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How to achieve a marketing ROI

Updated: Oct 21

How to achieve a marketing ROI in today's digital marketing world?


Let's start where most companies start, at the beginning. Typically here is what we find:

There's a huge gap between what the website has as traffic and what it could get.


Get Marketing ROI

Whilst it may appear like the marketing equivalent of espionage, you can easily research two/three things:

  1. What your competitors are getting in terms of web traffic?

  2. What keywords they are targeting?

    Want to Know how?



How do you ascertain the potential traffic you could get?


When you research the competition you can find out how many keywords they are targeting?

But more importantly what search intent that those keywords relate to.


Keyword Intent what is it?


There are four types of keyword intent categories


Pull in the keywords your competition go after

Keywords typically fall into four main intent categories:


1. Informational Intent


Purpose: The searcher is looking for knowledge or answers, not to buy something (yet).

Examples:

  • "What is fractional CMO?"

  • "Best time to post on LinkedIn"

  • "How does Google Ads work?"

Content to Create:

  • Blog posts

  • How-to guides

  • Explainer videos

  • Infographics

  • FAQs

Goal: Build awareness, educate the audience, and become a trusted resource.


2. Navigational Intent


Purpose: The searcher wants to find a specific website or brand.

Examples:

  • "HubSpot login"

  • "Communications Edge website"

  • "Nike online store"

Content to Create:

  • Optimized homepage & key pages

  • Branded landing pages

  • Social profiles & business listings

Goal: Ensure users find your official pages quickly and easily.


3. Commercial Investigation (a.k.a. Consideration) Intent


Purpose: The searcher is evaluating options before making a purchase.

Examples:

  • "Best CRM for small businesses"

  • "Fractional CMO vs marketing agency"

  • "Top project management tools 2025"

Content to Create:

  • Comparison guides

  • Case studies

  • Reviews & testimonials

  • Product feature pages

Goal: Help prospects compare solutions so you stay in their shortlist.


4. Transactional Intent


Purpose: The searcher is ready to buy, sign up, or take action.

Examples:

  • "Buy Nike Air Max online"

  • "Book free marketing audit"

  • "Subscribe to HubSpot Starter Plan"

Content to Create:

  • Product pages

  • Pricing pages

  • Free trial landing pages

  • Strong calls-to-action (CTAs)

Goal: Make conversion as easy and compelling as possible.



How Can I get hold of all the relevant keywords for my companies products and services?


There is a simple tool called SERanking- that enables you to research your competitors and import their keywords to "your project"

Once you import them, we'll show you how in a short video below then:


  1. We group them into topic areas so you can see how you rank for a group of products / services.

  2. We also like to then create sub groups for Top of Funnel Informational keywords - where people are researching.

  3. Then a secondary subgroup for Commercial Keywords where someone is considering alternatives "top 5 suppliers of """"""" "

  4. Then a final group for transactional keywords "Buy this" or "discounts on"


What you then find is you can organise three things better:

  1. Your research becomes more ordered

  2. Your planning easier - which keywords are easier to rank on

Your progress - how are we doing? Where are we weak?


SERanking will then start to recommend keywords that have traffic, you may want to consider.

However, at the end of say a days work you can have:

  • A plan what should we target?

  • A priority list - easiest to rank for the most volume

  • A Potential traffic idea- simply add the volume for the total keywords - (export then to excel and sum the column)

  • However SERanking will give you a traffic share and as you know your search volume you can work out the potential easily.


How to ascertain your sensible resources and timescales?


Broadly most SME/Medium sized businesses usually have less than 1% traffic share (visibility) and can work out the degree of difficulty to rank for each keyword. how i hear you ask?


In SERanking against each keyword you have:

  • The competitive pressure on the keyword 1 is intense 0.1 easy

  • The search volume for that keyword

  • The number of articles in Google that rank for that keyword.


We would advocate 12 months as a timescale to get 30%-70% of your keywords ranking in the top 10.

That's a pretty big range, however it allows for how much resource you want to throw at it, the degree of difficulty in ranking and where your starting from.


What resources will we need?


3 Years ago the answer would have been very different because:


  1. ChatGPT didn't exist and whilst we strong advocate against using it for content it is superb for planning content and briefing in content outlines.

  2. As such what would have been a months work to plan a campaign, you can now achieve in 2 days.

  3. Because you can produce content faster, we'd argue 15-30X faster, you need less resource.

  4. Because that resource can be briefed properly easily, you can have young marketing interns for 50% of what it would cost for an experienced marketing executive.

  5. Secondly, if you were thinking of an agency that marketing executive would be charged out with a minimum of a 60% margin, sometimes 90%.

