How Smart Marketers are Turning Up the Dial on their Marketing ROI

A Case Study

The Background

For a business owner, where and when to invest development funds is a crucial decision. When companies come to us for marketing and business solutions, they are often still deciding how to allocate their budget. They may be considering questions like, “Do I need to replace my old website?”, “Would a new website be worth the investment?”, “Should I invest in digital marketing?”, and “Are results from digital ads worth the spend?”.

As a data scientist, whenever I’m facing a major decision, I seek out the numbers to guide me towards the best solution. I rely on data, trends, and statistics as solid facts upon which to base my decision. Coming from this perspective, I have prepared a case study that I hope will be useful to anyone stuck in the decision phase of whether a new website and digital marketing is worth the investment.

The Sample

In our business, as in many others, referrals are a common source of new business. Happy clients tell others in their circle about the great results they are getting. This means we often have multiple clients within the same industry, which works out well for this case study, as it allows us to examine and compare a sample of similar businesses.

For this analysis, I identified a sample of clients within the same industry, whose businesses operate in different states across the United States and whose websites and marketing campaigns launched around the same time period. Because of these parallels, they offer a wonderful tool for drawing insights on the overall performance of the campaigns we ran.

Fast Facts

• 1 industry
• 4 companies
• 4 cities in 4 states – ranging in size from a major metropolitan center to a city of fewer than 10,000 people
• Services:
  • New, performance-designed website
  • Digital advertising campaign – search ads, display ads, retargeting ads, content marketing
• Timeframe: 7 months in 2018

The Results (Huge Growth!)

One measure that could be used to determine success is total traffic to the site. In this case, we drove significantly more traffic to our clients’ websites over the study period. Comparing traffic from before the website and marketing launch to after, clients saw an average increase in monthly traffic of 73.9% after launch. Doubling the number of visitors to your website each month means twice as many brand impressions, twice as many prospects, and twice as many opportunities to make a sale.

While we could all celebrate a win with more traffic, the quality of that traffic is what really matters. Are new visitors contributing to sales? It is important that the visitors we are driving to our clients’ sites are finding the enclosed content to be relevant to their original quest for information or a solution. It’s also important that these website visitors are likely to contact the business, either by submitting a form, by calling, or by engaging in a live chat. To assess the quality of the new traffic, we looked to website conversion rates, which measure the proportion of web visitors who convert into leads. For the sites in our study, conversion rates increased by over 400% after implementing the new websites and marketing campaigns, indicating that new visitors were interested, engaged, and converting into leads.

The Takeaway

When and where to invest resources internally is always a tough question for business owners. I hope that this case study provides insight into the results that are possible with a performance-designed website coupled with strategic digital advertising. While the businesses included in this study certainly benefited from a new website, each business has unique needs. Your website may have most of what it needs to perform. However, it may still benefit from implementing technical upgrades, speed optimizations, or fresh content. A better understanding starts with an assessment of your goals and your current state. If you’re interested in getting a clearer view of how well your website is performing, initial consultations are always free, confidential, and without pressure.

Courtney Turrin is VP of Data Science at Xponent21. Our company provides digital and business solutions that help our clients delight customers, drive revenue, and increase operational efficiency. To learn more about our services, reach out to us.