To track the value of their marketing efforts, your clients can probably tell you their ROI. But do they know what the industry average is? You can help them benchmark their data by sharing the results of the latest CMO Survey from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, the AMA and Deloitte.

ROI Trends

In the past six months, the average business experienced a 3.7% increase on marketing ROI when compared to the previous six-​month period. This figure is slightly lower than the average revenue increase of 4.5 percent. The associated revenue increase for the previous six-​month period was 4.7 percent.

By business type, marketing ROI breaks out as 

• B2B product 2.6%
• B2B services 4.3%
• B2C product 3.0%
• B2C services 5.5%

Businesses expect their marketing efforts to drive customer acquisition. In the past six months, the overall growth in customer acquisition was 3.8 percent. Businesses also experienced a 3.8% growth in customer retention.

The Power of Paid Search

In our earlier post on the CMO Survey, we reported that social media spending had tumbled. However, businesses continue to invest in paid digital media. Spending breaks out across the most popular formats as follows:

• Paid Search 27.7%
• Paid Display (including programmatic) 16.4%
• Paid Other 31.4%
• Paid Social 14%
• Paid Video 7.2%

Analysts noticed that significant differences in this spending category correlate to business vertical. For example, companies with higher percentages of internet sales also spend higher percentages of their digital marketing budget on Paid Display.

Mobile is the Future

Marketers continue to shift spending into mobile channels as well. At least 11.2% of the marketing budget goes to mobile. In five years, marketers anticipate that amount climbing to nineteen percent. On a scale of 1 to 7, B2C services companies value mobile initiatives the most: at 4.0. Similarly, companies that sell the most online also rate the value of mobile at 4.0. By vertical, educational marketers give mobile a rating of 5.7, while banking and finance businesses rank it at 2.1.

Help your clients understand how their digital marketing efforts stand up against other businesses by running a competitive analysis using the Digital Audit tool available from AdMall by SalesFuel. With this information, you’ll be able to help them improve their advertising outcomes.