  6. We would advocate 2/3 Young interns and a fractional CMO for a year.

  7. The CMO will start at 2/3 days a week and in 6 months be 1 day a week.

  8. Plan on no more than 40% of the cost of an agency.

  9. You'll move 10 times faster

You will increase content output, high quality content by 15X minimum (versus's an agency)


Resources clearly depend on

  • size of the task - how far behind you are.

  • Competition - is it hard to rank for the term.

  • building a wall - if you simply want to get share or take a sustainable advantage.

  • budget - interns can be added as funds grow with growth.

  • Learning - CMO training and coaching will be required but will tail off after a year.

  • Leadership maturity - some leaders think they are marketeers and meddle - getting the balance of design, content & customer journey wrong.

  • Planning - it takes longer if planning isn't thorough.

  • You also need to consider how sophisticated the pipeline nurturing needs to be. Suspect to Prospect pipeline management.

  • How much support the sales team need in what we call trade marketing, helping sales close. ie Prospect to close.


How do I measure the team?


Your fractional CMO will recommend 4 tools 3 of which are free which are all cloud based, so you can see real time numbers, insights and progress.

We'd advocate:

  • SERanking - for keyword & competitor research but also progress reporting on how you are ranking. the tool can also help you content score so that your content beats all the competition.

  • Google Lighthouse - is a must for technically delivering content to Google or Search engines in under 3 seconds. You need to do that for both desktop & mobile devices.

  • Google Analytics - is a must for tracking channels, traffic volumes and page performance.

  • Google Search Console - enables you to push content into Google to rank in under a second as well as a host of other elements.

  • Once you have these tools you can see their progress in a click, the quality and momentum will be clear.

  • These tools measure the creation of suspect customers through to marketing qualified lead.(MQL)

  • You will need a decent CRM to track MQL's and nurture them

  • We recommend HubSpot - however there are many.

  • As long as they can track enquiries, manage a pipeline, integrate with websites you are fine.



What is the cost of these tools?


  • SERanking £12 per intern for the basic level

  • All the Google products are free

  • Technically you can set up all three in a couple of hours and plan inside 2 days

  • Pipeline tools usually cost depending on the modules you want to take, the seats required for marketers and sales team.

Marketing ROI

You can establish marketing ROI easily as long as you have the above tools.

What to measure to get marketing ROI?

For us the classic is what is the Cost to Acquire a customer - All sales & marketing divided by the number of customers.

Pure marketing return simply look at marketing costs v pipeline converted.

This clearly needs your pipeline to convert.

Depending on your ambition their will always be an investment phase before you start to get a return.


Investment phases how long are they?


Typically depending on how far behind you are 6-12 months.

Interns take a year to grow and 1-2 years more to mature into weapons.

If your competition are engineering companies with little marketing nowse nearer 6 months investment phase.

If you coming into a massively competitive market, for example Meta virtual reality headsets 1-2 years.


Top 10 FAQs: How to Achieve a Marketing ROI


  1. What does marketing ROI actually measure?

    Marketing ROI measures the return on investment generated from marketing activities by comparing revenue gained to the total marketing spend.


  2. Why is ROI so important for marketing teams?

    ROI demonstrates whether marketing spend is generating measurable business outcomes. It helps justify budgets, improve decision-making, and align marketing with company growth goals.


  3. How can SMEs calculate their marketing ROI accurately?

    Use the formula: (Revenue from Marketing − Marketing Cost) ÷ Marketing Cost × 100. For accuracy, track leads, opportunities, and closed revenue using CRM and analytics tools like HubSpot and GA4.


  4. Which marketing metrics contribute to ROI measurement?

    Key metrics include Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), Conversion Rate, Pipeline Value, and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).


  5. How does marketing attribution improve ROI accuracy?

    Attribution models (first-click, last-click, data-driven) reveal which channels and campaigns truly drive revenue, allowing teams to optimise budgets around high-performing touchpoints.


  6. What tools help track and report marketing ROI effectively?

    Use GA4 for web analytics, HubSpot for lead tracking, and Looker Studio or Databox for real-time ROI dashboards that tie marketing actions to revenue.


  7. How can content marketing improve ROI?

    High-quality content attracts organic traffic, nurtures leads, and reduces paid media dependence, delivering compound ROI over time through sustained engagement.


  8. Why do many businesses struggle to achieve positive ROI from marketing?Common issues include unclear goals, lack of tracking infrastructure, weak alignment between sales and marketing, and focusing on vanity metrics instead of commercial KPIs.


  9. What steps can marketers take to increase ROI quickly?Focus on high-intent channels (SEO, PPC, email automation), tighten targeting, optimise landing pages, and cut spend on underperforming campaigns.


  10. How should ROI be reported to the board or leadership team?Use visual dashboards showing cost per lead, pipeline created, deal conversion, and ROI trend lines — supported by commentary that links marketing performance to revenue outcomes.

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