Projecting your marketing ROI before launching a campaign or other marketing initiative forces you to think through the costs of all campaign elements and the net results they’ll produce – the number of customers, total revenue and profit generated.

Projecting your return on investment is never 100% accurate, and sometimes very difficult, but simply conducting the exercise enables you to understand the key components of the campaign and the targets you need to hit.

The more often you project campaign ROI, the better you’ll get at it.

If you project your ROI BEFORE running your campaign, then measuring your actual ROI after the campaign completion isn’t difficult. Simply track down the actual numbers for each line item, add any additional costs, and see how well you performed.

It’s not uncommon to have large variances between your projected ROI and actual ROI. To reduce this over time, research the key areas that created the variance and seek to understand what caused them.

This understanding will improve your future ROI projections.