Marketing ROI

Marketing ROI is exactly what it sounds like: A way of measuring the return on investment from the amount a company spends on marketing. 

Marketing ROI benefits any company in the following ways:

• Justifies marketing spend
• Shows what to spend on
• Compares marketing efficiency with competitors
• Holds marketing people accountable

What sort of Marketing ROI should a business expect? 9 experts tell us what is a good Marketing ROI.

What is a good Marketing ROI?

According to Neilsen, the average marketing return on investment is $1.09. So what is a good Marketing ROI and why.

5:1 Ratio

‘A 5:1 ratio is in the middle of the bell curve. A ratio of over 5:1 is considered strong for most businesses. A 2:1 revenue to marketing cost ratio wouldn’t be profitable for many businesses, as the cost to produce or acquire the item being sold (also known as cost-of-goods-sold, or COGS) is about 50% of the sale price. Companies with higher gross margins (their COGS are LESS than 50% of the sales price) don’t need to achieve as many sales from their marketing before they become profitable. Therefore, the ratio is lower.” – Chris Leone, Web Strategies Inc.

Email marketing has the highest ROI

“Email marketing has the highest ROI of 675% when compared with any of the other major marketing methods. An email marketing campaign with a business’s website can be utilized to great success in order to increase sales and profits.” – Profitworks

Measure against the past

“One good way to set a “good ROI” benchmark for each marketing strategy is to look at the return from similar tactics you’ve tried in the past, as well as your current sales numbers. That information should help you create ROI benchmarks and goals that are realistic for your company. What’s considered a “good ROI” can vary based on the type of marketing strategy, your distribution channels, and your industry.” – Pamela Bump, HubSpot 

Start small and scale with success

“Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of blindly spending money, hoping that cash will eventually come back and multiply. Sometimes it works. Usually, however, the entrepreneur runs out of money because he or she didn’t consider ROI. Maybe you spend $500 on Facebook Ads. You track the campaign over several weeks and discover that leads from those Facebook Ads generated $10,000 in revenue. That’s a massive ROI. Now you know that Facebook Ads offer tremendous ROI. Next time, you might spend $2,000 on Facebook Ads to multiply the potential revenue.” – Jonathan Cronstedt, Medium

Test your way to a high Marketing ROI

“Almost anything can be measured using proper test design – but note that it’s prohibitively expensive to test everything with this method. With test and control groups, you apply the program or treatment that you want to measure to one component of your target buyer group, and not to another homogeneous part of that group.  All other factors being equal, you’ll be able to attribute any difference in buyer behavior between the two groups to the particular program.” Jon Miller, Marketo

Google Ads – $2 return for $1 spent

“According to research by the American Economic Association, businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords (Google Ads). However, many of them spend money on AdWords without knowing which search terms to target, what the best bid price is, or how to measure their revenue.” – MarketingProfs

KPIs with targets determine Marketing ROI

“ROI can certainly be seen as a “numbers game.” When marketers launch campaigns, they must be willing to identify the KPI’s of those campaigns in numerical terms. How much more traffic have they generated? What has been the increase in lead generation compared to that before a campaign has been in place? Companies can obsess on looking for a positive ROI in short order when, in fact, a campaign may be much longer-term before results can actually be seen. Find the balance. Set up the KPI’s, track results in real-time, eliminate those campaigns that are clearly not working, and allow those that seem to be getting results the time they need.” – Circa Interactive

LinkedIn has an average ROI of $9.59

“We looked at every paid LinkedIn touchpoint (e.g. paid social ads) across our customer base from 2017 through July 2018.  We use a full path attribution model in order to give revenue credit across the entire customer journey, including marketing that happens post-opportunity creation. We look at cost data and closed-won opportunities across the same 1.5-year time span. In other words, this includes costs for LinkedIn ads directed towards leads and current open-opportunities. The average ROI for a subset of our customers is $9.59.” – Andrew Nyugen, Bizible

Facebook ads lift search ROI

“Consumers who were exposed to Facebook ads were more likely to conduct a new search on mobile. The average lift for mobile search referral traffic was 6 percent. Small businesses saw the largest variance in the lift. when people saw Facebook ads in addition to paid search results, they were not only 13 percent more likely to buy online, they were also 79 percent more likely to seek out the brand’s physical store.” – Larry Kim, Wordstream

Do these experts help your understanding and expectations of Marketing ROI? Do you need help determining Marketing ROI for your business?

