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ROI statistics for different marketing techniques

by JeffNormand
9 replies
Hey all,

Just trying to build a presentation and showcase the power of SEO to my clients. As we all know, SEO offers the very best ROI and by a mile.

Sure, I could pull approximate numbers out of my ass but I prefer getting some sort of officials statistics on the matter.

Does anyone have a source of statistics for this? SEO as opposed to other more traditional methods of marketing (newspaper, ads, flyers, TV, radio, mailing, etc)?
#marketing #marketing services #roi #seo #statistics #techniques
  • Profile picture of the author Joshua Morris
    this is something that will be different for every business..

    you have to ask them what their average customer value is, then you have to find out the average conversion rate of thier site.

    Then look at the added up traffic you can expect to recieve from google and work out the ROI based from that.

    the real difference of SEO and online marketing than other traditional methods is the tracking capabilities

    you can see where your visitors are coming from, how long they are staying, you can split test different pages and content, and products and everything basicly.

    SEO is an easy sell tbh
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  • Profile picture of the author JeffNormand
    Trust me, I know it's an easy sell! I don't think I'll really need them, but I just thought I'd ask

    There must be some sort of study on this somewhere though, regardless of the type of business.
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    • Profile picture of the author BradleyC
      ROI is based upon a sale being made.

      When you're doing SEO, all you're doing is sending traffic to their website.

      Therefore, all you can really do is show how much more traffic you sent to their website. That's easy to do if they have cPanel where you can go into their analytics and see what the previous traffic was and compare it to what they're now getting.

      Helping them increase their sales is a whole new set of products and services.

      Bradley
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      • Profile picture of the author TJ Kazunga
        Originally Posted by BradleyC View Post

        ROI is based upon a sale being made.

        When you're doing SEO, all you're doing is sending traffic to their website.

        Therefore, all you can really do is show how much more traffic you sent to their website. That's easy to do if they have cPanel where you can go into their analytics and see what the previous traffic was and compare it to what they're now getting.

        Helping them increase their sales is a whole new set of products and services.

        Bradley
        Hi Bradley, actually you can track an SEO campiagns ROI. Its quite simple with tools like Analytics and having the right goals set up. Of course it's not 100% and you have to be careful to keep campaigns separate but it does give a reasonable idea.
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        • Profile picture of the author BradleyC
          TJ,
          Unless the business is taking orders from their website, you can't track ROI because a key part of the formula is sales. It's sales to cost. That's what gives you the ROI.

          Otherwise you're simply showing the increase in traffic to the business.

          Now, having said that, one could do this (just an example) ...

          Previously: av'g 500 visitors/mo and the business av'g 20 sales/mo. As a ratio, one could say that's 1 sale per 25 visitors.

          After SEO: Av'g 2000 visitors/mo and av'g 100 sales/mo = 1 sale per 20 visitors.

          Unless the business tracks where the lead came from, these #'s are just assumptions. However, I know many doing SEO will apply a formula like this.

          Clearly more traffic will increase sales. The question is, will it decrease the ratio of visitors to sales.

          Since we do the pieces that increase their sales effectiveness and we do SEO, I guess I just look at this differently than those who only do SEO.

          Bradley
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          ~ 25 Exciting Years of Marketing To Local Businesses ~
          << Learn NEVER BEFORE REVEALED strategies: MarketingToLocalBusinesses.com>>
          << Biggest Lead Generation Mistakes That Are COSTING YOU DEARLY!>>
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          • Profile picture of the author TJ Kazunga
            Bradley, surprising I know but we do know what ROI is and how to gauge it and that's exactly the point. As you said,
            Unless the business tracks where the lead came from, these #'s are just assumptions.
            ... well, that is exactly why we track leads to offline sale using analytics software.

            Here are some easy ways...

            1. Simple rough way - set up a Goal to track the number of people who fill in website lead form - then simply track those leads to sale. That is what my clients do and they feel quite happy with the ROI figures they generate.

            2.             Track a whitepaper/pdf/coupon download that contains unique phone number. Track those leads to sale.

            Of course another easy way with coupons/vouchers is just to offer web-only vouchers.

            3. Have custom URLS and phone numbers for different landing pages. Again, track to sale.

            As I said in earlier post, it's not 100% but is accurate enough to determine the effectiveness or not of SEO, PPC and even offline marketing campaigns.

            Cheers
            TJ
            P.S. By the way, we never sell "SEO" as such, but rather promote our service as lead/prospect generation.
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    • Profile picture of the author TJ Kazunga
      Well, I love PPC, and the best ROI I've achieved to date with a client using PPC has been 35 to 1 (blew their socks off lol). With SEO, campaigns tend to average between 5% - 10% ROI.
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  • Profile picture of the author mjbmedia
    TJ I think Bradleys point is that you can massively increase the traffic youre sending to a site, but if that site isnt converting well, then the ROI still isnt going to be impressive, thats not the SEO's fault but if the business owner doesnt understand that then its not that helpful.
    Eg 200 more people come into a retail outlet following a leaflet drop, but the display is crap, the layout is cluttered and theres no calls to action, no information about the products, no staff to help , the 200 extra visitors are meaningless though the leaflets done their job
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    Mike

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    • Profile picture of the author TJ Kazunga
      Originally Posted by mjbmedia View Post

      TJ I think Bradleys point is that you can massively increase the traffic youre sending to a site, but if that site isnt converting well, then the ROI still isnt going to be impressive, thats not the SEO's fault but if the business owner doesnt understand that then its not that helpful.
      Eg 200 more people come into a retail outlet following a leaflet drop, but the display is crap, the layout is cluttered and theres no calls to action, no information about the products, no staff to help , the 200 extra visitors are meaningless though the leaflets done their job
      Actually, I took Bradley's point as being it is difficult to gauge the ROI of an SEO campaign...
      Unless the business is taking orders from their website, you can't track ROI because a key part of the formula is sales. It's sales to cost. That's what gives you the ROI.
      hence the conversation we've been having

      Your point is obviously correct but it reinforces what I've been posting; i.e., a well run SEO campaign is not just about traffic and you must track ROI, at least if you want to keep your client for a long period.

      A good SEO will look at conversion even more than traffic/rankings because as we all know, it's all about the conversion right? And as I showed, it's fairly easy to track the ROI of an SEO campaign for an offline client using Google Analytics.

      Cheers
      TJ
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