Corporate Blogging

I know that calculating ROI of any marketing initiative can seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be. If you know a few key pieces of data, it's easy to calculate or estimate the ROI of any marketing initiative, including your corporate blogging program.

Let's start with the key pieces of data that you will need:

1. Call-to-action (CTA) clicks - The number of people clicking on the conversion points that you are offering on your blogs. For example, on this blog, it would be anyone who is clicking on our "download" or "sign-up" buttons off to the right. You can find this in your analytics.

2. CTA click to lead rate - Of those who click, how many turn into leads? This is also known as click-to-form completion. You will need to use your CRM system for the lead piece. If it is difficult to figure this out for your business blogging program specifically, you can use other marketing activities as a benchmark - i.e. your PPC campaign or website are good places to start. This is simply CTA clicks / leads.

3. Lead to close rate - For leads that come into your CRM system, how many typically turn into won business. This could be customer count, order count, etc. This is simply won business / leads.

4. Avg. deal size - What does the average customer spend with you? Most marketers generally know what this amount is.

Okay, so Part 1 is to know what data you need to collect. Part 2 is to actually get it, and Part 3 is to apply it to come up with blogging ROI. It's your turn for Part 2, and my next post will include samples with ROI calculations.