21 - Work out your ROI's from 2016

Welcome to our 2016 Advent Calendar! We are sharing a marketing tip or trick every day until Christmas. To make sure you receive these updates, don't forget to register here. Happy Christmas!

Moving into the new year, it's important to set a number of goals to better your previous year. The ultimate goal year-on-year should be growth of some form - but where are you now and where would you like to be?

In order to work this out, you'll need your monthly or annual ROI figures, based on your KPIs. Calculating your return on investment can be a long process but it's extremely worthwhile. Not good with numbers or analytics? Outsource the leg work!

Return on investment is usually shown as a percentage and gives you a picture of your profitability or efficiency of different investments. A percentage compared against a benchmark can help you to identify any investments not working as you'd like and investments worth scaling up. Advertising budget and associated return is one metric we obsess over optimising for clients with social media advertising such as Facebook ads! Once you have your KPIs and 2016 ROI figures you'll be in a better place to plan for your 2017 marketing.

Top tip: Understanding your figures is critical

If you've outsourced your marketing ROI calculation you'll want to know what all the results mean. Take the time to go through the numbers with the person who calculated them to gain understanding of exactly what they mean for you. Compare your numbers to benchmarks in the industry to find out where you are and what you should be aiming for - this will help in your 2017 goal setting.

That's all for today. Stay tuned for more tips and tricks from our free advent calendar.