Defining ROI.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 01 September 2013
• Author: Bane, Sunny

I am a dictionary nerd. I love breaking down a particular phrase and looking up each word in the dictionary to get the fuller meaning. So when I was asked to write about ROI for legal marketing, I had to see what Microsoft Encarta said about "return" and "investment."

In this context, return is typically defined as "yield profit" and investment as "money invested." As anyone in the legal marketing sector knows, measuring financial profit on our activities is a big challenge. But what if we dig a little deeper? Profit isn't always financial; Encarta also defines it as an "advantage." In other words, a return is simply yielding an advantage. And my favorite Encarta definition of investment is "a contribution of something such as time, energy or effort to an activity, project or undertaking in the expectation of a benefit." So return on investment could be thought of as deriving a competitive advantage as a result of your time, energy and...