Digital marketing improves leads, builds awareness, and accelerates overall growth. In B2B SaaS, where sales cycles are long and involve multiple touchpoints, tracking ROI is crucial to optimize the pipeline without overspending your budget. With rising internet penetration rates, the global digital advertising spending reached $694 billion in 2024, accounting for 70% of the total global ad investments. 

With accurate measurements of ROI, SaaS business owners can focus on revenue growth with fewer wasted campaigns, more intelligent budget allocation, and greater alignment between marketing and sales. In this blog, we will explore how to measure and calculate digital marketing ROI for your business, enhancing your ROI outcomes. 

Key Insights:

• Digital ROI isn’t just about revenue; it’s about efficiency: ROI tells you not only what’s performing, but which channels and campaigns are worth the cost to keep running.
• Cost per Lead alone doesn’t tell you enough: Without knowing close rate, customer value, or retention, you’re missing the complete ROI picture.
• Multi-touch attribution enhances ROI clarity: In SaaS, a single campaign rarely drives the deal. ROI improves when you understand how each channel contributes across the journey.
• Low ROI often highlights issues: Factors such as poor positioning, slow pages, or weak conversion paths all impact ROI. Fixing content or targeting in isolation rarely solves the root problem.

Importance of Digital Marketing ROI

Tracking digital marketing ROI helps you understand whether your marketing efforts are contributing to business success. 

Here are some of the key importance of digital marketing ROI in B2B SaaS businesses:

• ROI highlights which campaigns are producing revenues and helps you allocate budgets with accurate estimates. 
• Breaking down ROIs by channel or campaign can help you scale what works for high-performing channels, thereby enhancing overall cost-effectiveness. 
• Understanding your marketing impact pipelines or campaigns can help you plan future campaigns depending on projected returns. 
• An ROI-focused tracking ensures both teams are measured against outcomes such as closed revenues and CLTV. 
• A poor ROI highlights messaging disconnects, or irrelevant audiences, especially when 95% of buyers aren’t in-market, as the 95:5 rule in digital marketing suggests. 

Let’s understand the formula for calculating the digital marketing ROI of marketing campaigns. 

Formula for Digital Marketing ROI

Evaluating whether your marketing efforts are delivering profitable income, here’s a simple formula that compares the revenue generated to total marketing investments. 

Digital Marketing ROI = (Revenue from Marketing – Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost × 100

Example Calculation:

Suppose your SaaS company spent $10,000 on paid ads, content production, and marketing tools in a quarter. These efforts generated $30,000 in revenue directly attributed to those campaigns. 

ROI= (30,000 – 10,000) / 10,000 × 100 = 200%

Therefore, you earned $2 in revenue for every $1 spent, excluding other operational costs, and a 200% ROI indicates efficient campaign performance.

Let’s explore some key metrics to calculate digital marketing ROI, including CPL, CLV, and others.  

6 Important Metrics for Calculating Digital Marketing ROI

Digital marketing is a key marketing strategy in 2025, and the market is expected to reach $786.2 billion by 2026. When calculating the ROI for your online marketing efforts, it's necessary to track and measure metrics that relate to business goals. 

1. Cost per Lead (CPL)

Represents the average cost to generate one marketing-qualified lead. 

Formula: Ad spend/number of attributed leads = cost per lead

• To determine the cost per lead, divide your total marketing costs by the total number of leads generated through your campaigns. 
• Comparing your cost per lead to the cost of each lead that generates positive ROI. 

2. Lead close rate

Lead close rate is the percentage of leads that convert into paying customers. 

Formula: Conversions/number of leads = lead close rate

• The lead close rate indicates the quality of the leads, and if you have a low lead close rate, it is essential to adjust your targeting to attract better-qualified leads. 
• Evaluating the lead close rate based on channel, device, and demographic characteristics is helpful when segmenting your leads for targeted marketing. 
• A low close rate often points to misaligned messaging or poor lead quality, and tracking this helps you align sales and marketing efforts. 

3. Cost per acquisition (CPA)

CPA measures the cost per acquisition of a new customer. 

Formula: Cost of advertising/number of conversions = cost per acquisition

• CPA is more reliable than CPL when calculating true ROI tied to revenue. 
• Calculating CPA will help you understand the number of sales and achieve a positive ROI. 

4. Average order value (AOV)

AOV indicates the average revenue generated per transaction or customer. 

Formula: Revenue/number of orders = average order value

• AOV is useful for pricing strategies and upsell or cross-sell analysis. 
• A higher AOV represents a higher ROI, even if acquisition costs remain constant. Increasing your average order value by a small percentage can lead to a substantial increase in revenue. 

5. Customer lifetime value (CLV)

CLV represents the total revenue you expect from a customer over the length of their subscription.

Formula: (Average annual revenue from a single customer x the number of years someone typically stays a customer) – your cost per acquisition of one new customer = CLV

• CLV supports long-term ROI forecasting, especially in subscription-based models. 
• Tracking your CLV helps you keep your marketing costs down, and CLV enables you to focus on the entire lifetime of your customer relationships rather than individual purchases. 

6. Click-through rate (CTR)

CTR represents the percentage of users who click a link, ad, or CTA after viewing it. 

Formula: Total number of clicks / total number of impressions = CTR

• To calculate your CTR, divide your total clicks by the total number of impressions, which represents the number of people who visited your website. 
• A low CTR often indicates a misalignment between the ad copy and the relevance of the offer. 

