Most business owners are presented with spending opportunities every day. There is a constant barrage of one tactic or another, everything from advertising to “branding”. If you want to spend money on marketing, there is no shortage of ways.
Unfortunately, there are fewer opportunities to think about your marketing efforts, to formulate the strategy, define plans and budgets, and to examine the results you expect to get from your marketing spend.
“Marketing Mistake: Not defining the results you expect.”
This doesn’t mean that an ROI calculator should drive every marketing decision. Calculators might work for specific tactics or campaigns like email offers and social media advertisement. The same math cannot be applied to more strategic efforts.
It’s hard to quantify results for developing quality content, focusing on trust, or empowering your staff. But by measuring customer engagement, interactions, repeat business and customer and employee retention, it can be done.
To prevent the marketing mistake of not setting expectations for your marketing spend develop a way to measure results that you are comfortable with and allows you to focus on what matters to you That may include calculators for certain campaigns or measuring long-term improvements in repeat business and referrals.
Looking for marketing ROI calculators?
Find them here:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/
http://www.bplans.com/
Marketing plans are best built from marketing strategies. Read about our approach to developing a marketing strategy and plan that will work for your business.