More than four in five marketing executives (82%) say they expect campaigns to be measured, yet few can effectively evaluate the ROI of key channels such as public relations (18%), search engine optimization (SEO) (24%), and social media (26%), according to a survey from Ifbyphone.
Marketers' capabilities in measuring ROI vary across marketing channels, but overall they have been most successful at measuring email (47%) and direct marketing (41%) campaigns.
Below, additional findings from Ifbyphone's State of Marketing Measurement survey.
When pressed to select the most difficult type of campaign to track, more than one-half of marketers cite offline channels such as public relations (33%) and print ads (27%).
Fewer marketers cite online ads (15%), email marketing (6%), and SEO/PPC as the most difficult campaigns to measure.
Measuring Keywords Most Challenging
Looking at online advertising specifically, marketers say they have the most trouble measuring which keywords drive the most clicks (40%), conversions (40%), and phone calls (37%).
Marketers also cite problems determining the optimal ad spend per channel (37%) and the right amount of money to bid on certain keywords (27%).
Marketing Tools
The inability to track ROI may be tied to a lack of use of available marketing tools. Among marketers, the most popular tools include those for Web analytics (48%), email marketing software analytics (47%), lead counts from online contact forms (38%), social media monitoring (30%), and call tracking (27%).
Interestingly, most marketers are satisfied with their marketing tool sets: 58% agree and 13% strongly agree they have the tools they need to measure the ROI of their marketing campaigns.
How Success Is Measured
Most marketing dollars are measured in terms of sales and new business: 62% of marketers track net increases in sales and 57% track the number of new customers acquired.
Roughly one-third of marketers track leads generated (39%), customer retention (33%), and awareness (33%).
About the study: Findings from "The State of Marketing Measurement" are based on a survey of more than 200 US marketing professionals across a wide range of B2B and B2C industries, conducted by Ifbyphone in the fourth quarter of 2011. Some 57% of responders were from companies with 1-100 employees.
