Here's what you need to think about to score high ROI in B2B marketing
Every year the challenge of demonstrating that your marketing spend is justified. Recognizable? It's also quite logical that management needs this to allocate budgets. A good ROI is the key to justify your spending.
By driving ROI, you can make sure you're making the right choices to get the most out of your marketing spend. Bet you'll have plenty of marketing budget next year? In this blog, I'll show you how to do this.
Michael Horneman
Client & sales manager
Calculating your ROI
First, you need to know how to calculate your actual ROI and your desired ROI (target ROI):
- Step 1: calculate what your marketing investment should generate in sales. First, estimate what your expected sales or additional net profit will be. For example, based on past results. Do you have seasonal peaks in your industry? Then you should definitely take this into account if you want to work with an ROI per month/quarter.
- Step 2: determine the expected cost of your investment. These are your one-time costs, such as advertising spend, but also your structural costs. For example, the ongoing costs for marketing agencies, your team, etc. Note that your ROI thus includes more than your ROAS, in which you only calculate how much revenue you get in per euro of advertising budget.
- Step 3: calculate your (target) ROI. Now it's time to calculate your expected Return On Investment: ROI = (expected sales - cost of sales)/investment cost X 100%. Oh dear ... does this not match your goal? Then see how you can increase your expected sales or decrease your costs. Do this until you have established a target ROI that makes you happy and is realistic.
- Step 4: calculate your realized ROI. Once the period over which you want to calculate ROI is over, repeat steps 1 through 3 with actual costs and sales to calculate your realized ROI and compare it to your goals. Not happy with the results? Then take a quick look at how to increase your ROI!
Which channels for the best ROI from B2B marketing?
Nice that ROI, but how do I make it go higher? Each period, you need to determine what is the ideal combination of channels for you to maximize your ROI. What options do you have for B2B marketing? I'd love to help you get started!
Google Ads
Um, well, do we actually need to talk about this? This, of course, is a no-brainer. 92% of all Dutch people use Google to search. And that's the equal strength of Google Ads: that it's demand-driven. Advertise on the right keywords and target audience, then SEA works like a charm. Especially if you use Google's Artificial Intelligence to automatically optimize your campaigns.
Google Ads is relatively inexpensive. If you deploy automated bidding strategies properly, you can achieve higher conversion (and thus ROI) than on other channels.
Microsoft Ads
Microsoft Ads, or search ads on the Bing search engine, are often overlooked. About 4% of the Dutch search market uses Bing. That doesn't seem like much, but can still be interesting for some B2B companies. Searchers on Bing are somewhat older and less "digital savvy" than Google users. In addition, click rates are cheaper and conversion rates are higher than in Google if this is your specific target market, because there is less competition here. So very favorable for a high ROI.
LinkedIn is great for getting a good ROI from B2B online marketing because it specifically targets the business audience. Advertising on LinkedIn is relatively expensive, but with good content you can definitely achieve your target ROI.
My top tip for LinkedIn? Create relevant content about current problems and dilemmas of your target audience in the form of white papers, blogs and webinars. Use the power of the social network by sharing your content organically and actively expanding your network. Combine this with LinkedIn ads in which you offer your white papers and events in exchange for an email address to get the most out of this channel.
Email Marketing
And then . good old email marketing. Still a powerful tool for communicating one-on-one with leads from your online marketing campaigns. Think not only about what you want to communicate, but also what you want to know about them. With well-thought-out e-mail flows, you can enrich the data of your prospects and turn cold leads into new customers.
Customer Data Platform
Finally, your CDP. The secret weapon that ensures you get the most optimal ROI from your B2B online marketing and email marketing. With the data from your CDP you can personalize your website, send personalized and targeted e-mails and include or exclude target groups. It is quite an investment and setting up and maintaining it properly also requires some work. Therefore, it takes longer before you get your ROI on your CDP, but it is very high!
Therefore, make sure you employ at least an e-mail marketer and online marketer. And if this is not feasible, you can also outsource it. An additional advantage: then the work never comes to a standstill due to illness or leave. We are happy to help you implement and work out your flows.
Summary channels
ROI to calculate the efficiency of your B2B marketing
By focusing on ROI when choosing and optimizing your channels, you benefit from the best leads at the lowest cost. Plus, with your ROI, you can show what the online marketing returns are versus all your efforts. You can finally be clear about "what it all adds up to" and properly substantiate your budget request for next year. Well worth sitting down for.
Want more tips for increasing the ROI of your B2B marketing budget? Then download our white paper More results from B2B marketing in a world without cookies.
