[MSM]

You're really, really overthinking this. How much does it cost to assign a word to $SEO_PHRASE? Nothing. How much money magically flies out of their bank account whem they pick up the phone to talk to a customer? Nothing.

However, if they have someone on their payroll making $100k/yr and that employee spends a day with a customer gathering feedback about the product and what the customer would like to see going forward, that's going to be an opportunity cost of ~$300. It's just an investment. They aren't making money right now- they are spending money paying the (hopefully) right people to determine what they can do to (hopefully) maximize their viability later in the product's life.