Marketing ROI Calculator. See where your budget is working and where the opportunities are.

How to calculate marketing ROI the right way

Most marketing teams calculate ROI wrong. They measure spend vs. leads. But the real question is: how much pipeline and revenue did each dollar produce?

The formula

Marketing ROI = (Revenue attributed to marketing - Marketing cost) / Marketing cost x 100

Simple, but the hard part is attribution. Here's how to do it honestly:

Step 1: Define your attribution model

• First-touch: Credit goes to the channel that first brought the lead. Good for measuring awareness.
• Last-touch: Credit goes to the last interaction before conversion. Good for measuring closing power.
• Multi-touch: Credit is distributed across all touchpoints. Most accurate, hardest to implement.

Step 2: Track by channel

For each channel (paid, organic, email, events, outbound), track: spend, leads generated, MQLs, SQLs, opportunities, closed deals, revenue.

Step 3: Calculate CAC by channel

CAC = Total channel spend / Number of customers acquired from that channel

If your paid ads cost $10K/month and bring 5 customers, your paid CAC is $2,000. If organic brings 8 customers at $3K/month total cost, organic CAC is $375. Now you know where to invest.

Step 4: Factor in LTV

A channel with high CAC but high LTV customers might be your best investment. Calculate LTV:CAC ratio for each channel. Target: 3:1 or better.