ROI = Return on Investment.

“You must be able to measure how much you make in return on your advertising spend!”

“If you can’t measure the return on your marketing investment, you’re wasting your time and money!”

Heard it all a thousand times.  And fair enough, to an extent, it’s true.

But it’s also tends to be a cop-out for short sighted, play-it-safe business owners who tend to think INSIDE the square.

People tend to treat advertising and marketing as if they were buying shares in a company on the stock market. Spending (or investing) their money and saying, “This better pay-off!”

Yet, they’ll spend $15,000 EXTRA on their new company vehicle.  $10,000 on painting their offices. $6,000 on new carpets. $3,000 on a new phone system. $1200 on a corporate box at a sporting event.   WHERE’S THE R.O.I ON THAT STUFF??   CAN YOU MEASURE IT??

No you can’t. And you don’t. And then you hassle the next advertising sales person that walks through your door… because you need to make up for all the money you spent elsewhere.

So here are a couple of options/suggestions.

1.  Look at everything you spend your precious business money on as requiring a measurable ROI.  (Looking foward to seeing how you measure the ROI on the new paint job.)

2. Give the advertising and marketing people a little break and experiment a little.  You might be surprised on [a] How quickly you spend a lot of money. [b] how well things turn out. [c] how much spare money you have to experiment with advertising because you didn’t get the office painted.

Your thoughts?