Nudging Marketers, Google Introduces “Full Value Of Mobile” ROI Calculator

It’s a multiscreen world now. And, Google has been doing everything it can to help marketers catch up to consumers, who live in a world of several devices: PCs, tablets and smartphones. Yet, marketers still mostly live in the world of PCs.

To educate and bring them along, Google has produced compelling research, launched Enhanced Campaigns, broadened conversion tracking in AdWords, and now is introducing a mobile ROI calculator.

As part of its “How to Go Mo” site, Google is launching “The Full Value of Mobile.” It offers videos, case studies and ROI calculators for different mobile and multiscreen scenarios:

The Full Value of Mobile Calculator provides simple equations and benchmarks to help you estimate of the value that mobile drives for your business through calls, apps, in-store, mobile site and cross-device. In about 30 minutes, you can follow the step-by-step wizard to upload data from AdWords and your mobile website, and make some key assumptions to create your Full Value of Mobile estimate. Through the exercise, you’ll see the total value, value per click, and ROI that mobile is driving for your business across all mobile customer paths, not just your mobile website. You’ll also see how cost-effective your mobile CPAs are.

The ambition of the site is to model broader ROI thinking for marketers and give them methods to get a better sense of the contribution of mobile when conversions include multiple screens or happen offline (e.g., the research starts on mobile and the transaction happens on a PC or in a store).

The ROI calculator asks marketers to input data and values for questions such as:

• How many people clicked “Get Directions” from your mobile search ads between 2/24/2013and 3/26/2013?
• What percentage of users who clicked on “Get Directions” actually visited your store(s) as a result?
• What percentage of store visitors made a purchase?
• What is the average value of an in-store customer’s purchase?

Google provides calculators for offline purchases, calls, apps, cross-device transactions and mobile ecommerce. Marketers also get a comparison view of all the outcomes for each of the categories. The tool relies on marketers knowing certain types of information — the number of visitors who clicked “directions” and then showed up in stores, for example — which may not always be available or known.

However, the tool and related information go a long way to help show marketers necessary and expanded ways to think about ROI in the new multiscreen environment. Google is also hosting a webinar on how to use the ROI tool on March 28 at 1pm ET.