How to Measure the ROI of Your Case Studies

Calculating a return on investment (ROI) on all marketing initiatives is critical to ensuring your efforts are generating results and helping to grow your business.

Fortunately, determining marketing ROI is much easier today than it was just a few decades ago, when brands would spend exorbitantly on broadcast media advertising and on written ads in newspapers and magazines. It was challenging in those days to gather meaningful data that could identify whether ad impressions were translating to actual sales.

Fortunately, since the rise of social media and the Internet, marketers have more precise and accurate tools at their disposal for measuring the ROI of all their campaigns, from paid Google ads to lead generation emails.

Client case studies, also known as success stories, are important tools in any marketer’s Batman utility belt. Considering the investments of time, resources, and dollars that go into creating these marketing assets, it’s vital to be able to measure ROI. In this blog, we’ll discuss how to do it.

Measuring Marketing ROI

Calculating ROI for any marketing initiative or campaign is straightforward. The simple ROI formula is:

 (Sales Growth – Marketing Cost)/Marketing Cost = ROI

For example, if you spent $100 on a Google Ad, and it resulted in a $1,000 sale, your ROI would equal 900%:

 ($1,000 - $100)/$100 = 900% 

That’s a nice return!

Of course, when it comes to calculating true marketing ROI, the devil has always been in the details. Specifically, how do you attribute an individual closed sale to a specific marketing campaign or content asset?

As mentioned, the Internet has helped to improve the accuracy of tracking attribution, although it is not foolproof.

Through analytical tools like Google Analytics, or those included with various social media channels, it is feasible to track a lead all the way from first interaction to closed sale. If a prospect downloads a case study from your website, then books a discovery call online that results in a sale, you can safely attribute that sale to the case study, as it was the first and only known touchpoint.

More often, though, a prospect may follow your brand and digest your content output through a variety of means over a longer period, say several months or even years.

For example, a prospect within your target market may listen to a podcast that featured your CEO as a guest. That may spur them to begin following your company’s LinkedIn page. Over the course of several months, they may like, share, or comment on some of your posts. At some point, they may click on a post promoting your latest client success story, which takes them to a landing page on your website. They enter their contact information to download the case study, and now they’re on your newsletter email list. Eventually, they book a discovery call, are categorized as a qualified sales lead, and finally convert to a new client.

On average, it takes 6-10 touchpoints before a client makes a single purchase, so this is a very common scenario, especially for high-value products and services.

5 Steps to Capturing ROI Through Indirect Attribution

When your prospect engages with your brand across multiple touchpoints, it is very difficult to directly attribute a sale to a single marketing campaign or asset. In these cases, there are indirect approaches you can use to determine the value of a content asset like a case study. Here are five steps to calculating the ROI of your case study through indirect means:

• Define Your Goals: Begin by setting clear objectives for your success story project. What specific outcomes are you hoping to achieve? Case studies can help you achieve a number of marketing and business goals, from generating an increase in qualified leads and achieving higher conversion rates, to elevating brand awareness. Before you can determine the success of your project, you need to ensure you have defined objectives that align with your overarching business goals.

• Track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): In marketing, KPIs are where the rubber meets the road. Once you’ve defined your objectives, you must track the right metrics to assess performance against these goals. Common marketing KPIs include conversion rates, lead quality, and website traffic, as well as social media engagement metrics like views, shares, likes, and comments. Overall sales growth is another key metric that is often overlooked.

Make sure you have the right tracking tools at your disposal, such as Google Analytics, CRM systems, and social media analytics.

• Analyze Pre- and Post-Publication Data: It’s important to establish a baseline for all key metrics before you publish, to minimize the influence of bias and variability in your data. Compare key metrics before and after the case study is published, and then use attribution models to understand the impact of the case study on various stages of the customer journey.

• Calculate the Financial Impact: Based on the type of attribution model you use (e.g., first-touch, last-touch, linear, or time decay attribution), you can determine the unique financial impact of your case study.

First, link any increase in sales and associated revenue growth to the case study. Then, consider the costs involved in writing, publishing, and distributing the case study. This is fairly straightforward if you outsource the work to a contract writer, graphic designer, or marketing/PR firm. But don’t forget to include the “soft costs” associated with your own time spent on the project, if you decide to do it in house.

• Gather Qualitative Feedback: Lastly, don’t discount the benefits your success story project provides, beyond hard dollars and cents. Make sure to reach out to the clients featured in the case study to thank them for their time, collect their feedback on the process, and ask whether the project helped them consider your relationship in a different light.

Also, be sure to monitor all online comments, shares, and discussions to gauge audience reception and long-term growth in brand awareness. This is all invaluable feedback that will help you refine your marketing approach going forward.

Measuring ROI is an important piece of the puzzle in determining whether or not any marketing campaign is a success. Since client case studies are best used as a critical component of an integrated content marketing strategy, the indirect attribution approach will generally be most effective. Make sure to establish clear goals and benchmarks for your success story campaigns, track your KPIs, and focus on continuous monitoring and improvement over time.