4.0 or Less ROAS
If your return on ad spend is less than 4 there is a chance that you might be losing money. This depends on your exact circumstances but there will likely be some big opportunities for further optimisation.
Understand how your ads are performing
Welcome to the Lumos Digital Marketing ROAS Calculator! This powerful tool is designed to help you measure the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns by calculating your Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS).
Now you know your ROAS, what do people generally consider to be a good ROAS? Bare in mind your ROAS is something individual to your business, what might be good or bad on average might be different for you!
Paying close attention to your ROAS and understanding what that means can have a huge impact on your profitability and the performance of your ads. Here are some of the questions we get asked the most!
ROAS stands for Return on Ad Spend. It is a crucial marketing metric that measures the amount of revenue generated for every pound (£) spent on advertising. It is essential because it gives you a good idea of how well your ads are performing.
By monitoring ROAS, businesses can:
Get a good idea of how your ads are performing.
See if there are any ad campaigns that you should be spending more of your budget on, as some campaigns will naturally perform better than others.
The formula for calculating ROAS is straightforward: You divide the revenue generated by your total marketing spend.
Example: If you spend £500 on shopping campaigns in a month and those campaigns generate a revenue of £3,000, you would divide £3,000 by £500 to get 6. This result is expressed as a 6:1 ROAS, meaning for every £1 you spend on ads, you earn £6 in revenue.
When calculating your total revenue, remember to include:
Affiliate commission costs.
Vendor costs.
Personnel salary.
Other fees specific to certain ad groups (e.g., cost per click).
While both are profitability metrics, they measure different things. ROAS is a marketing metric that measures the cost of a single stream of advertising spending against the revenue that may or may not be the sole stream of revenue.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Focuses only on the efficiency of your advertising spend.
ROI (Return on Investment): This is a broader business metric. While ROAS is one of the most useful metrics that you can use, getting a good idea of how well your marketing strategy is working is meant to drive more revenue.
A “good” ROAS is relative and dependent on your profit margins, operating expenses, and the overall health of the business.
A good ROAS tends to sit at a 4:1 ratio. This means £4 revenue to £1 ad spend.
Large Margins: If a business has a large margin, these businesses can survive low ROAS.
Small Margins: Businesses with smaller margins must maintain low advertising costs.
Start-ups: If you are a start-up business with a smaller budget, you may need higher margins.
Your Break-Even ROAS is the minimum revenue multiple you need to cover all associated costs of your product/service, including the ad spend. This figure is crucial for defining your ROAS goal when you have a defined budget and a firm handle on your budget’s profit margins.
ROAS is one of the most important metrics that all business owners who advertise should monitor. You will ensure that you are sticking to your budget as well as ensuring that your ads are being seen as often as possible by the audience you want to target.
Ways to improve your ROAS include increasing your conversion value and decreasing the costs that you spend on ads.
Optimise Budget Spend: Spend most of your budget on profitable campaigns.
Audience Targeting: Another way in which you can increase your ROAS is by using audience targeting. Identifying your audience is crucial. The ideal thing to do is to create a buyer persona and investigate the different segments you want to target. By personalising your campaigns, you will target the right type of customers, thus encouraging them to click on your ads.
Bidding Strategy: If you lower your ad spend or have too many bids on your CPC, this can lead to your ads being seen less.
While ROAS is one of the most useful metrics that you can use, it has challenges:
Vanity Metric: ROAS can be considered a vanity metric.
Long-term Viability: ROAS sometimes is not seen as something that can contribute to long-term business viability.
Incomplete Journey: ROAS only measures the cost of a single stream of advertising spending against the revenue that may or may not be the sole source of revenue. ROAS does not represent the entire customer journey. If you are looking at your customer’s journey through ROAS, you will miss all of the digital touchpoints.
Recommendation: It is good as a business owner to look at a customer’s journey to see how they came about finding your website and why they made the purchase.
You will ensure that you are sticking to your budget as well as ensuring that your ads are being seen as often as possible by the audience you want to target. You should monitor ROAS because it gives you a good idea of how your ads are performing and if there are any ad campaigns that you should be spending more of your budget on as some campaigns will naturally perform better than others.
Using our ROAS calculator you can work out your ROAS very easily. Calculating your ROAS is fairly easy and is something you should keep track of. Using your ROAS data can have a big impact on your business.
Get in touch with Lumos Digital Marketing today and let's talk about how we can take your business to the next level.