What Is a Good ROI When You Outsource Your Marketing

How many of you are tired of investing time and resources into your marketing only for campaigns to fall flat? We get it. We really do. Especially if you outsource your marketing, it’s important to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth a.k.a. making meaningful connections with your audience. That’s why we want to talk you through how to measure and make sure you’re getting your return on investment (ROI). High fives all around. Let’s do this!  

Increased Engagement 

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), marketing is: 

The activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

People. It’s all about the people. So one way to measure your marketing ROI is to measure engagement. Depending on your company’s market, you may be seeking engagement on any number of channels. 

1. Social media
2. Email
3. Blog 
4. Website
5. In-person events
6. Virtual events
7. Fill in the blank here

Always go where your audience goes. If you haven’t researched your audience to find out what digital landscape locales they visit, now’s the time. Then, meet them there. Leverage your outsourced partner to help you craft a high-connection content strategy and execute stellar content to match. Then, track your metrics to assess your ROI.

The metrics you measure depend on the channel. Are you focusing heavily on Facebook engagement? You can look at reactions, comments, shares, link clicks, etc. Ah yes, but don’t stop there. Raw numbers are great, but you have to look at them in context. Use this formula: 

Number of engaged users ÷ total page reach x 100 = engagement rate 

Let’s go one step further. Say your engagement rate is 1%. Most companies aim for 2-3% on Facebook, so there’s room for growth. 

It all depends on the channel. Emails are a beast unto themselves, and in that case, you may want to look at unsubscribes, sign-ups, click-through rate, and more. Bottom line: utilize your outsourced marketing partner to help you establish engagement goals and track your analytics.

You’re getting an ROI if there’s growth that matches your goals and reaches levels above what you’re spending on your marketing.  

Marketing Guru Tip: assess your engagement baseline before you outsource your marketing. Then, set KPIs (where you want to go) before every project so you can measure progress and make sure you’re getting a solid ROI. 

Website Traffic

If you’ve outsourced your website creation and development, you’ll want to make sure you’re getting a good ROI when it’s all said and done. Yep. We’re talking about a shiny, brand new website that engages users, bolsters up your brand, and serves as an entry point to the customer journey infinity loop. Your website holds a lot of power, and it’s important the money you’ve spent on it helps you meet your business goals.  

Let’s take a moment to bow down to the all-knowing Google. When it comes to measuring your ROI, turn to Google Analytics to check the health of your website. Like the section above, you can get down into the nitty-gritty of website interactions. Checking the numbers is a great way to ensure you’re getting a solid ROI. It works like this.

You want more people to visit your website. 

You want people to stay awhile on your website. 

You want people to come back to your website. 

And if none of the above is true after you’ve outsourced, you’re not getting a good ROI. 

Marketing Guru Tip: hire a website team that understands search engine optimization (SEO) so your website is more likely to reach the people it needs to. 

Increased Sales

Marketing and sales have an interesting relationship. Like two siblings who bicker, but love each other deep down inside. Salespeople interact with real live customers and can thus provide marketing with crucial insights into your company’s audience. Marketing can provide sales with the tools and resources to do their jobs better, specifically with customized content like checklists, how-tos, free downloads, and more that nurture relationships by providing value. And marketing and sales can put their heads together to analyze data to improve campaigns and nurture leads, respectively. So if you’ve outsourced your marketing, your return on investment can be reflected in your sales numbers. 

If your marketing is effective, you’ll drive more people to your website, and more people to buy your products and services. Bam. More sales. 

If your marketing is effective, your social media ad campaigns will lead to increased conversions. Hello sales. 

If your marketing is effective, your customers are more likely to identify your company as the solution to their problems and, yep, buy your stuff. 

A simple way to calculate the ROI is like this: 

ROI = (sale - marketing cost)/marketing cost

Take some time to assess the cost of outsourcing your marketing against your sales data, and you’ll be better positioned to understand your ROI. 

Marketing Guru Tip: avoid siloes. Both your marketing and sales departments will be more successful if there’s goals alignment between the two. 

Brand Loyalty 

Ever heard of customer lifetime value (CVL)? It’s the measure of the total worth of your customer’s business during the course of their relationship with your company. Basically, your business needs loyal customers, people who keep coming back time and time again. The investment you will have to make—both timewise and monetarily—is less than acquiring a new customer. New customers need to be wooed, wined, and dined. That takes effort and resources. 

You can get super granular when calculating both CLV and CAC (customer acquisition cost). Add in Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and you’re going to need one hell of a calculator. But for your purposes, you’re getting a solid ROI on your outsourced marketing if it increases brand loyalty.

What does brand loyalty look like in the real world? Simply, it’s a customer who purchases more than once. That customer continues a relationship with you over time, they may follow you on social media, they may receive your newsletters, and most importantly, they may tell their friends all about you. People that are loyal to brands leave reviews, share your content, and spread the love, digitally, by making referrals. 

If your marketing doesn’t convince your customers you’re The One, you may not be getting the best ROI. An outsourced marketing partner knows to focus on sustainability and growth over time, rather than a one-time purchase. 

There are so many options out there for potential customers, and effective marketing makes you stand out in the crowd.  

Marketing Guru Tip: find user-generated content on your social channels and repurpose it to show potential customers what they stand to gain if they start a relationship with you. 

Email Sign Ups 

We saved the best for last and while you definitely saw the email listed in our first section about engagement, it deserved its own section. Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing out there with an average open rate of 22.86% vs. social media’s 0.58% engagement rate. Thems the facts. Even though social media marketing is huge (rightly so), people tend to be more open and receptive to email marketing from businesses. It’s a “right place, right time” sort of thing. 

So, if you’ve hired an outsourced marketing partner to take your email up a notch, tracking your email metrics is essential for assessing your ROI. An outsourced marketing partner can help you reduce unsubscribes, segment your lists, increase subscribers, facilitate conversions, and improve your open and click-through rates by crafting engagement-driving content.

Same rule applies here as above; check your baseline against the work your outsourced partner does. There should be improvement and improvement that matches the cost to hire.  

Marketing Guru Tip: Periodically clean your email list. Your emails will do better if they’re landing in the inboxes of people who want to engage.  

Outsource Your Marketing for A Better ROI

If any part of this blog made your head spin—data, analytics, metrics, oh my!—you’re not alone. Fortunately, a trusted outsourced marketing partner can show you the ropes or do the heavy lifting for you. 

Marketing for marketing’s sake isn’t great marketing. 

Choose an outsourced partner that tracks data, gives you status updates, and makes adjustments to help you connect with your audience. Beyond the numbers, the ultimate ROI is forming meaningful, long-lasting relationships with your audience. At Brainchild Studios, we serve as outsourced marketing partners, and our specialty is using data to inform relationships. If you’re ready to make it happen, email us at info@brainchildstudios.com.