Thread by @darth_na

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:: ROI - You're doing it Wrong! ::

Not aimed at anyone specific,
but just been reminded of it...

1) You don't include costs
2) You don't factor in time (to implement/effect)
3) People push the %, but don't provide the "actuals"

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#SEO #Marketing

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Relative figures (grown by X%, gain by N%, return of Y%)
don't mean squat unless there is a real figure provided alongside (ideally, the initial/base figure - failing that, the final, and people can do the number crunching).

Why is it important?

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Perceptual skew.

Go from 10 to 100
Go from 100 to 500
Go from 5,000 to 6,000

Each of those is increasing at a lower %,
but the actual figure increases.

It's easy to have impressive relative figures (such as ROI), when you start with a low figure!

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It's even more impressive if you only factor the positives/gains, and fail to include negatives/costs.

So doing things such as

ROI
=
Value
x
Conversion Rate
x
Traffic ( = Search Volume / CTR)

Will typically be far better than it should,
because ...

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... because it doesn't have things like:

- Dev time x Dev cost
- Writer time x Writer cost
- Opportunity cost (doing X means you're not doing Y)
etc.

(and we're not even looking at time to implement/lead loss, fluctuations/variance in figures, inflation etc.)

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It's just another shining example of how SEO
(actually, Digital Marketing in general)
tends to take a concept,
and half bake it.

If you are going to use things like ROI,
do so properly!

Include costs
Provide an actual/hard start (or end) figure
Timeframe
Consider a range