Digital marketing case studies show how businesses and brands produce great results with the benefits of digital targeting, media selection and data analytics.

Here are a few reasons why companies are moving in this direction.

• 86% of women turn to social networks before making a purchase (Alist daily)
• 49% of organizations do not have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy (Smart Insights, Managing Digital Marketing research report)
• 40% of marketers say proving the ROI of their marketing activities is their top marketing  challenge. (HubSpot, State of Inbound)

Here are examples of companies large and small, B2C and B2B to help spark great content, creative thinkingand execution at your organization, 12 inspiring digital marketing case studies that prove ROI.

1. BRITISH TELECOM: Managed to save £2m per year by routing around 600,000 contacts per year through social media instead of its call centres. This also improved the customer experience, as these people preferred to deal with BT via social instead of phone or email.
2. CLEAN & CLEAR: Used Snapchat to help raise awareness of its Morning Burst facial cleanser among females age 13 to 24. Clean & Clear partnered with Snapchat to run animated Snap Ads that reached the right people at the right time. Clean & Clear used Snapchat’s Lifestyle Categories to optimize its Snap Ads between Stories campaign and reach Snapchatters more likely to be interested in beauty. Clean & Clear’s Snap Ads and Filters campaign generated an 11.2% lift in Aided Awareness (5.5X higher than Millward Brown Norms) and a 7% lift in brand favorability (3.5X higher than Millward Brown Mobile Norms).
3. CREME EGG: Switched ad spend from TV to Facebook in this example of digital marketing case studies. A seasonal social media campaign invited people to ‘Have a fling with Crème Egg’ on Facebook, created a long series of one-off posts that fed into an overall narrative across the three months. Facebook matched TV in driving brand consideration for a third of the cost increasing sales by 7% as a result.
4. FISHER TANK: A welded steel tank constructed with a sales cycle of 12 months to several years. They used an Inbound Marketing approach would attract more (and more qualified) prospects to their website and give the company a chance to demonstrate how they think and what they do. They developed a more visually attractive site, and one that was a magnet for search engines. They included calls-to-action to download content of interest and value to prospects (primarily engineers, owners and facility and project managers) and integrated a blog with social sharing abilities, established company social media profiles, and optimized the site with the right long-tail keywords to get Fisher found in more searches. As a result, 1) website traffic increase by 119%, 2) quote request increased by 500% and 3) drove up the value of qualified sales opportunities by $3.4 million.
5. HCC MEDICAL INSURANCE SERVICE: Infographics have been overused in recent years, but they’re still an effective medium for content marketing.HCC Medical Insurance Services (HCCMIS) managed to increase blog traffic and email revenue using an infographic aimed at its travel customers. Compared to its normal sales emails the infographic achieved a 96% lift in email revenue, while on Facebook the post that featured the graphic had more than 2,000 interactions compared to an average of 10.Overall HCCMIS’s blog post featuring the graphic achieved 3.9m views, of which 90% were new visitors.
6. IBM: trained its sales people to use LinkedIn and Twitter, and also gave them access to a content calendar so they had relevant things to share. In this example of digital marketing case studies, the program resulted in 4x more sales year-on-year, though there are a few caveats to take into account.
7. KLM: Noticed, from one of its employees, that a lot of people were asking about social payments, so they spoke to KLM’s IT and accounts teams to see if it was possible to set it up.This resulted in a new social payments tool, which cost €3,500 to setup and now takes €80,000 per week in sales.
8. MANN FAMILY DENTAL: A comprehensive family care and cosmetic dentistry practice, wasn’t generating leads that would convert to patients. The creation of a blog on their website saw an immediate rise in phone calls. They used social media to strengthen and increase that organic referral web by engaging with their patients on Facebook. They focused on long tail keyword with local geographic terms. Mann Family Dental saw a: 1) 270% increase in web traffic 2) 10X increase in leads and a 3) 50% increase in patients generated from the website.
9. NEUTROGENA: Used shopping basket data to identify competitor products loyal customers were already buying that were within their own range. Neutrogena knew they had a loyal base of customers, but 75% of shoppers were only buying items within a single segment of the Neutrogena range. They created a “product pairings” campaign delivered through video, banner ads and coupons to drive sampling. Consumers were targeted based on their personal buying habits. They saw an Increase in incremental sales with 18.1 million households reached and a  £5.84 return on advertising spend (ROAS).
10. NILLA WAFERS: used Facebook to reinvigorate its Nilla Wafers brand and boost sales. A study showed Nilla Wafers sales increased 9% in test market locations among consumers who saw Facebook ads versus a control group of consumers over the course of a five-month campaign. The Facebook ad campaign for Nilla Wafers also was able to reach 11.3 million households through 190 million total impressions (16.8 impressions per household).
11. SNICKERS: Targeting fat-fingered typists, this clever search campaign from Snickers used misspelled words in Google keywords to capture hungry office workers’ attention during the working day. The chocolate bar brand managed to reach 500,000 people within just three days of launch, without any seeding and for less cost than bidding on brand keywords.
12. W HOLLYWOOD: Knew their luxury condominiums were expertly-crafted. Vibrant homes in the L.A. spotlight are eye-catching to many people. They created a lead-generation strategy which included SEO and Facebook ads to drive engaged visitors to the site. Google AdWords campaigns targeted specific areas within the California region and other cities where qualified lead potential was determined. The campaign resulted in: 1) 115% increase in conversions from Google Adwords, 2) 63% increase in site visits from SEO and 3) 1,800 goal completions from Facebook.

