As an entrepreneur or marketer, you likely grapple with ROI and ROAS regularly. These acronyms get thrown around a lot, but what do they mean and why do they matter?

In this post, I’ll unpack these key metrics to help you better understand, calculate, and leverage ROI and ROAS.

Whether you’re running an early-stage startup or managing marketing campaigns for an established business, insights into return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS) can steer you toward smarter decisions.

ROI: Return on Investment

ROI measures the overall profitability of an investment. Essentially, it helps answer the question:

For each dollar we put in, how much money did we get out?

To calculate ROI, you divide net profit from an investment by total dollars invested. Let’s walk through an example.

Say your startup raised a $100,000 seed round and used $50,000 to build your minimum viable product (MVP). After a year in the market, your startup generated $200,000 in revenue with $100,000 in expenses.

• Investment: $50,000
• Net Profit: $200,000 (revenue) – $100,000 (expenses) = $100,000
• ROI: Net Profit / Investment = $100,000 / $50,000 = 2x

So your startup achieved a 2x ROI on that initial product investment. For every $1 invested, you generated $2 in profit. Pretty solid return!

As this example illustrates, ROI evaluates profit results comprehensively across an entire venture or investment. It provides a holistic gauge for overall efficiency and value creation.

ROI empowers entrepreneurs to benchmark profitability across business units, campaigns, product launches, and other initiatives.

By calculating ROI, you can objectively assess where capital is being deployed most effectively within your organization to drive growth.

ROAS: Return on Ad Spend

Whereas ROI examines business investments broadly, ROAS is a metric tailored specifically for assessing advertising expenditures.

ROAS stands for return on ad spend. It helps answer the question: For each dollar we spent on ads, how much revenue did we generate?

The formula is similar to ROI:

ROAS = (Revenue from Ad Campaign) / (Cost of Ad Campaign)

Let’s say your e-commerce site spent $5,000 on Facebook ads last month. That ad campaign generated $20,000 in online sales.

• Ad Spend: $5,000
• Revenue from Ads: $20,000
• ROAS: $20,000 / $5,000 = 4x

So your Facebook ad achieves a 4x ROAS, meaning each dollar invested in ads yielded $4 in sales revenue. Pretty amazing! This signals that money pumped into Facebook ads is doubling, tripling, and quadrupling in value.

While ROI focuses on comprehensive profitability, ROAS specializes in quantifying the revenue impact of specific marketing channels.

It empowers you to gauge the ROI of individual initiatives—like email nurturing campaigns, trade show appearances, or podcast ads—to determine where your marketing dollars are best spent.

ROI vs. ROAS: Key Differences and Similarities

Now that we’ve defined both metrics, let’s summarize some core differences:

• The breadth of focus: ROI evaluates overall investment profitability; ROAS assesses advertising performance specifically.
• Inclusion of expenses: ROI factors in revenue minus expenses; ROAS only examines gross revenue generated.
• Benchmark for success: Since it accounts for more factors, ROI tends to be lower than ROAS. An ROI above 100% is typically good, whereas ROAS commonly reaches 200-500% for strong campaigns.

That said, ROI and ROAS share a similar formula structure and the overarching goal of quantifying efficiency in converting spend to profit. Both metrics enable data-backed decisions on where to strategically direct budgets.

When to Prioritize ROI vs. ROAS

Should you pay more attention to ROI or ROAS then? It depends on your business context and goals:

• Early-stage startups – Focus on ROI to assess product decisions and overall traction. Don’t get distracted optimizing ROAS for individual campaigns when still proving core product-market fit.
• Growth-stage companies – As marketing and ads scale, ROAS becomes increasingly important to double down on high-performing campaigns. Continue monitoring ROI to stay profitable amidst rapid growth.
• Enterprises – With maturity comes greater scrutiny of profitability and ROAS across business units. Granular ROAS data guides budgeting decisions department by department. Leadership evaluates overarching ROI.

As a best practice, review both ROI and ROAS during key planning cycles and milestones, adjusting budgets based on these metrics’ signals. ROI spotlights big-picture profitability, while ROAS reveals winning channels to sustain momentum.

How to Measure ROI and ROAS

Now comes the fun part: calculating ROI and ROAS! Here are tips for nailing the measurement process:

Set proper tracking and attribution

• Implement analytics across devices to connect consumer touchpoints with conversions. This facilitates campaign attribution.
• For e-commerce, install Facebook pixel and Google tag manager to monitor online behaviors preceding purchases.
• Link CRM data with marketing platforms to track ROI across the customer journey.

Isolate campaign impacts

• Run A/B tests for campaign variations to reveal incremental lift.
• Assess performance trends before/after the launch of initiatives.
• For omnichannel efforts, identify unique contributions per channel.

Calculate regularly

• Pull reporting data and run calculations monthly.
• Evaluate new campaigns independently for initial 2-3 months.
• Drive insights by comparing metrics across campaigns, segments, and cohorts.

Calculating and interpreting ROI and ROAS requires groundwork upfront to bake in accurate attribution. However, once established, these metrics serve as guiding stars for aligning budgets to business growth.

Key Takeaways

• ROI measures overall profitability, while ROAS evaluates advertising revenue returns specifically.
• ROI takes a holistic view, factoring in investments and expenses. ROAS purely examines gross revenue generated.
• Startups should emphasize ROI but increasingly focus on ROAS as marketing scales up.
• Proper tracking, isolated campaign impacts, and consistent measurement all help accurately calculate ROI and ROAS.
• Regularly comparing performance across initiatives based on ROI and ROAS will help guide optimal budget allocation.

In today’s digital world infused with data, metrics like ROI and ROAS minimize speculation and decision-making based on intuition alone. But conceptualizing what these acronyms mean is just the first step. To truly extract value, you need to meticulously track performance and continuously translate insights into action.

Now that you’re armed with knowledge of core differences between ROI vs. ROAS and best practices for leveraging them, why not put this into practice for your startup? Dive into the data and let it guide your next big marketing moves. The proof is in the numbers!