Hi everybody, Mickey Griffith here with the Referral Institute in the North San Francisco Bay. What I’d like to talk with you about today is your return on your investment (ROI). Return on your investment as it relates to referral marketing. How do you know what your return on investment is with referral marketing? Two words, objective criteria. Are you using objective criteria in determining whether or not you’re getting a direct return on your investment in referral marketing?
What am I talking about when I say return on investment? Well, when we invest something, what are we investing? We’re investing resources, and resources might be money, might be time, might be emotional investment in some sort of a relationship that might or might not be bearing us fruit in a referral marketing relationship. When you’re measuring your investment and you’re trying to get a return on your investment and your referral marketing activities, what objective criteria are you using? Most business owners are using their debt. They’re saying, “Well, I’m in this networking group and I think it’s doing good for me.” But are they really evaluating? And first of all, are they evaluating what they’re putting in before they evaluate what they are getting out?
It’s one thing to join a group, but if I don’t invest in it emotionally, and with time, and with money, it’s very difficult for me to get anything out of it. So, when you’re in your referral marketing efforts what is your objective criteria? Are you measuring how much time you spend with individuals? Are you measuring what time and money you’re putting into a networking group, or what emotional investment you’ve put into a relationship for a long amount of time that you’re hoping to get a referral relationship going in and it’s just not going anywhere? Do you have an objective criteria?
Okay, emotionally that might be a little difficult to put some objective criteria on, but the time and money, we can measure those and we should be measuring those. If you’re not measuring, you’re guessing. And if you’re guessing, that means you don’t know. I highly encourage you to put some objective criteria on measuring your referral marketing activities to see if you’re getting out of your marketing activities what you really want. I’m Mickey Griffith with the Referral Institute.