Do these digital marketing case studies inspire you? Did they prove ROI to your satisfaction? Could a creative digital marketing program help increase business in your organization?

• 86 percent of B2B companies say they are doing content marketing
• Just 38 percent say it is effective
• 21 perecnt are able to track a return on investment (ROI) (source: Content Marketing Institute)

Benefits from marketing and attribution of results always seem harder for B2B companies than B2C. Maybe it’s because the buying cycle takes longer, more people are involved in purchase decisions and sales are made for rational, not emotional, reasons.

Is it harder or are we not looking hard enough?

If you need convincing, here are 33 inspiring B2B digital marketing case studies.

CONTENT MARKETING

1. ADP: Developed a content marketing campaign to connect and engage with their target audience on a ADP solution using white papers and a diagnostic assessment tool. The campaign generated over $1 million in new sales opportunities with several deals closed within the first 3 months of launch.
2. CROWE HORWATH: the public accounting firm used 48 pieces of content in 4 different topic areas, this campaign targeted C-level prospects in financial institutions with $1 billion or more in assets across the buying cycle. Content tactics included: executive briefs, case studies, infographics, checklists, Q and A, and Brainshark video. 778 contacts were engaged with a 70% open rate (vs. 10%), 2 engagement worth $250k in revenue.
3. DEMANDBASE: A B2B marketing cloud, helped B2B marketers make the right content technology investment by using a white paper, infographic, webinar, Slideshare and a live presentation to spotlight tools that can maximize the power of content. The results of the campaign generated 1,700 leads, 125 webinar participants, 5,000 views on Slideshare and $1 million in new business.
4. FISHER TANK: Makes giant, above-ground welded steel tanks. With clients in the fuel industries, waste water, pulp & paper and other industrial and municipal areas, projects tend to be big (multi-million dollar) and take a long time to sell (12 months and longer). For more than 60 years, the company has made its sales primarily through cold calling and referrals from existing clients. So it took some moxy to launch a content marketing strategy online. The plan including sprucing up the website, integrating a blog and social sharing, and offering some valuable content by free download. The campaign increased web traffic by 119%, traffic from social media by 4800%, lead conversions by 3900%, quote requests by 500% and new qualified sales opportunities by $3.4 million.
5. LOGICALL: A company that focuses on inbound and outbound customer management solutions, uses content assets such as emails, microsite and ebook, Logicalis developed a thought leadership effort that supported sales teams by enabling custom messaging based on the prospects interaction with the campaign. With a target audience of about 2,000, nearly $8 million in new pipeline business was closed.
6. OPENTEXT: A software solution for enterprise information management, created a personalized new customer onboarding site offering a variety of assets (white papers, checklists, product pages, ebooks, case studies) and content to welcome new clients and provide upsell, cross-sell opportunities. The campaign also included a two phase nurturing program. 1,700 new contacts were identified along with 31 new opportunities worth $1.8 million.
7. OPTUM: A health services business, created an integrated marketing campaign to support the launch of a new solution, support sales and build thought leadership. The content marketing mix included: advertorials, display ads, email, direct mail and a campaign website. The successful campaign earned a 23.5 lead to conversion rate, 475% increase in website traffic, 2,500+ resource downloads, 28% increase in YoY blog followers and $52 million in contract value of new business with less than $ 1,000,000 invested.
8. RS COMPONENTS: The electronic product distribution company created a specific social hub, spanning four different languages, having the purpose of being a collaboration and engagement hub for Electronic Design Engineering. One of the centrepieces of the site is the free tool store, which includes a free design tool that’s been downloaded more than 60,000 times and the site itself gathered more than 45,000 members within its first 12-month period.
9. SAP: The global strategy was aimed at enabling cross-cultural information to be efficiently shared around the company. SAP Latin AmericaOne year after implementing this strategy SAP Latin America had more than 100,000 fans and followers (an increase of 900%) and achieved a 17% interaction rate across  the region, while a campaign featuring a social app targeting specific buying centers drove more than 12,000 visitors and a 15% engagement rate. has four Facebook pages, four Twitter feeds and two LinkedIn accounts. These profiles are split out by language (e.g. Portuguese and Spanish) rather than country and aim at achieving a split of 20% promotion material vs. 80% of interesting, engaging content for its community.
10. XEROX: Created a targeted “Get Optimistic” campaign to connect with 30 top accounts and partnered with Forbes to create a magazine that offered relevant business tips. 70% of targeted companies interacted with the microsite, readership increased 300-400% over previous email campaigns, added 20,000 new contacts, generated 1,000+ scheduled appointments, and get this: yielded $1.3 BILLION in pipeline revenue.

