Maximizing ROI: Creating Cost-Effective Marketing Campaigns for Ecommerce

16 min read

As a business owner, any opportunity to cut costs and gain online exposure is a golden ticket to growth in an already saturated market.

Cost can be a significant deterrent for all businesses, from small shops just getting started to veteran sellers who have been in the game for years. The trick is to find creative ways to launch campaigns that convert without costing a pretty penny.

In this post, we’ll share the secrets to maximizing ROI while minimizing costs, allowing brands (at any stage) to grow their business, attract new customers, and compete in new markets. Let’s jump in!

What Is ROI?

Return on investment, or ROI, is a measurement used to determine how profitable an investment has been for a business when compared to the investment’s cost.

ROI is important for businesses because it’s a simple way to determine the profitability of certain investments and provides accurate insight to make adjustments as needed.

From email campaigns to influencer partnerships, there are so many moving parts when it comes to your digital marketing strategy. Knowing what works and what doesn’t is vital to your success.

As an ecommerce business, if an investment or strategy isn’t serving your bottom line, the sooner you know, the better. For example, why waste money on an SMS campaign that isn’t converting when you could invest more into influencer collaborations that have a higher profitability? Follow the money, always!

How to Calculate ROI?

Calculating ROI can be done with a simple ROI formula, which is as follows:

ROI = Net Return on Investment / Cost of Investment x 100

Depending on your business model and goals, there are a few other ways to calculate ROI. You can also use ROI calculators online.

In advertising and marketing, measuring ROI is vital to justify tweaking budgets — not just deciding whether to lower or raise them, but also figuring out where to put your money.

One common way to calculate ROI for marketing campaigns is to subtract organic sales growth and marketing costs from revenue growth and then divide it all by the marketing costs.

However, different campaigns might need different strategies. Given this context, it’s unsurprising that more than a quarter of global marketers mentioned that measuring ROI was one of the challenges for a data-driven marketing strategy.

What Is a Good ROI?

To tackle this question, it’s important to remember that what’s considered “good” can vary depending on a business. Also, keep in mind that the specific industry and market conditions can play a role in how profitable a company is.

According to Statista, in 2023, the median profit-based return on investment for successful advertising campaigns worldwide hit $2.43. This means that, on average, global advertisers made $2.43 for every dollar they put into those strategies.

Median revenue-based ROI of successful advertising campaigns worldwide 2017-2023 (Source: Statista)

Why Is a Return on Investment Important?

The value of understanding ROI and its impact on your business is critical for a few reasons. Let’s discuss the most significant ones here.

Financial Insight

Knowing the ROI of marketing campaigns helps ecommerce shops make sound financial decisions that can have a positive impact on their bottom line.

When you know your ROI on a campaign, you can make an informed decision on whether you should continue pursuing that particular channel or try something else.

Performance Measurement

With valuable ROI metrics, it becomes simple to measure the success of marketing campaigns, initiatives, and special projects. With an accurate picture of how campaigns performed, ecommerce shops can pivot, change course, or keep moving forward with what’s working.

Resource Allocation

Once your ROI analysis is complete, allocating resources to effective channels and strategies becomes simple and streamlined. Knowledge is power, and for ecommerce shops, this metric can be the difference in huge sales, brand awareness, and your bottom line.

Step-by-Step Guide to Maximizing ROI

Wondering how you can maximize your ecommerce shop’s efforts and ROI? Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started.

Step 1

Fail to plan, plan to fail… which genius came up with this quote? We aren’t sure, but it’s likely to have been a marketer! Setting clear goals and KPIs for your marketing campaigns is a critical first step to maximizing ROI and efforts every step of the way.

These will help to assess the effectiveness of your efforts, identify issues, determine which tactics were successful, and how you can improve.

Step 2

Tracking your expenses and the revenue generated from campaigns is the foundation of what a return on investment is. Keep track of every dime spent on campaigns, from ad budget to graphic designers, flyers, website fees, email platforms, and anything else related to your campaigns.

