Background

In the last post, Marketing and Advertising Works, Right? we looked at the value of investing in marketing. Our conclusion was that if done wisely increasing the amount of marketing will most likely lead to an increase in revenue.

In this post, we will look at the same company but examine the specific changes that were made to improve the effectiveness of their investments in marketing.

As mentioned in the last blog post we are using data from one of our clients. I’m not able to divulge the name of the company but I can tell you that the numbers are real. The company is located in Calgary, Alberta. They have been in the renovations industry for nearly 30 years. Our company, Anduro Marketing, has done a variety of marketing activities for them including Digital Marketing, Traditional Marketing (via a media buyer partner), Website Design Consultation, and in recent years Marketing Strategy Consulting.

Below is the same table that we introduced at the end of the last post.

The data are for the full years of 2017 and 2018. Here is an explanation of each row and column:

• Marketing Investments are the amount invested in marketing for the entire year

• Booked Revenues are the total value of revenue for the projects committed to by customers

• Investments / Revenues % is the percentage of revenues invested in marketing

• The acronym for Return on Marketing Investment is ROMI

• We format this number as a dollar. If the answer is $10 we would say, “For every $1 invested in marketing we generated $10 in revenue, not including the investment in marketing”. By the way, $10 is a good baseline number.

• The formula for ROMI is [(Revenue - Investment) / Investment]

• Change is the difference between 2018 and 2017

• % Change is the percentage of the change between these 2 years

Marketing Investments

As we can see from the table, investments made in marketing increased by 15% from almost $195,000 to nearly $225,000. This is a significant increase.

Before we look at the results of this increase in investment in marketing I have to add that this decision - to increase the budget by nearly $2,500 per month - takes guts, faith, planning, commitment, and a talented team to execute the plan.

Booked Revenues

Revenues that were committed to by customers (booked) increased from nearly $1,835,000 in 2017 to almost $4,000,000 in 2018. This is a significant increase of 117% (an increase of over $2 million). Wow.

Investments / Revenues %

If we look at the percentage of investments compared to the revenues booked we can see that this amount actually decreased from a bit more than 10% to just over 5%. This is excellent.

This means that we are investing a lower percentage of revenues in marketing and actually generating more revenue. In other words, investments in marketing are more efficient and more effective - exactly what we want.

ROMI

ROMI increased by 99% from just over $8 in 2017 to nearly $17 in 2018. In other words, for every $1 spent on marketing in 2018, we generated $17 in booked revenue (not including the amount invested in marketing).

This is fantastic for 2 reasons: a) the trend is going in the right direction (improving) and b) the return of $17 for every $1 invested in marketing.

Recommendations at the End of 2017

Here is a list of recommendations that we made and which were adopted by the company we are working with:

1. Implement a customer relationship management system (CRM)

2. Hire a female salesperson (most of the buyers are women)

3. Target traditional advertising (radio and billboards) to specific areas of the city where those in the target market live

4. Increase ad spend for traditional marketing campaigns (radio and billboards)

5. Focus on getting referrals and repeat business using incentives

6. Increase the number and scope of customer participation events

Recommendations at the End of 2018

Here is a list of the recommendations that we made at the end of 2018 for the upcoming year of 2019:

1. Improve SEO

2. Increase scope for Google Ads

3. Add Google Display Ads and Remarketing

4. Have a stronger presence on social platforms

5. Increase the number of reviews

6. Increase the number of followers on specific platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, email)

Next Post

In our next post, we will look at comparing the performance of two differences.