The primary goal of any marketing campaign is to draw more customers to your business and make the company better known throughout the region. However, in order to successfully market, you will need to lay down some money and invest in advertising tools, such as promotional products.
The idea is to bring in profit that is greater than the money you invest—but it is the exact measurement of the return on investment, or ROI, that has puzzled marketing professionals for a long while and calculating it will determine the effectiveness of your campaign.
Setting Goals
The first step in determining what the ROI will be on your promotional merchandise investment is to lay out exactly what you aim to get out of a marketing campaign. If you don’t have a clear objective or objectives, then you can’t determine if your strategies are effective. For example, the goal of your company is to make your name well-known in your region or get a certain number of sales. That certain goal would then be the basis when evaluating whether your expected outcome is met or not.
By rule of thumb, it is a good idea to have one primary goal and two secondary goals. This will help you stay on track and focus your efforts on only achieving those goals. Try to make them as specific as possible, even writing them in numeric terms. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, write it out as “increase sales by 20%.”
The Tools to Get There
Once you have clearly established goals, you need to decide how to get there. Many business people, even marketing experts, believe that promotional products are one of the most effective advertising tools. This is primarily because company-specific items create brand recognition and can continue to raise awareness every time they are viewed or used by the owner and those around them.
Now, the tricky part is the selection of the branded merchandise. Using items that are relevant to the nature of your business is a good idea, as well as items that are used frequently by people, such as pens, key chains and t-shirts. Of course, you also don’t want to use items that are cheap—top-quality ones will promote a better image for your company.
However, budget is something to be considered as well, especially because you want to have a high ROI as possible. This means that careful selection is imperative, making sure that every dollar you spend will bring in revenue. To achieve this, you should ask yourself first: “Will this item draw more clients and increase my sales or not?”
Calculating ROI
Return on investment is something that is relatively difficult to calculate in exact scientific terms, but it is possible. Different companies and professionals use different methods and there are various ways to reach a similar figure. One method involves the usage of this simple equation:
ROI= (income generated – marketing expense) /marketing expense
Using this formula, you need to subtract the amount that you spent on advertising, primarily used on promotional products, from the revenue that you brought in from the marketing campaign. This figure is known as the incremental margin and is a pure figure of how much your net income is. Then you take that figure and divide it by the actual expense (the same amount used previously). This will leave you with a single number that indicates how much return you received from your advertising investment. Generally speaking, a higher result means that your campaign or strategy is more efficient.
Some people, however, are still debating that this doesn’t prove that using promotional products as marketing tools can bring in more revenue than any other kind of advertising, such as television or magazine ads. Nevertheless, what matters is for your marketing campaign to be successful in meeting your goals and in generating more income than what you dispensed.
Successful Marketing
All companies want to market themselves and gain higher profits compared to investment costs. You can measure this through ROI, which can be easily calculated by dividing the incremental margin by the expenses paid. This can gauge the success of your marketing campaign.
Hopefully, by using the right kind of promotional products, you will be able to successfully market your business. For more information and help on finding the perfect ones for you and your Perth company, call us on (08) 92444 111.