There’s a “Plus” to Your Return on Investment
By Carrie Cousins
Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Vice President, Carrie Cousins, in their September 2024 issue.
There’s simple math that most businesses do when thinking about advertising.
Dollars spent on ads < Sales from advertising
In the digital advertising space, it’s pretty easy to calculate. You can literally follow an ad click that converts into an online purchase. If purchases total more than the ad spend in a month, most businesses can see the direct value of the ads.
But this equation is missing a less quantifiable metric.
Dollars spent on ads < Sales from advertising + Indirect sales from brand awareness
There are often sales that don’t follow the direct path from clicking an ad to purchase, but still lead to a purchase eventually. This is the bonus return on investment that comes from advertising in general.
Recently, a client saw this phenomenon with his ad spend.
For a month, he advertised one specific product to generate interest. It’s not even for sale yet. During that time, he sold 100 units of other items online.
The ad campaign ended, and sales of those other items dropped to 6 the next month.
The ad campaign for the presale item was generating enough interest in the business and leading enough visitors to the website that it resulted in a “plus” on their return on investment, an unexpected revenue gain from advertising.
This is a common occurrence with advertising. While you are directing traffic and visitors to a specific product or service, they stick around to learn more about your business. Advertising generates direct awareness for the thing you are promoting, but also everything else that you do.
That impact can be multiplied with any additional advertising or marketing activities – pairing Google Ads with social media ads or television ads, promoting a blog article and running ads on YouTube, or almost any other combination. In addition to clicks, people will think about your business again later and likely search for your product or service online. There, they may again find an ad and click it or find an organic search listing that leads them to your website.
Another client asks to see this each month when looking at their website analytics. Whenever they run TV or streaming commercials, website traffic from search engines increases, as do sales. There’s not a direct return on investment to measure, but it is a plus!
President John F. Kennedy said “a rising tide lifts all boats,” and it couldn’t be more true about advertising. Any marketing or advertising activity will impact all of the other things you are doing. And that’s return on investment plus.
Carrie Cousins is the Vice President at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She is also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech.