SOCIAL MEDIA

1. CISCO: Established a social media listening center. It listens to more than 5000 social mentions a day on Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels. Cisco has been able to control outside agency fees, avoid other customer and partner interaction costs, increase team productivity, and identify new sales opportunities. The social media listening center has had an ROI of +281% in 5 months to generate an annual benefits of $1,596,292.
2. MAERSK: Danish shipping company Maersk first began using social back in 2011 to raise brand awareness, gain insight into the market, increase employee satisfaction and get closer to its customers, It focuses on the stories that emerge from within the business, such as how it is helping fuel a boom in the sale of Kenyan avocados and where its staff come from. Its presence on each network is tailored to that platform, so for example on LinkedIn it promotes job vacancies and publishes articles about the work culture within the business, while on Instagram it encourages followers to post photos of its ships using the hashtag #Maersk. Maersk now has more than 1.5m Facebook fans (of which around 15% are customers) and 12,000 Twitter followers, as well as active accounts on Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube and Google+.
3. DELL sought to go where its customers are — on social media — by offering technical support, responding to customer concerns and building business digitally. The company launched @DellCares, a program that uses social media platforms and online communities to address customer questions and reply directly to customers through tweets and other response methods. According to Amy Marquez Bivin, Social Media Outreach Manager, 98 percent of customer issues responded to through @DellCares are resolved without customers needing to work with an agent and 85 percent of social-media-assisted customers with negative initial opinions of Dell reported a positive opinion following the support experience. The program is also generating an average of $265,000 in additional weekly revenue.
4. SHIPSERV: It’s difficult to imagine the maritime industry getting to grips with social media, but Shipserv one of the leading industry marketplaces, proves that in can be done very successfully. As part of a wider marketing strategy and customer engagement strategy, various social approaches were taken, resulting in greater site traffic, alongside increased brand awareness and lead opportunities. From an initial $30,000 social media marketing investment, it’s estimated the overall results achieved would have cost more than $150,000 through traditional media.

SOCIAL CRM

1. ALLINA HEALTH: Used CRM to manage its data warehouse. It’s identified benefits that include reduced patient length of stay, reduced admissions, and improved health outcomes in stroke, depression, and angioplasty treatments. Within 2 years, the CRM initiative had an ROI of +152% and generated $1,052,828 each year.
2. GET SATISFACTION: A leading online customer community platform that companies use or customer support, idea submission, marketing and sales questions, and capturing positive feedback, focused traffic driving strategies on search, social media, blogging, and building a content community. The CRM strategy achieved an ROI of +104% in month one, +168% in month two and +248% in month three.
3. TYROIT: is Europe’s largest manufacturer of bonded grinding, cutting-off, sawing, and drilling tools generating $416 million in annual revenue from more than 70,000 unique products produced in 19 plants for 60 countries. Tyroit used CRM to integrate products and solutions to reduce the number of contact points and transaction costs. It increased bottom line costs by +25% and produced an ROI of +183% within 2 years.

