Getting Past ROI as the Only Metric
Return on investment (ROI) is one of the pivotal metrics in the business world, with good reason. It measures what you get in return vs. what you put in. It’s a way to measure whether the “juice is worth the squeeze.”
But when it comes to content marketing, ROI is the wrong metric. Content marketing is about getting to what I call the Threshold of Trust, the point at which you earn a small transaction in return. That transaction might not even be a paid one at first. But then repeat the cycle until you accumulate enough trust to convert your prospect into a paying customer.
The limitation of ROI is that it’s just a snapshot of a moment in time, whereas content marketing has a long gestation cycle. And in light of today’s consumer behavior, if you only measure ROI in money, you’re selling yourself short.
In today’s episode, I ask you to suspend disbelief for 15 minutes while I make a case for getting beyond this simplistic measure when it comes to your marketing – and how to measure trust instead.
Listen to Episode 95 here or subscribe in iTunes or your favorite podcast app.
Show Notes
In this episode, I referred to two upcoming segments:
- Be In It for the Long Game – Short-Term Thinking Leads to Bad Decisions
- Marketing and the Experimental Mindset (in Unit 2 of this series)
Subscribe in iTunes or here on this site to keep up with the series – and choose your preferred frequency.
Also in this episode, I made a special announcement: You are the first to know about my new online course called CreateBiz. We just did a soft launch last week on June 1 (after two full years of work!).
What is CreateBiz? It’s is a complete online course to help writers, musicians, and visual artists build a business around their creative work, focused on the most difficult part – marketing. Many creatives dread marketing, because it feels “icky” and self-promotional. Like this podcast, CreateBiz teaches a more soft-touch approach instead, which is more effective in growing a devoted following.
The course is 42 video modules, with dozens of worksheets, templates, and guided assignments. Here’s a preview of the complete course outline.
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