Cost per order

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Cost per order, also called cost per purchase, is the cost of internet advertising divided by the number of orders. Cost per order, along with cost per impression and cost per click, is the starting point for assessing the effectiveness of a company's internet advertising and can be used for comparison across advertising media and vehicles and as an indicator of the profitability of a firm's internet marketing. [1]

Contents

Purpose

The purpose of the "cost per order" metric is to measure the advertising cost required to acquire an order. If the main purpose of the ad is to generate sales, cost per order is the preferred metric. [1]

Construction

This is the cost to generate an order. The precise form of this cost depends on the industry and is complicated by product returns and multiple sales channels. The basic formula is:

Cost per order ($) = Advertising cost ($) / Orders placed (#) [1]

Related Research Articles

Cost per impression (CPI) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) are terms used in traditional advertising media selection, as well as online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. They refer to the cost of traditional advertising or internet marketing or email advertising campaigns, where advertisers pay each time an ad is displayed. CPI is the cost or expense incurred for each potential customer who views the advertisement(s), while CPM refers to the cost or expense incurred for every thousand potential customers who view the advertisement(s). CPM is an initialism for cost per mille, with mille being Latin for thousand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fixed cost</span> Business expenses not dependant on output

In accounting and economics, fixed costs, also known as indirect costs or overhead costs, are business expenses that are not dependent on the level of goods or services produced by the business. They tend to be recurring, such as interest or rents being paid per month. These costs also tend to be capital costs. This is in contrast to variable costs, which are volume-related and unknown at the beginning of the accounting year. Fixed costs have an effect on the nature of certain variable costs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Net income</span> Measure of the profitability of a business venture

In business and accounting, net income is an entity's income minus cost of goods sold, expenses, depreciation and amortization, interest, and taxes for an accounting period.

In business, operating margin—also known as operating income margin, operating profit margin, EBIT margin and return on sales (ROS)—is the ratio of operating income to net sales, usually expressed in percent.

Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost per thousand (CPT), is a commonly-used measurement in advertising. It is the cost an advertiser pays for one thousand views or impressions of an advertisement. Radio, television, newspaper, magazine, out-of-home advertising, and online advertising can be purchased on the basis of exposing the ad to one thousand viewers or listeners. It is used in marketing as a benchmarking metric to calculate the relative cost of an advertising campaign or an ad message in a given medium.

In advertising, a gross rating point (GRP) measures impact. GRPs help answer how often "must someone see it before they can readily recall it" and "how many times" does it take before the desired outcome occurs.

Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of clicks on a specific link to the number of times a page, email, or advertisement is shown. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website, as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.

The brand development index or BDI quantifies how well a brand performs in a market, compared with its average performance among all markets. That is, it measures the relative sales strength of a brand within a specific market.

The category development index (CDI) measures the sales performance of a category of goods or services in a specific group, compared with its average performance among all consumers. By definition, CDI measures the sales strength of a particular product category within a specific market.

Return on marketing investment (ROMI) is the contribution to profit attributable to marketing, divided by the marketing 'invested' or risked. ROMI is not like the other 'return-on-investment' (ROI) metrics because marketing is not the same kind of investment. Instead of money that is 'tied' up in plants and inventories, marketing funds are typically 'risked'. Marketing spending is typically expensed in the current period.

All-commodity volume or ACV represents the total annual sales volume of retailers that can be aggregated from individual store-level up to larger geographical sets. This measure is a ratio, and so is typically measured as a percentage.

In bookkeeping, accounting, and financial accounting, net sales are operating revenues earned by a company for selling its products or rendering its services. Also referred to as revenue, they are reported directly on the income statement as Sales or Net sales.

Sales effectiveness refers to the ability of a company's sales professionals to “win” at each stage of the customer's buying process, and ultimately earn the business on the right terms and in the right timeframe. Improving sales effectiveness is not just a sales function issue; it's a company issue, as it requires deep collaboration between sales and marketing to understand what is working and not working, and continuous improvement of the knowledge, messages, skills, and strategies that sales people apply as they work sales opportunities.

An impression is when an ad is fetched from its source, and is countable. Whether the ad is clicked is not taken into account. Each time an ad is fetched, it is counted as one impression.

The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB), authorized by the Marketing Accountability Foundation, is an independent, private sector, self-governing group of academics and practitioners that establishes marketing measurement and accountability standards intended for continuous improvement in financial performance, and for the guidance and education of users of performance and financial information.

One of the indicators of the strength of a brand in the hearts and minds of customers, brand preference represents which brands are preferred under assumptions of equality in price and availability.

The purpose of profit-based sales target metrics is "to ensure that marketing and sales objectives mesh with profit targets." In target volume and target revenue calculations, managers go beyond break-even analysis to "determine the level of unit sales or revenues needed not only to cover a firm’s costs but also to attain its profit targets."

Marketing spending is an organization's total expenditure on marketing activities. This typically includes advertising and non-price promotion. It sometimes includes sales force spending and may also include price promotions. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 52 percent responded that they found the "marketing spending" metric very useful.

Numeric distribution is based on the number of outlets that carry a product. It is defined as the percentage of stores that stock a given brand or SKU, within the universe of stores in the relevant market.

“The incentive plan needs to align the salesperson’s activities with the firm’s objectives.” Toward that end, an effective plan may be based on the past (growth), the present, or the future.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Farris, Paul W.; Neil T. Bendle; Phillip E. Pfeifer; David J. Reibstein (2010). Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. ISBN   0-13-705829-2. The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) endorses the definitions, purposes, and constructs of classes of measures that appear in Marketing Metrics as part of its ongoing Common Language in Marketing Project.