Marketing ROI: calculation, benchmarks, and strategies to improve it

Many marketers ask themselves: how do I get the maximum from my marketing campaigns?

Often, you don’t need a bigger budget to get better results. You need better tracking and a clearer view of what works.

That is why we’ve made this guide on how to increase your marketing ROI, which includes:

Let’s dive in and learn what marketing ROI is and what to do to get the most out of your marketing campaigns. 

Marketing ROI is the revenue or profit you gain from marketing activities. 

For example, if you spend $10,000 on a campaign that generates $50,000 in revenue, your ROI is high, meaning the campaign was efficient and worth the effort. 

Marketing ROI matters because it shows the impact of marketing spending on your company's financial success. 

To calculate your marketing ROI, use this formula: 

For example, if a campaign cost $10,000 and brought $50,000 in revenue, the ROI would be ((50,000 – 10,000) ÷ 10,000) × 100% = 400%. This means a $4 return for every $1 spent.

💡When analyzing marketing ROI, make sure to understand how it’s different from Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). 

ROAS covers only revenue vs. ad spend difference, while Marketing ROI includes all relevant marketing costs. 

Marketing costs typically include:

Once you understand how to calculate ROI and what expenses to include, you might ask yourself: what’s a good ROI to aim for?

Here are average ROI benchmarks across different marketing channels:

To increase your marketing ROI, start by analyzing your customer data: which campaigns lead to purchases, which pages or channels people interact with (like product pages, emails, or ads), and where they take the final action by buying, booking a demo, or filling out a form (on your website, on your mobile app or a third-party app such as Amazon etc.).

Web tracking tools, such as browser cookies, tracking pixels, and JavaScript tags, have become less reliable over time. 

Privacy-focused browser updates and ad blockers often lead to gaps in customer data, preventing important events like purchases or form submissions from being captured. 

As a result, missing conversion data makes campaigns appear less effective than they truly are, preventing ad platforms from optimizing properly.

That’s where server-side tracking can be a great solution. 

Server-side tracking lets you set first-party cookies and avoid filters that block browser scripts. 

With server-side tracking, the customer’s data is sent from your server rather than the user's browser, allowing you to capture more conversions and client data. 

The result is a fuller picture of which ads and channels bring revenue. 

With that, more accurate data leads to higher marketing ROI: ad platforms get more complete feedback to optimize their algorithms, and you can make smarter budget decisions.

Just have a look, Optimize With Data, a partner of Stape, saw a 30% increase in reported conversions and a 58% lower cost per purchase for their client by switching to server-side tracking. 

💡To see how it works in action, check out Stape’s webinar Server-Side Tracking Done Right on YouTube, which shows how better data can improve ROI. 

Strategy and the right tools are very important when working on your marketing, and so is your marketing ROI. Here are key strategies and case studies to learn from to improve your marketing ROI:

1. Track conversions more accurately: if your analytics misses conversions, you’re not seeing the whole picture.

This often happens with traditional web tracking methods like browser cookies or JavaScript tags. Browser privacy updates and ad blockers prevent important actions from being tracked.

Server-side tracking solves this by sending data from your cloud server instead of the browser. Since it bypasses browser restrictions, more customer data can be captured, giving platforms like Meta or Google better input to optimize your ad campaigns.

Real-life example: after switching to server-side tracking with Stape, Hide and Seek’s clients were able to track 15–30% more conversions. 

2. Use first-party data to improve ad performance: ad platforms give better results when they receive accurate, first-party data from you.

By sending conversions directly from your cloud server using tools like Meta Conversions API, you help platforms like Facebook or Google understand what actions matter and who took them. This leads to better attribution, smarter targeting, and more efficient campaigns.

Real-life example: after implementing Meta Conversions API with Stape, a client of Optimize With Data recorded 30.7% more conversions. Just one month later, their cost per purchase dropped by nearly 59%.

3. Optimize ad spend with better attribution: efficient marketing is a lot about knowing which channels actually drive conversions.

If you use browser-based analytics, your tracking system can miss or mislabel which ad led to the sale or how the customer found you because of browser limits, privacy settings, or blocked scripts. 

This way, it is hard to tell which campaigns are actually working, and platforms like Meta don’t get the customer data they need to improve targeting.

Server-side tracking fixes that by sending accurate data directly from your cloud server, helping platforms deliver your ads to people who are more likely to convert.