SOCIAL SELLING

1. AT&T:  Put together a new sales team to re-build business relationships with a Fortune 100 company in Atlanta. They decided to take an entirely new approach that heavily favored building relationships through social media. They had to try something new.  Relationships with a key client had suffered in the past five years, creating strain and sales had dried up. With training from Mark Schaeferand support from our internal team, they began implementing a content strategy aimed at strategic “persons of interest” from the former customer. Inside of 18 months $47 million in brand new business was awarded to AT&T, directly attributable to social media outreach.
2. IBM: Traditional ways of finding B2B customers for hardware and software products – telemarketing and email – were not producing the same results when applied to selling web-based services such as cloud computing and data security. IBM launched a program called “intelligent listening” within social media to learn what conversations about cloud computing were going on, what trends and issues were being discussed, and what the hot-button topics in the field were for users. Sales reps could simply check an RSS feed, find some content that fit the context of any discussion they were seeing, and upload them to social media and also to their new individual rep profile pages within the IBM site. The result was 10 orders the first day, and orders for product during the quarter that were 4X higher than during the same time the year before.
3. INCONTACT: A call center software company, trained half their team to learn and engage with customers through Social Selling using LinkedIn and the marketing automation software, Eloqua. Within a year, the half of the team that was trained saw a 122% increase in revenue for those sales reps using LinkedIn; 157% increase in revenue for those sales reps using LinkedIn & Eloqua. Now the entire company is trained in Social Selling Here is a brief video to explain the story.
4. INDIUM:  Social Media in manufacturing is a rarity. Several of their engineers (17 or so, and 73 blogs.) write blog articles to share their expertise with customers, prospects and people with questions about the technical applications related to solder. They shifted from traditional white papers to blog articles, supported by extensive measurements. Video is part of the mix too, to develop high value conversations, and this rolls over into trade show attendance. The video highlights key points for success and insights. SEO improved significantly. Leads increased significantly while trade-show costs decreased 75%.
5. HUBSPOT: Focused social media on solving customers’ problems as a way to earn leads. For example, HubSpot is first to release guidebooks their target market needs to create success. When something changes in online marketing, HubSpot is there with a guide to manage the change. They share the best advice, fast and have earned a reputation as THE educational resource for the market they serve. They give knowledge and advice (content) away free and make sure it’s the very best stuff possible. This (now) famous software start-up exploded onto the scene in 2006. Two years later they hit $2.2 million in sales and $52 million 4 years later.
6. LINKEDIN:  Had to be converted to social selling. After the release of tools such as Sales Navigator and TeamLink, LinkedIn’s own sales team began seeing significant results. Ralf VonSosen, the company’s head of marketing for sales solutions notes, “We started seeing a 50% increase in leads to meeting conversion rates.”
7. LOGMYCALLS: A call tracking service, practiced a“150 Blog Posts in 50 Days” effort. “With a company our size, the commitment has to be significant in order to produce 3 unique and useful blog posts a day,” says Inbound Marketing Manager, McKay Allen. “After all, we also produce 2 original marketing webinars each week, monthly case studies, a variety of marketing White Papers, and some humorous and awesome marketing call tracking videos.” The result of this original and relevant content: A 400% increase in leads within 90 days.

LINKEDIN MARKETING

1. AXWAY: Is a software service that manages, runs, secures, and monitors all your business interactions – emails, files, messages, services, events, and processes. Although Google Adwords was successful at generating leads for Axway, competition for top keywords was fierce and drove up conversion costs. Axway used LinkedIn Ads specifically targeting the job titles, industries and job functions. They tested over 30 ads with custom landing pages. The LinkedIn campaigns generated +25% conversion rate with the lowest cost per conversion ever achieved.
2. JMF INTERNATIONAL TRADE GROUP: Is a business consultancy and contract manufacturer run by James Filbird. What Jim did is something any of us could do to grow a business but most of us don’t. He: 1) kept his profile up-to-date, 2) joined 50 LinkedIn Groups, 3) scoured Group Digests, 4) engaged in discussions, 5) connected, 6) moved the conversation offline, mostly through Skype and 7) re-evaluated his groups and contacts, regularly. He attributes the company he built to $5,000,000 in revenue largely to LinkedIn.
3. GOSHIDO: a software solution that makes is easier for people around the world to work together and collaborated, used LinkedIn to find seed capital for its own creation.  This was done by identifying and leveraging connections who could be potential investors. Approximately $150,000 was raised.
4. HEWLETT PACKARD: is the first company to hit 1,000,000 Followers for a Company Page. They also set up a specific Discussion Group to attract small businesses that has 5,500+ members; 75% who actively engage in discussions and who are 2X more likely to recommend HP. Since a video tell more than 1,000 words, here’s the story.

