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Irrelevant of any channel or medium, advertising is an investment that involves a certain risk. Any time you risk your money, a loss is very much an option. That’s just the nature of the business, and with ROI being the crucial metric for success, things get tough.

What’s more, there are several myths and fables about guaranteeing ROI that make it even harder to succeed. You are reading this post because the results aren’t satisfying for you and you’re wondering if you’re making a mistake or two along the way. Let’s see, shall we?

1. “We Guarantee Positive ROI”

Right off the bat – that is one of the reddest flags to watch out for. Think about it: if it were true, we all would be rolling around in cash, sipping expensive champagne from our platinum-covered cups, and driving Lamborghinis. Ensuring ROI is difficult enough for marketers without being led into false promises. That’s the difference between the good and bad platforms. Those that truly understand how ROI works will add value to your efforts by bringing valuable knowledge and expertise you don’t have to the table.

For instance, our self-service platform SelfAdvertiser offers an innovative feature called Optimizer that is designed to help users attain positive ROI through various optimization techniques. In addition, there’s a dedicated expert support team available for further help, if necessary.

2. It’s All About The Money

Here’s an all too familiar scenario. You create a campaign that results in a decent ROI on a frequent basis. Naturally, you can start pumping up more money in order to raise your revenue through the roof. Yet, the ongoing return on investment is far below what you expected, even with all that additional money. In that scenario, you’re set fairly good as at least you’re seeing some ROI at first.

What about those who think that more money creates positive ROI? You all want more and rightfully so, only the trouble isn’t solved by increasing your budget. It’s about focusing on what makes the campaigns run, be it the proper ad type, audience targeting, good CTA, focusing on USP, and so on. Depending on the main purpose of your campaign, these practices will get you where you want, not just money.

3. More Traffic Means More Money

More often than not, there’s a reasoning that more traffic automatically equals more leads and thus, sales. The argument that traffic quantity breeds guaranteed or higher ROI indeed holds a grain of truth to it. However, it definitely doesn’t translate instantly to more money because that’s not how paid advertising works.

The goal is to make the most conversions by thoroughly understanding your audience, target them through various available segments, and ultimately drive quality traffic to your website for sales. The keyword being quality, as driving lesser volumes of highly targeted traffic will yield higher ROI levels than driving more traffic in terms of volume but less in terms of targeted traffic.

4. There’s No Need to Measure ROI (It’s Guaranteed, After All)

Running a campaign without any means to measure which impressions are converting into sales almost universally means you’re wasting money on low-quality traffic. More clicks aren’t better by default. Tracking the conversions that manage their way inside the sales funnel from an ad click and transform into a buyer can do wonders for your ROI effort. It can show you what ads are doing well, which campaigns could use a boost for maximum performance, which ads or keywords don’t work, and so on.

Granted, measuring ROI isn’t always simple (60% of small business entrepreneurs have trouble with it in some form), but there are more than enough tools to make the process easier. Ignoring the math behind the return on investment can be a disastrous mistake. That’s the real guarantee here.

5. There’s Only One Game in Town

And it’s usually Google AdWords. Far from it. This is not an ad network vs. ad exchange battle where there can be only one. There are numerous platforms you can use to raise brand awareness or up your sales. Putting all your eggs in one basket effectively limits your ability to branch out and scale.

Apart from the usual suspects, some platforms could be more suited to your needs than others, especially if you have a very targeted audience. Get a peek at your metrics and explore other options like Bing, LinkedIn, SelfAdvertiser and others, who offer high-quality traffic with a number of targeting options through a medium-sized publisher network.

6. “No Strategy Needed, We Got You Covered!”

Without a proper strategy that aligns with your business objectives, you can buy traffic all you want, it won’t matter. It’s like throwing wet paper towels at the wall and hoping some will stick. A strong strategy allows you to set your product from the rest, focus on your USP, segment your audience to a number of groups, define your KPIs (including the “guaranteed” ROI), and execute accordingly. Otherwise, you’ll most likely spend your hard-earned money on campaigns that won’t resonate with your audience and target market.

7. You’re All Set, Sit Back and Enjoy Your Guaranteed ROI

If anything, ROI is based on properly informed judgment and too many factors are at play to meet your goals. According to one research, only 39% of marketers manage to achieve or exceed initial expectations. True marketers know that making ROI projections needs to be based on existing and ongoing data. With necessary relevant data in place, they can develop metrics that analyze and evaluate the overall impact of the campaign, leading it to success. And that’s far away from any actual promise or guarantee.

Source: Social Media Examiner

Busted!

When speaking about ROI-related myths and promises, accompanied by the dangers they represent, you get a feeling it almost sounds logical. Understanding the difficulty of proving ROI is one thing, but these stories of a guaranteed ROI take the difficulty to a whole another level, like fighting the end boss in old games. Only this time, posts like these will be your cheat codes and hack to avoid getting beat. Good luck and remember to stay clear of any ROI promises.