Organic Processing Vo1.8 #5 - September/October 2011

No Metrics to Gauge ROI Leads to Small Budgets

One very surprising result was how many organic and
natural companies fail to measure their marketing’s ROI
Setting up the analyt-
ics and tracking ROI can
seem complex, which is
probably why larger com-
panies are more likely to
track marketing ROI
than smaller ones. Some
formulas not only look at
gross profit from a single
campaign, but also calcu-
late the “consumer lifetime value,” or the measure of profit
that would be generated by a consumer over the lifetime
with your company. It gets even more challenging when you
have many marketing efforts going on at once. All in all,
there are many metrics—from consumer interest and brand

Figure 3: Method for quantifying brand awareness (percent)

awareness to sales figures—that can be taken into consideration when calculating ROI. Explaining these could fill up an entire article by itself, and there are software programs and professionals who can help organize these metrics into something easier to navigate.

While measuring ROI can be complex, it doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking— start small, but start. Conduct a comparative test between similar stores with consistent sales patterns that are willing to share sales data. Launch a marketing campaign in one store and do nothing different in the other store. Be sure to keep tabs on all additional expenses used for the campaign. Or test out how well different messages are received via web marketing that drives consumers to purchase products online, a process that is much easier to track.