Ultimately, the main concern for justifying spending money on marketing is all about the return on investment (ROI). The first thing to look at is the marketing budget. The recommended marketing budget should be around 4% of the revenue coming in. Typically, we find that most companies spend far below that, making it very difficult to measure ROI if there isn’t a marketing budget that is comparable to the revenue.

The second way to assess marketing ROI is by reviewing SMART objectives — Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-Bound. Comparing results to SMART objectives, that were hopefully laid out at the beginning, along with key performance indicators (KPI) will help determine if the efforts were justified.

Thirdly, analyzing lead conversion which is the process of converting a lead into an account, contact, and/or opportunity. But remember, marketing’s ultimate goal is to use various tactics to get in front of the target audience to build trust and loyalty with them. Unless you are solely utilizing online strategies such as AdWords, SEO, Pay Per Clicks (PPC), etc., it may be hard to completely quantify your marketing efforts.

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