Writer Biz #11 - ROI – A Time Suck or A Success?

What is ROI? It’s Return On Investment. Another one of those business-ey terms authors need to become familiar with.

ROI is about creating measurements which will tell you how effective a particular marketing effort is on your marketing goals. This is why you need to be sure your goals are as specific as possible. The more focused they are, the easier ROI is to measure. As time goes by and you’re following your marketing plan, doing the promo, and twittering your little heart out, you need to know if what you are doing is working. Or not. Was it a time suck, or a success?

Let’s say for your marketing plan, you set your timeline for one year. The first quarter flies by, and then before you know it, your looking at the end of the second quarter. You need to take time out, look at your measurements and see if things are moving in the direction you want them to. This really depends on the goals you set at the beginning of your plan. Are you garnering more readers? Selling more books? Are more people wanting to engage with you?

You need to be sure you are moving in the direction of your goals. If you are not, then what you are doing may not be working, and you’ll want to adjust your strategy. The unfortunate part about all of this is that there is no hard and fast rule about what works and what doesn’t. It really seems to be unique to each author and how they connect with people.

How do you track ROI? With analytics. Which is the next post. Don’t worry it’s not as awful as it sounds.

And I can hear you naysayers out there. ‘Some things you just can’t measure. You have to go with your heart.’ IMO, that’s an excuse to be lazy and to allow failure. Save your heart for your stories. This part requires your head.