Return on marketing investment and channel budget allocation benchmarks
Performance (search/ads)
40–60% — captures existing demand
Content/SEO
15–25% — slow cycle, lowest long-term CAC
Email/CRM
5–10% — retention costs 5× less than acquisition
Brand/PR
10–20% — for long decision-cycle categories
Experiments
5–10% — new channels, fixed experiment cap
ROMI is computed on gross-margin profit, not revenue: revenue × margin − spend. ROMI 100% means a unit of margin per unit of spend. Compute ROMI per channel — the portfolio average hides loss-makers.