Marketing is Never a Cost…

…if done correctly. Those were the words spoken to me by a former supervisor and marketing guru. At the time, I had been running AdWords campaigns and assisting in other forms of paid advertising. I saw the bill, and her statement seemed absolutely ludicrous. Being the marketing novice I was, I stared at her with a dumbfounded expression and wondered at how such a thing could be true.

It took some explaining for me to understand. Perhaps the one and only true metric of success when it comes to marketing is a little thing called ROI, or Return On Investment for you non-marketing folks. It’s a ratio that says, “How much are you getting for what you’re paying?” If your ROI is greater than 100%, your marketing efforts are earning more than they’re costing. On the other hand, if your ROI is less than 100%, you’re losing money.

Once that was explained to me, the truth of my supervisor’s statement became clear. When marketing is done correctly, it’s a positive investment. Your ROI exceeds 100% and you’re netting more profit than cost. If it stays that way, then there’s no reason in the world to worry about your advertising budget. After all, if you’re getting $1.20 for every dollar you pay for marketing, why wouldn’t you put as much as possible into it?

Of course, achieving a perpetually positive ROI is a complex task that involves, among other things, a lot of tracking and analytics. Most marketing experts wish they could boast such a feat. Still, I find that the whole, “Marketing is never a cost when done correctly,” line is a great way to put thrifty clients at ease when it comes time to discuss their marketing budget.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 9:26 am and is filed under Website Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.