WEBINARS

1. INSPIRED MARKETING: Sells digital materials and online training programs about using social networking tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to create and market a successful business. In 2010, the partners presented more than 300 webinars (both their own and through other people). They investment could be tracked to over $2.5 million in sales for 2011. “In January 2011, we had sales of $250,000 from just seven GoToWebinar events,” says President and Co-founder, Lewis Howes.
2. LUMEDX: Is a small healthcare technology company with 100 person staff. It needed to stand out in the face of large brand competition. Lumedx used webinars to cost effectively build awareness of its cardiovascular information and imaging systems product, drive lead generation campaigns and build customer rapport. Lumeds increased contact with over 500 clients, gained competitive edge over much larger companies and drove over$600,000 in annual sales.
3. MARKETO: Is a leading provider of marketing analytics software. The company recognized webinars as a key piece in the marketing tool kit to promote thought leadership and generate leads. As with many webinars, people registered but didn’t always attend. They used a simple, recorded phone message reminder in addition to email. Although th ephone reminder added $2 for every registrant, it increased conversion of people who attended  from 26% to 48% and, according to Marketo, was well worth the investment in terms of sales results according to a company rep.
4. PINPOINTE: Is  a provider of on-demand email marketing automation services for mid-market and large enterprises. Pinpointe depended upon free,15-day trials of its service together with traditional sales outreach to generate leads and win new customers. However, the company wanted to find additional ways to increase awareness, leads and sales. When webinars were added, 1000 new leads per month are added; 25 become customers who each generate $200/month in Pinpointe services adding $6,250 and $75,000 to the bottom line.
5. SEAGATE: Is a large 52000+ staff technology company, Seagate wanted to bypass traditional B2B channels and market its new product directly to end users. Webinars facilitated a B2C product launch and attracted 1500+ attendees with zero advertising budget. Seagate also used webinars to assemble far-flung speakers for webcasts without travel costs. Seagate exceeded initial sales unit goal by 300 percent, doubling sales forecast within one week of launch. Once they put the webcast on YouTube, a viral marketing effect created 38,800 within 4 months.

This post was originally featured on the {grow} blog from Mark Schaefer’s Businesses Grow. We’re grateful for the significant exposure it received. We’re republishing for our readers.

Did you find one relevant to your business? Did these B2B digital marketing case studies convince digital marketing can work for your B2B business?

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.” – Seth Godin

• 91% of people want brands to enable their personal goals (source: Edelman)
• 87% expect brands to share their interests (source: Edelman)
• The most recommended company in its category grows 2.5X or 250% faster than the category average (source: Bain & Co)

The facts say:

• Consumers choose, support and recommend brands that share their interests, values and goals
• Social currency is a major factor in brand selection
• Small, daily interactions build stronger relationships than big, monumental events

What’s the best way to build a brand in the channel where this happens most frequently?

Here are 10 best practices of great digital brands.