Real-life example: New Path Digital helped their client, a public university, reach 100% more conversions and reduce cost per acquisition by 56.64% by switching to server-side tracking by Stape.

The right tools are as important as strategy when increasing your marketing ROI. 

The right setup can help you collect cleaner data, fix broken attribution, and avoid wasting budget on ineffective campaigns.

Here are the key tools marketers use to track results more accurately, avoid losing data, and get more conversions at a lower cost:

1. Conversions APIs (CAPI) and API Gateways

Conversions APIs let you send events like purchases or signups directly from your cloud server to platforms like Meta, TikTok, or Snapchat.

This helps recover data lost due to browser restrictions and gives platforms the context they need to optimize your campaigns.

If you’re tracking for just one platform, dedicated gateways can simplify the setup. They come preconfigured, so you don’t have to build out the server GTM manually.

Each gateway is tailored to its platform, so you get accurate tracking with less manual work.

2. Cookie Keeper and Custom Loader by Stape

These power-ups from Stape help you collect more complete data when using server-side tagging.

Together, they strengthen your server-side setup and make sure your data doesn’t disappear along the way.

3. Analytics platforms

To increase your marketing ROI, you need to see the full customer journey. 

Tools like GA4, Matomo,or Piwik PRO can help you understand which channels and actions actually lead to conversions.

But to get reliable insights, your data needs to be complete. And server-side tracking makes that possible.

It helps send cleaner, more accurate data to any analytics platform you use by reducing losses from browser restrictions, blocked scripts, or short-lived cookies.

Use server-side setups to feed your analytics tools with the full picture, so your marketing decisions are based on what really works.

Facebook and Instagram ads can bring great results for your business only if Meta gets the full data. 

The more accurate your event tracking, the better Meta can optimize your ad campaigns and send them to the right audiences.

That’s where server-side tracking comes in.

With Stape, you can set up server-side Google Tag Manager and use the Meta Conversions API to send event data (like purchases, leads, and signups) directly from your cloud server. This helps avoid data loss caused by browser restrictions, ad blockers, or iOS privacy updates.

This will give you:

Real-life example: ROI Assist, a digital agency, had significant challenges with tracking accuracy on Facebook Ads for its clients. By implementing Stape's server-side tracking, they achieved a 33.65% increase in Facebook Ads conversion tracking accuracy.

Once your event tracking is complete and stable, you can start fine-tuning your campaigns to improve Facebook ads performance. To do this, consider refining your targeting consistently. 

When Meta receives high-quality data, its algorithm becomes more effective at finding similar audiences and optimizing for results. That’s when it’s worth testing broader targeting. 

Test creative approaches in your content creation to speak directly to each segment’s needs. The more relevant your messaging, the higher your engagement and conversion rates. 

Google Ads can be an important part of your business growth. 

To get the most from Google Ads, you should monitor tracking accuracy. If key actions go untracked, your budget will disappear quickly without much return.

Here’s how to improve your Google Ads ROI:

If Google Ads or GA4 misses conversions, your ROI calculation will not reflect the real impact, and Smart Bidding will not work properly. 

That’s why tracking every conversion is important, even when browsers block scripts or cookies.

With server-side tagging, your cloud server sends conversion data directly to Google, so fewer events get lost. This leads to better bidding decisions and more reliable attribution.

Google rewards relevant ads with a higher Quality Score, reducing your click cost. 

To get a higher Quality Score, you should:

Manual bidding gives you control, but Smart Bidding often brings better results. Strategies like Target ROAS let Google adjust bids in real time based on the likelihood of a conversion.

You can also focus more of your budget on people who are already familiar with your brand or have shown interest because they’re more likely to convert than cold audiences. For this:

To maximize ROI, focus your budget on what works best and cut the rest. Use data to identify high-performing campaigns or channels, and allocate more spend there. On the other hand, reduce or pause spending on underperforming ads. 

ROI can get lower when marketing spend isn’t efficient. 

Common reasons for this are poor targeting (spending on the wrong audience), low conversion rates (traffic not turning into buyers), or rising advertising costs without returns. 

Inaccurate tracking can also decrease ROI by hiding which campaigns actually work, leading to budget waste. 

ROI marketing services are tools or agencies that focus on improving your return on investment. They can optimize campaigns, adjust media spending, and fine-tune targeting to increase efficiency.