Free tool

Marketing ROI Calculator: Measure What Your Marketing Returns

Seed Light built this free marketing ROI calculator to show whether the money you put into marketing comes back. It also shows the contribution left once that spend is paid for.

Enter your marketing spend and the revenue behind it, and see the return and the profit made.

Your marketing numbers

What you spent on marketing

Ad budget, agency fees, tools, for the same period.

Revenue attributed to this marketing

Only the revenue you can trace back to it, on whatever attribution you use.

Out of every 100 in sales, how much do you keep

Your gross margin, after the cost of the product or the job.

Your result

Enter your numbers and your result will appear here. The calculation runs in your browser.

Talk through your result

Book a free 15-minute call and we will help you read the numbers and decide what is worth improving first.

We record the result band you reach, not the numbers you enter.

Free to use, with no sign up. The calculation runs in your browser, so the values you enter are not sent to our server or stored.

The maths

How this calculator works

01
Attributed revenue becomes gross profit
The attributed revenue multiplied by your margin. This has to run on gross profit, because a sale you barely make anything on cannot pay for the marketing that won it.
02
Then the spend comes off
The marketing cost is taken off that gross profit. What is left is estimated contribution after marketing, which is not the same as company net profit, because overheads sit outside it.
03
The result is a percentage
That figure divided by the spend, shown as a percentage. One hundred percent means every unit in came back as two.
04
Margin is the part people forget
Comparing spend against sales alone flatters the result. Put the real margin in and the picture changes, which is exactly why this tool asks for it.

A worked example

A furniture retailer spends on ads and email over a quarter, attributes the revenue it can trace, and keeps forty five in every hundred after the cost of the goods. Example only. Replace these assumptions with your own numbers.

Marketing spend: 1 unit
Revenue attributed to it: 5 units
Margin kept: 45 in 100
Gross profit on that revenue: 2.25 units
Contribution after marketing: 1.25 units
Return: 125 percent

See how we run marketing

Straight answers

Common questions

Common questions about the calculation and how to use the result.

ROAS compares attributed revenue with ad spend. Marketing ROI compares the return with wider marketing costs and can account for the margin on each sale.

Include the costs that would stop if the marketing stopped: media spend, agency or freelancer fees, software, production and allocated staff time.

Start with the revenue your own records can link to marketing. Useful evidence includes tracked online sales, forms, unique phone numbers, campaign links and CRM records. State any gap between the platform report and confirmed sales instead of treating attribution as exact.

A good marketing ROI depends on your margin, cash flow and growth goal. Compare it with the return required for the campaign to cover all included costs.

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