1. SEGMENT THE MARKET: For every brand, there is going to be a wide disparity between best and worst customers. If your audience wants your brand to enable their personal goals, it’s safe to say don’t go after everyone. Define and segment your audience in specific terms based on what you will do for each other. Because, when you succeed with key segments, they will spread the word for you to a larger audience.
2. CREATE BUYER PERSONAS: See and know your audience members as individuals. Create Buyer Personas, so you can identify their needs and more effectively communicate. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll find it easier to develop creative marketing strategies that reach and motivate your target.
3. CONDUCT COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE: In almost all categories, product proliferation and market fragmentation are increasing. This puts more pressure on innovation and price. But competitors provide the means for differentiation and discovery. In the digital channel, use tool like Compete and Alexa to understand your competitors web presence, their audience, influencers and links. Use this information to discover your brand’s differentiation and audience.
4. IDENTIFY KEYWORDS FOR CONTENT CREATION: Keywords are the currency of the internet. Find the keywords that are being searched for your category and product through Google Trends and their specific monthly search volume through the Google Keyword Planner. Use these keywords for the content and conversations your brand has with its audience.
5. SHARE YOUR VALUES:  If you want to build a community around your brand, you have to give them the ability to feel more connected to your brand. Affinity is built through continued conversation and engagement. For example, Walmart’s social connection to its community, whether it is on Facebook or Walmart Moms, is to express ideas and content for saving money and represent the voice of its customers.
6. FIND KEY INFLUENCERS: One of the most important quests is to find key influencers, trusted industry voices with a weighty follower range. They help endorse your brand, share your content or promote your efforts. Tools like BuzzSumo, PeerIndex and Marketing Grader for links help identify who are key influencers. The best digital brands begin to build one-on-one relationships from there.
7. GET PERSONAL: By taking these steps, you’ve gotten to know your audience on an individual basis, now connect with them. Speak to them by name, offer them content you know they’ll appreciate and test offer through A/B Testing that improve your ability to create better personalized brand experiences.
8. USE ONLINE TACTICS TO DRIVE OFFLINE ENGAGEMENT: As strong as the digital channel is in branding brands, for sales to occur, you’ll have to drives consumers an offline environment. Consider email, events, local promotions and direct contact that can direct your audience to the offline environment where you want them to go.
9. LISTEN AND LEARN FROM THE DATA: Find out what is being said, who is talking and how is it influencing success. Identify Key Performance Indicators as your actionable scorecard. Consider tools like Topsy, Social Searcher and Radian6 as listening tools.
10. BE CONSISTENT: Regular interactions convince your audience your brand will do what is says it will. Be consistent. Consider a Content Calendar. Manage the relationship your brand has build with content and conversations.

Do you think these are best practices of great digital brands? How many of these best practices is your brand doing?

Does great creative drive ROI?

We certainly think it should.

Here are 14 case studies that highlight creative on digital campaigns. They include brands from B2C, B2B, small business, large brands, profit and non-profit. Tactics range from paid, owned and earned media to user generated content.

In each case, the impact of the creative idea is isolated and measured. We found great creative drives ROI. But it drives even greater ROI when it is combined with smart targeting, sound strategic thinking and has a specific business role in the overall marketing mix.

Here are 14 case studies that show great digital creative drives ROI.

