Paid Search Tops List of Digital Marketing Channels for ROI Measurement

The “Marketing Budgets 2015 Report,” recently published by Econsultancy and Oracle Marketing Cloud, shows that paid search is the top digital channel for ROI measurement, beating out more than a dozen other analyzed channels.

According to the data, 52 percent of marketers consider themselves to be “good” at measuring ROI from paid search.  Approximately 44 percent of respondents said they were “good” at measuring ROI from email marketing for acquisition purposes, giving it the second spot on the list. Email marketing for engagement came in third with 39 percent of the response.

Content marketing and social media use for engagement were at the bottom of the list of digital channels. About 41 percent of marketers said they were “okay” at measuring the ROI of content marketing, and 40 percent said the same about utilizing social media for engagement and retention.

Video advertising was at the bottom of the list. Only 13 percent of respondents said they were “good” at measuring ROI from video, and 39 percent considered themselves to be “poor.”

Proving ROI Continues to Be a Marketing Challenge

This is not the first report to hone in on the challenge of demonstrating ROI. In February 2015, Webmarketing123 released its “State of Digital Marketing” report, which showed that 24 percent of B2B marketers consider proving ROI to be their largest hurdle.

This amount represents a 46 percent year-over-year increase, and the authors of the report consider ROI to be a major pain point for B2B marketers.

However, video content appeared more positively in this report, compared to the piece published by Econsultancy and Oracle Marketing Cloud. Approximately 76 percent of respondents in the State of Digital Marketing report said that video was their most widely used and most effective marketing tactic.