the ROI much more successfully.
For example, my ROI on Facebook (both post promotion and re-marketing) is an average of 34% and on Pinterest is -5.6%!! When I was able to track and measure the ROI, I was shocked! I always thought that the ROI on Facebook was much lower and the one of Pinterest was higher and was spending more and more on Pinterest! I was actually losing money on Pinterest! Once I was able to measure the ROI I changed the budget and started spending more on Facebook.
I am now testing Paid StumbleUpon and Linked Ads and will update this post once I have some accurate figures to report.
