Marketing ROI Calculator
Most marketing ROI figures are revenue figures in disguise. This one asks for your margin, because that is the version finance will check.
Your numbers
$29,000 of gross profit left after $25,000 of marketing cost
Quoting the revenue figure (380%) instead of the margin-adjusted one (116%) is the most common way marketing ROI gets overstated. The second number is the one your finance team will use.
The arithmetic
marketing ROI = (revenue × gross margin − cost) ÷ costrevenue ROI = (revenue − cost) ÷ costbreak-even revenue = cost ÷ gross marginEvery figure above comes from an input you set. There are no industry averages baked in, because an average you cannot check is worse than no number at all.
The margin step everyone skips
Marketing ROI is usually reported as revenue divided by cost, which is not a return on investment at all. It is a revenue multiple. The difference is not academic: at a 45% gross margin, $120,000 of attributable revenue on $25,000 of cost is a 380% revenue return and a 116% actual return. Both are real numbers. Only one survives a conversation with a CFO.
Why the honest number is the more useful one
Inflated ROI figures cost marketing teams credibility exactly when they need it, because the gap between the reported return and the profit that shows up in the accounts eventually gets noticed. A 116% return is genuinely good and it is defensible. A 380% claim invites someone to check it.
Attribution is the real uncertainty
The arithmetic here is trivial. The hard input is "attributable revenue", and no attribution model is correct. Last-click flatters brand search and starves awareness. Multi-touch spreads credit according to assumptions you cannot validate. Marketing mix modelling handles this better at a scale most businesses do not have.
The workable approach is to pick one model, keep it, and trust the trend more than the level. A channel whose ROI has moved from 80% to 140% under a consistent model is telling you something true even if neither number is exactly right.
Beware benchmark ROI figures
Channel ROI statistics circulate widely and almost never trace back to a published methodology. We deliberately do not print them here. Your own margin and your own attribution, applied consistently over time, will tell you more than any industry average — and unlike the average, you can check it.
For the search-specific version, the SEO ROI calculator models a fixed monthly cost against compounding organic return.