If there’s a cost—find the benefit

I don’t mean doing a cost/benefit analysis on the ice cream you’re about to buy your kids, or the round of drinks you’re about to shout your friends.

But say you have the choice of taking the car and the bus to the city. If you take the bus it will take 7 minutes longer, but you get a bit more of a walk, and you save $32 on parking AND get an extra half hour work done on your laptop sitting on the bus, so why not leave the car at the office? We often get so programmed in our habits that they’re worth re–evaluating to see if they still serve us best.

Conversely, it’s important to consider secondary benefits. Say you run a campaign handing out flyers for an event. The increase in the number of people who show up only just covers the cost of the flyers. However, the secondary benefit is that 2,000 new people now have seen your brand, seen what you do, so when they see your online ad a few weeks later they’re far more likely to click and act.

Now, when you take that into account, your cost/benefit looks entirely different.