ROI (Return on Investment)

What Is ROI?

ROI, short for Return on Investment, measures the value a marketing effort generates relative to what it cost to produce and run. In content marketing, this can mean revenue attributed to a campaign, but it can also mean pipeline influenced, cost saved through organic traffic versus paid, or time saved through reusable assets. ROI is the number that turns “we made good content” into “the content worked.”

ROI = [(Generated Revenue/Value – Cost) / Cost] x 100

Why Is ROI Important?

Every marketing budget eventually answers to a finance conversation, and ROI is the language that conversation happens in. Cybersecurity buyers are risk-averse and data-driven by trade, and internal stakeholders often are too. Being able to show that a content investment produced measurable pipeline, not just impressions, is what keeps a content program funded past its first year.

Can You Use ROI In A Sentence, Please?

“The blog looked great in the recap deck, but leadership wanted the ROI, so we tied it to the six deals it actually touched.”

See Also: Key Performance Indicator (KPI), Conversion Rate, Data-Driven Content