1. ADP: Developed a content marketing campaign to connect and engage with their target audience on a ADP solution using white papers and a diagnostic assessment tool. The campaign generated over $1 million in new sales opportunities with several deals closed within the first 3 months of launch.
2. ALS ASSOCIATION: Created the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. It relied on user generated content and is, to date, the most successful viral social media campaign ever. In one month, over $100 million dollars was donated versus $2.6 million in the year ago period. Over 6.000.000 people created their own Ice Bucket Challenge video and posted it on YouTube. Participants included (George Bush, Barak Obama), business leaders (Mark Zuckerberg) to celebrities (Matt Damon, Charlie Sheen), many people of influence have given their implied endorsement by taking the Ice Bucket challenge.  Traffic to the organization’s website, alsa.org, ranked as the 648 most viewed website in the US and 4.192 in the world (an improvement in rank of 168,792 within 3 months) according to Alexa.
3. COCA-COLA: Used the digital channel to “Share A Coke.” The campaign gave people the chance to order personalized Coke bottles through a Facebook app. resulting in a 7% increase in sales. It also earned a total of more than 18 million media impressions, and traffic on the Coke Facebook site increased by 870%, with ‘Likes’ growing by 39%.
4. CREME EGG: Invited consumers, in a seasonal social media campaign, to ‘Have a fling with Crème Egg’ on Facebook. They created a long series of one-off posts that fed into an overall narrative across the three months. With one third of the spending in Facebook compared to TV. Facebook matched TV in driving brand consideration. ROI research showed consumers exposed to both TV and Facebook were 66 per cent more likely to purchase than the expected combined effect of both. Creme Egg saw a 7% increase in sales.
5. IKEA: The 2014 IKEA catalogue came to life this year taking the customer experience further with extended digital content. To unlock 50 pages of digital content, including videos, furnishing tips and room designs, users needed to download the IKEA catalogue app, scan the plus logo in the catalogue with their smartphone or tablet and have access to a variety of digital content. One of the features was an augmented reality capability which allows customers to view and place selected 3D virtual IKEA products in their own rooms. The app was downloaded 8.5 million times.
6. LOGICALLS: A global IT and managed services provider, used content assets such as emails, microsite and ebook, Logicalis developed a thought leadership effort that supported sales teams by enabling custom messaging based on the prospects interaction with the campaign. With a target audience of about 2,000, nearly $8 million in new pipeline business was closed.
7. MERCEDES: For the launch of the new Mercedes A-class, Mercedes wanted to appeal to a younger generation of drivers in the UK. The idea behind the campaign was to reach out to young people watching TV while interacting with a mobile or tablet device. Showing the commercial during prime time TV (during the X Factor) and using the hastage #YOUDRIVE, viewers were encouraged to use Twitter to determine the outcome of the story. Brochure requests increased by 140%, exceeding the original goal and on social media the hashtag appeared 103 million times on Twitter and 30 million times on Facebook. The #YOUDRIVE website was visited by over 740,000 people and the YouTube trailer viewed 237,000 times and had a very impressive 95% completion rate.
8. NILLA WAFERS: Used Facebook to change perception of a brands that was seen as old to one that for those who are young at heart. Through a campaign of posts that showed everything from versatile and new uses, they measured engagement. By combining likes, comments, shares, and estimated impressions to create an engagement score, Nilla Wafers was found to have a score of 557 against 46 posts during the prior period. This is a massive 11 times higher than the U.S. Food sector average. The campaign produced a 9% increase in sales.
9. PICON: Wanted to revamp its brand promise of ‘spreading happiness’ across Lebanon. The FMCG brand’s civic activism programme became part of the country’s school curriculum via some smart digital marketing. Each area of civic activism was represented by a Lebanese superhero, who represented the programme as an ambassador and spoke about the effort to the media. Picon developed ‘Happiness Heroes’, a program that taught civic education to school children and allowed them to apply those lessons outside of the classroom through civic works projects. The campaign reached 6,700 students. Together, those students collected two and a half tons of bottle caps, recycled two tons of paper, and planted 1,250 trees. The students also helped 158 families in need, entertained 2,000 seniors, renovated 15 public schools, and helped 550 people with special needs participate in sports events. Picon estimated the company garnered $1.8 million in earned media and reached 2.5 million people.
10. SAMSUNG: To promote its latest Galaxy camera, this global campaign from Samsung targeted the millennial community who regularly upload photos to social media. The electronics giant created a social media marketing campaign –dubbed ‘Life’s a Photo Take It’ – using young influencers to demonstrate the key differences between the quality of images from a normal smartphone and the Samsung Galaxy camera- getting results that blew away expectations.  Purchase intent grew by 115% with Tumblr pictures and YouTube videos getting over 1,000,000 views (300% higher than expected).
11. SMART BALANCE: Grew its US market share by 14%, giving power brands such as Flora, Country Crock and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! something to worry about. They introduced new health/nutrition content, recipes, seasonal promotions and coupons, and streamlined navigation across the site. Site visits were up by 42% and time spent on site has increased 27%, while bounce rates decreased by more than 16%. Several thousand coupons were delivered and the Smart Balance email database grew over 15-fold.
12. SNICKERS: Targeted fat-fingered typists across the UK, this clever search campaign from Snickers used misspelled words in Google keywords to capture hungry office workers’ attention during the working day. The concept was to bid on commonly misspelt words with an advert reading “Grab yourself a Snikkers” as “Yu cant spel properlie wen hungrie”. the campaign smashed their target of 500,000 people within just three days of launch – showing that with a little creativity, search continues to throw up opportunities for increasingly cost-effective marketing.
13. WILKINSON SWORD: Ran a #DADICATION social campaign in the to coincide with Father’s Day. It setup a booth in London so that members of the public could record video messages paying tribute to their dads.  A montage of some of these clips was posted on YouTube to promote a Facebook competition that allowed people to win one of 20,000 personalized razors for their dad, a Wilkinson goodie bag or a day out at a brewery. The YouTube ad has been viewed more than 1,300,000 times and many people left tributes on the Wilkinson Facebook page.
14. XEROX: Created a targeted “Get Optimistic” campaign to connect with 30 top accounts and partnered with Forbes to create a magazine that offered relevant business tips. 70% of targeted companies interacted with the microsite, readership increased 300-400% over previous email campaigns, added 20,000 new contacts, generated 1,000+ scheduled appointments, and get this: yielded $1.3 billion in pipeline revenue.

Do these examples show you how great digital creative drives ROI? Do you wish your brand had these kind of creative ideas working for it?