If you’re using Ecwid for your online store, you can check out the built-in Marketing reports. They give you a quick look at where your orders are coming from — whether it’s a Google ad, a Facebook post, or an email campaign.

The Marketing reports also show the revenue generated from each channel, which can help you calculate the ROI of your marketing campaigns.

Ecwid’s Marketing reports provide you with an easy-to-understand overview of your sales sources

Ecwid’s Marketing reports are based on data collected with the help of UTM tags. Learn all about using them and making the most of the Marketing reports in this article:

Step 3

Curious how far your efforts have gone once a campaign has been completed? This is where using ROI formulas is necessary to calculate the effectiveness of your campaigns. Break each ROI analysis down by channel to see your results and efforts accurately.

For example, track your spending and earnings on an SMS campaign and compare it to how email, Facebook ads, or TikTok sponsored posts have performed. This data will paint an accurate picture of which channel offers the most cost-effective marketing for your brand.

Step 4

Once you have this new data, it’s time to tweak and adjust your strategies and efforts. If your goal is business growth, new customers, and more sales, an ROI analysis will tell you everything you need to know.

For example, if your Facebook ads have a significantly lower ROI than other ad campaigns, it may be time to reevaluate your Facebook advertising strategy. You may need to target a different audience or adjust your ad creative and messaging.

Remember that figuring out ROI isn’t just about pinpointing successful campaigns but also about analyzing why some efforts might not give the expected results. This insight can steer future decisions and investments, shaping a stronger marketing strategy.

Cost-Effective Marketing Strategies to Maximize ROI

Not sure where to start? We’ve got you! Here are the most cost-effective marketing strategies for small business owners to get started.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is truly one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. According to different studies, it usually returns about $36 to $40 for every dollar invested; Omnisend even claims ROI of up to $72 for each dollar spent!

In 2023, about 52% of marketing pros saw a twofold increase in ROI from their email campaigns (Source: Statista)

To create an impressively high ROI with email, run targeted email campaigns that segment audiences based on demographics, interests, and shopping behaviors. Personalized emails are more likely to resonate with recipients and drive conversions.

For example, segment your email list based on purchase history. Send specific product recommendations to those who have bought similar items in the past.

If you sell online with Ecwid, you can use its integration with Mailchimp to run personalized email campaigns. For example, you can email customers who bought a specific product more than three times and offer them a subscription for that product.

Another handy tool Ecwid sellers can use is the Customers dashboard. For each customer, there’s a details page where you can check out stats like the number of orders they’ve made, the average order value, and the total revenue per customer.

Using this information, you can segment and export customers to send personalized campaigns via the email platform of your choice.

Viewing a customer’s past orders can help create more personalized offers

SEO Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website to attract organic (free) traffic from search engines like Google or Bing. This way, you’ll increase visibility and drive long-term organic traffic, turning leads into customers without breaking the bank.

SEO is one of the cheapest ways to promote your business since it doesn’t require paid advertising like Facebook or Google Ads. However, it does take a bit longer to see the results compared to some other methods.

Here are a few key factors to keep in mind when optimizing your website for SEO:

Use relevant keywords: Make sure to use keywords that accurately describe your product or service throughout your website’s content, meta descriptions, and image alt tags.
Provide high-quality content: Search engines prioritize websites with valuable, informative, and well-written content. This not only helps with SEO but also creates a positive user experience for visitors.
Optimize your website’s loading speed: A slow-loading website can negatively impact both SEO rankings and user experience.
Use backlinks: Backlinks from reputable sources can help boost your website’s authority and credibility, thus improving its SEO ranking.
Ensure mobile-friendly design: With the majority of internet users now accessing websites on their mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly design is crucial for SEO and user experience.
Register a custom domain name: Having a unique and memorable domain name can help with brand recognition, trustworthiness, and SEO.
Collect product reviews from customers: Reviews not only provide valuable feedback for your business, but they also serve as user-generated content that can improve SEO rankings.

