Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off

CHAPTER 97

REPLACE ROI WITH RLC FOR BETTER MARKETING MONITORING

“So Jim, what sort of return on investment (ROI) can I expect from using your ideas?”

Fair question.

Even though most of the ideas presented in this book have been free marketing ideas, you should still track the amount of time and even the small monetary investments that you make in implementing these ideas. You will almost certainly find, as so many others have, that 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your efforts, but you'll have to give it time.

Relationships take time.

We've heard the old saying, “I know that half of my advertising is working, but I just don't know which half.” It has always been difficult to track the results of marketing and advertising efforts, and even though the Internet makes it a lot easier to track these things in some cases (such as when using pay-per-click marketing), it is still difficult to measure the full impact of most marketing efforts that you undertake. This is especially true once you begin to understand the power of building relationships using the Internet. It can be nearly impossible to track (from an ROI perspective) how well it's going. Your bottom line will certainly reflect it, but it might be a bit difficult to trace your results back to their source.

In this book I attempt to convince you that the best ideas for spreading your brand and increasing your customer base are more about relationships and trust than they are about spending money on the correct ...