Now, let’s take a step-by-step guide to measuring your digital marketing ROI for enhanced revenue outcomes. 

5 Steps to Measure Your Digital Marketing ROI

The top-performing ROI channels for brands include email marketing, among others. The average conversion optimization rate for most e-commerce websites is typically under 2%. Measuring digital marketing ROI for B2B SaaS requires connecting marketing activity to actual revenue outcomes. 

Here’s a simplified five-step process to measure your digital marketing ROI:

Step 1: Define Your Marketing Goals 

Start by isolating your successful parameters, such as SQLs, trial signups, demo requests, or revenues sourced. In B2B SaaS, these goals should be tied directly to your sales pipeline and customer lifecycle. Moreover, avoid vague goals such as brand awareness unless measurable conversion outcomes support them. 

Step 2: Establish KPIs

Your KPIs should match the intent of each campaign. For example, track the cost per qualified lead (CPL) for lead generation campaigns or the demo-to-close rate for sales enablement efforts. Additionally, always connect your top-of-funnel KPIs to downstream metrics, such as pipeline value and churn rate.

Step 3: Set Performance Metrics

The next step is to utilize internal historical data and industry benchmarks to assess the significance of your results. For example, aim for a 3:1 CLTV-to-CAC ratio or <20% churn in annual SaaS contracts. Such benchmarks provide context for ROI and help identify underperforming channels at an early stage. 

Step 4: Track Marketing Investments

It is essential to maintain a centralized cost-tracking system tied to campaign tags and UTM structures. Include every cost, ad spend, agency fees, content production, and internal team hours. SaaS campaigns often rely on multiple tools and team inputs; therefore, tracking partial spends can distort overall results. 

Step 5: Evaluate and Adjust

The final step is to use attribution models such as multi-touch, linear, or data-driven models. Moreover, adjust budgets and strategies based on actual returns, rather than top-line engagement metrics. Most SaaS businesses review their metrics monthly, therefore building reports or dashboards and establishing a regular time to review their results. 

To understand how you can improve your digital marketing ROI for enhanced engagement. 

How Can You Improve Your Digital Marketing ROI?

According to Gartner, nearly two-thirds of marketers struggle to deliver personalized customer experiences, optimize declining conversion rates, and achieve ROI. Accurate measurements of your digital marketing ROI help you identify which digital marketing efforts are making an impact and where they are falling short. With an appropriate determination of your ROI, you can focus on optimizing your investments for better results. 

Here are some of the tips to follow:

• Using multi-touch attribution models: Single-touch attribution often undervalues the early and mid-funnel stages. Therefore, it is best to use models like linear or data-driven attribution to distribute credit across all key interactions. 
• Track CAC with CLTV: Compare CAC against CLTV to ensure campaigns deliver sustainable returns, not just one-time sales. Tracking the right metrics can help you adjust your strategy to ensure every part of the campaign is running smoothly and delivering the desired returns.
• Measure performance by channel, campaign, and segment: You must break down ROI by campaign objectives and audience segments. This provides a clear insight into the highest-value conversions for your digital marketing channel.  Ignoring segmentation is one of the most common digital marketing mistakes; it hides underperforming segments and inflates perceived success.
• Conduct A/B tests: It is essential to test variables such as audience targeting, creative formats, and landing page copies separately. Small gains in conversion rates at any stage compound to overall ROI. 
• Connect advertising platforms with CRMs: Integrate tools like Meta, Google Ads, and LinkedIn with your CRM to track pipeline attribution. It helps you tie up top-of-funnel activity to closed revenues.

Also read: Best Digital Marketing Agencies for Startups in 2025

How Beetle Beetle Can Help You With Digital Marketing?

Beetle Beetle works with B2B SaaS companies that have strong products but underperforming websites. If your digital campaigns are generating traffic but your site is not converting that interest into a pipeline, the issue likely lies in how the message is being perceived. 

We isolate where visual content, funnel friction, and messaging gaps are limiting ROI. Our team builds scalable websites in Webflow backed by research-driven positioning, purpose-built visions, and custom CMS setups that make content easier to manage and convert. 

Want to see where your ROI is falling short? Book a free audit, and we will help you determine what is working best for your digital marketing campaigns. 

FAQs

1. What’s the difference between ROI and ROAS in digital marketing?

ROI includes all marketing costs and measures profit, while ROAS focuses only on ad spend return. In B2B SaaS, ROI is more useful because it reflects full-funnel efficiency. ROAS can be misleading without considering the sales cycle and the quality of leads.

2. How often should I calculate digital marketing ROI?

For ongoing campaigns, monthly or quarterly tracking is most effective. In SaaS, longer sales cycles mean short-term ROI can be misleading. Pair financial tracking with leading indicators like demo bookings or SQLs.

3. Can content marketing be measured for ROI like paid ads?

Yes, but attribution takes longer. Track gated downloads, trial signups, and assisted conversions through tools like GA4 or HubSpot. Tie content to pipeline stages, not just traffic.

4. What’s a good digital marketing ROI benchmark for B2B SaaS?

A healthy benchmark is a 3:1 CLTV to CAC ratio, though this varies by deal size and churn rate. ROI above 100% typically indicates positive returns. Always compare against internal past performance first.

5. How do I handle attribution for multi-touch SaaS funnels?

Use linear or data-driven attribution models to give partial credit to multiple touchpoints. First- and last-touch alone often miss the impact of email and retargeting. Integrate CRM and analytics platforms to track it end-to-end.