If you use Ecwid as your ecommerce platform, there are many ways to optimize your Ecwid store for search engines. That includes:

customizing product and category URLs
creating 301 redirects
buying a custom domain name
publishing product reviews
adding meta tags and alt texts to products and categories
and more! See the full list in the Ecwid Help Center.

Search engines favor concise and descriptive product URLs

Social Media Marketing

Social media continues to be a powerhouse marketing tool for brands big and small. Use social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube to leverage organic reach through engaging content, building communities, and influencer collaborations as you grow.

A September 2023 survey among global B2B and B2C marketers found that 29% cited Facebook as the top social media platform for ROI, followed by Instagram. YouTube ranked third at 26%, with TikTok following at 24%.

Facebook is the social media platform with the highest ROI (Source: Statista)

Follow your target audience by existing on their preferred channels. This will allow you to interact with them on their terms, building trust and credibility.

If you encounter a creative block while crafting content for your business on social media, here are some helpful cheat sheets:

Content Marketing

The written word isn’t going anywhere — content marketing is making sure of that! Through valuable content, you can build impressive brand authority without investing huge sums of money and create trust with your target audience.

This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, eBooks, tutorials, and more. Drive organic traffic to your website and ecommerce shop, where potential customers will be more inclined to shop on your site and get to know your brand.

For more ideas on what content to create, listen to our podcast:

Ecommerce Content 101: Easy Types of Content to Make for Your Business

Direct Mail

If you’re surprised to see direct mail, you’re not alone. Many businesses overlook this traditional marketing tactic, but actually, according to a US survey of marketers, direct mail ROI outperformed other channels by an average of 161% in 2023!

ROI of advertising campaigns in selected media in the United States in 2023 (Source: Statista)

With digital ads everywhere these days, business owners need to get creative with marketing, and direct mail can be an inexpensive way to do that. To learn more about direct mail strategies you can implement, check out our podcast about good old direct mail marketing:

Why Direct Mail Is Far From Dead–and How You Can Use It in Your Marketing

PPC Advertising

This one is tricky because it involves spending more money than other marketing strategies. However, it doesn’t mean that PPC advertising can’t be cost-effective.

Here are some ways to make your ads more cost-effective:

Target specific demographics to reach a highly qualified audience actively searching for your products or services. Simply put, don’t waste your budget on people who are not interested in what you have to offer.
Use A/B testing to determine which ad copy and images perform better, and then allocate your budget to the most effective ads.
Use retargeting to reach potential customers who have already shown interest in your brand or products, increasing the chances of conversion.
Set daily budgets and track conversions for precise control over your marketing budget
Control which networks and platforms your ads run on – no need to advertise on a platform your target audience rarely engages with.

To learn more about lowering your ad costs, check out the article below:

Final Thoughts on Maximizing ROI

Running a business online is no easy feat — it takes grit, dedication, passion, and a certain amount of marketing chops that many business owners hone as they go. Take note of the strategies above to make this process easier. This way, you’ll be able to spend less and ultimately grow your brand.

Ready to start selling? Join the Ecwid platform today and enjoy many powerful marketing tools at your fingertips, including email, ads, SEO, beautiful website templates, and much more.

Ecwid is your partner in navigating through the waters of ecommerce, helping you to maximize ROI and experience massive growth. What are you waiting for? Sign up for Ecwid today!

Sell online

With Ecwid Ecommerce, you can easily sell anywhere, to anyone — across the internet and around the world.

Get started

Marketing and Promotion

Aug 14, 2024

About the author

Anastasia Prokofieva is a content writer at Ecwid. She writes about online marketing and promotion to make entrepreneurs’ daily routine easier and more rewarding. She also has a soft spot for cats, chocolate, and making kombucha at home.