ROI or return on investment is a big deal in business. It’s a measure of how effective your marketing is in generating sales. Businesses are always on the lookout for marketing methods that maximise their ROI. But they aren’t always successful.
In fact, learning the best ways to make a return on your investment is, for the majority of businesspeople, discovered the hard way. That’s why I’ve put together some of the most helpful tips on the matter. These are the things you wish you’d known earlier about ROI.
Update Website Design
Many small businesses don’t make a lot of trade through their website directly. That’s done in the real world by making contacts and forming relationships. And so it would seem as if your site wasn’t that important.
However, a lot of small businesses don’t realise that potential clients still use their website. Often somebody will hear about your business by word of mouth and then snoop on your business by going to your site.
That’s why your website has to be responsive and up to date. If your web design is poor, you’ll put customers off. It needs to be simple and eye-catching, with a beautiful layout.
Use Promotional Video
One of the perennial issues that small businesses have is their mentality. They think of themselves as being small, and so they act as if they’re small. They never even investigate whether they could use something like professional video production. That, in their opinion, is for the bigger players.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. With prices coming down all the time, every company has access to promotional videos. And it usually offers a fantastic ROI. What better way to say to your customers that you mean business?
Position Your Brand
When companies first form, there is a steep learning curve. Often companies have no idea who their key market is. Or if they do, they don’t know how to sell to them.
Great brands know who they’re targeting and what their audience wants. And they do this by positioning themselves better than the competition.
Being clear on who you’re targeting through your brand is a powerful tool for ROI.
Experiment Often
In the real world, there are always unmet customer needs. These are an opportunity for your business. But they’re also a risk.
Taking a trial and error approach can be OK, so long as the risks you are taking are isolated. You could try marketing a particular product to one group in a certain way and wait and see if that has any positive effect.
Doing simple experiments like this helps to keep your business fresh and helps you learn what does and does not work. Optimising things like website design and keyword advertising can lead to substantial ROI.
Don’t Bother With Vanity Metrics
Keeping track of how many retweets you’ve had might seem like a good way to track progress. But, unfortunately, it isn’t. The success of your efforts to improve ROI should be in sales, not on social media buzz.
