Measuring a Troublesome Campaign’s Potential ROI

While you’re struggling with a PR campaign that just won’t take hold, it’s tough to “look on the bright side.” When pulling reports and measuring current ROI shows you only bleakness and doom, it can be enough to make you shove your campaign in a closet and never peek at it again.

However, that’s not the end-all be-all of the story. Your campaign could experience a big turnaround right around the corner, and if you abandon it too soon you’ll never see the results you wanted.

So while you’re not currently experiencing success, seeing it peek around the corner could be just as exciting. Here are some signs you might be due a homerun in the future.

Keyword Prediction

You’ve spent weeks developing your SEO – writing blogs, responding to forum posts, the works – but haven’t seen a lot of traction gained yet. Instead of abandoning it, don’t you wish there was a way to predict what keywords were going to blow up soon?

In fact there are several services you can sign up with, including WordTracker, Trellian, and Hitwise, all of which attempt to predict if the keywords you’re using are going to be a trend soon. They look at past usage, current usage and whether it’s on an upward trend or not, which can help you figure out if your efforts are worth it.

Of course there’s no guarantee, but that’s part of the risk of “prediction.” However, it’s more than just guesswork, which is what you’ve been running on thus far.

Conversion Valu

Let’s say your potential customer finds your website through your social media efforts. They then take the time to go through your site and buy a product. That’s very exciting, sure…but was it worth the time you put into it? Would five sales do it? Would a hundred?

Measuring ROI (both present and future) depends a lot on what you put into the campaign and how much you could potentially get out of it. That may seem obvious, but it’s tough to imagine sometimes, especially when you’re in the “gotta do whatever it takes to succeed” mode.

For example, if you’re breaking your back to get a customer to your extremely niche product that only sells for $5, is it ever going to have a great ROI? Most likely not. If the same product is $100, though, the potential for a good payday is greater, and could be more worth your time. The same goes if the product costs $5 but the audience is very broad.

Your True Potential

Again this point is highly dependent on how well your business “could” do. Not every company is going to be Microsoft or McDonald’s. Most companies are going to be Mom & Pop Little Shop That Could – and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that!

What can land you in trouble, though, is thinking your business is McDonald’s when it’s actually the Little Shop. This means you’re putting McDonald’s effort into a Mom & Pop store, which is likely a waste of your time and money.

Make sure your PR campaign is attuned to the task at hand. If you fall into a niche, embrace it and build from there instead of attacking the entire United States of America all at once. This way you should see a ROI in real time instead of having to always predict one.

How long do you give a troublesome PR campaign before abandoning it?

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1nHDBUf