Last week, we talked about Email Marketing and what it consists of and what that means for your business. Be sure to check out the recap of that blog, How to use email marketing to engage your audience, to learn more about email marketing. This week we will continue to learn about engaging, however, we will focus on EVENT-BASED MARKETING. You may watch the video and/or read the summary below to learn more.
Last week, we discussed building your database and I shared Two tools to build your database and grow your business. This week I want our focus word to be ENGAGE. Watch the video or read the summary to learn about 3 Key Ways to Engage Your Audience.
In my last post, I talked about 3 reasons to attend live events to grow your business. Those reasons included gaining insight, making connections, and finding out about opportunities.
All of these reasons are great and can help to grow your business, but if you want to take it a step further, you might want to consider hosting your own event. In this post, I share 3 reasons why hosting your own live event can help to grow your business.
I’ve mentioned in several of my blog posts that having consistent events for your business is a great marketing strategy. Events give people an opportunity to learn more about you, more about the business, and more about your product or service. Over the last decade or so, Virtual Events have become very popular. I define virtual events as any type of event that does not take place in person.
Here are some examples of types of virtual events you can have to market your business:
Are you including events in your marketing strategy? If so, are you also using Virtual Events to grow your business?
Having consistent events for your business is a great marketing strategy. Events are a great way for people to get to know you, like you, and trust you, which we all know is the key to getting more business. However, putting on events is not always an easy task. The hardest thing about events is getting people to attend, so this article goes through the 3 steps to successfully market your next event.
Pre-event is the planning phase which involves all the activities that go into planning an event up until the day that the event occurs. The planning phase should include the following key elements:
The marketing of the event does not end while the event is taking place, in fact, some of the best promotion can be done at the event. Some ways that you can promote during the event include:
The marketing of the event does not end after the event. Depending on how often you will be having the event or having other events for your business, the end of the event is a great way to market the next event.
Do you have consistent events to promote your business? If so, what do you include in your pre-event, during event, and post event planning?
Dictionary.com defines a relationship as a connection, association, or involvement. It also defines marketing as the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer.
My definition of Relationship Marketing is the activities involved in building a greater connection with your clients, prospects and partners. This strong connection often leads to the sale of products or services, and also increases loyalty to your brand or company.
With that said, Relationship Marketing is a key part of your overall marketing strategy, and should occur both online and offline.
In this blog post I will mention a few activities that you should include in your Relationship Marketing:
ONLINE
In order to build a connection online with your clients, prospects, and partners, it is important to have an online presence. Included in your online presence should be the following activities:
OFFLINE
These are just a few ways you can use Relationship Marketing to GROW your business. What other ways can you think of in which you can use Relationship Marketing to grow your business?
It is a fact that one of the best ways to grow your business is by building the relationship that you have with your current customers. Most small businesses overlook this fact and concentrate on new customers and new business, but don’t neglect your existing customers because they can really help you grow your business.
In this blog post, I will cover 7 surprising ways you can get repeat and referral business from your current customers:
Send your customers a birthday card. Yes, I am talking the old fashioned in the snail mail birthday card. Now a days, so few people take the time to send family, friends and customers physical cards that it would be a welcome surprise for your customer to receive a card from you. Depending on the size of your customer database, this could be an expensive undertaking, so I suggest if you cannot send a birthday card to every customer, make sure that you send one to your most loyal and repeat customers. It’s a great way to show that you care about your customers, and it’s a great opportunity to add a special offer for additional products or services. I get a birthday card and a $10 off gift card from a popular women’s apparel store every year, and most of the time I go in the store to use my gift card. I am pretty sure this strategy is working for this retail store because I continue to get a card every year.
Send your customer a “Thank You for Your Business” card. Whenever you close a deal or get a new account, it is the start of a new business relationship. Why not show your customers how much you appreciate this new relationship and send a thank you for your business card. You will be surprised how this can make you stand out as a business and strengthen the new business relationship. Paying attention to the little details also makes customers more encouraged to send referral business to you because they know you will treat the person who they refer with as much care as you have treated them.
Send your customers holiday cards. Whether it is one of the popular holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years, Independence Day, or one of those less popular holidays like President’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, etc. take the time to send your customers a holiday card for the holidays that you feel would be appropriate. I know I have said this before, but people just don’t get a lot of cards anymore, so receiving a card from your company on a special holiday can really make your company shine!You will notice that the common element for each one of these tips is to send a card! A great system to use to automate the sending of cards and gifts for your clients is SendOutCards. SendOutCards is an online system that allows you to select a card, customize the card, add the contact information for the recipient or upload a list of contacts, and hit send. The card will then be printed, stuffed, and mailed to the recipient(s) all by the click of your mouse. In addition, you’re able to keep track of all the cards and gifts that you send because the system keeps a record of everything for you.
For more information go to www.SendOutCards.com If you decide that you want to use the system to send your cards and gifts, you can use id#155454 to join.
In my last post, The best kept secret to using social networking to grow your business, I talked about a popular social networking site that doesn’t get as much attention as the other major sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, but is a very effective tool to grow your business, and that social network is Meetup.com. As I mentioned in Part 1, there are two ways that you can use Meetup to grow your business, joining a meetup group or organizing a meetup group. For the sake of this post, I will talk about how to organize a meetup. Here are five ways to grow your business by organizing a meetup group:
1. Start a Meetup specifically for your target market. Once you know your target market, it is easy to start a group that caters to your target market. Your goal is to create a community of individuals who are in your target market and provide them with valuable information and fun events. The goal of the Meetup should never be to sell your product or service, but to offer some value to your community and in turn that should lead to business for you.
Tip: Make sure the name of the group and/or the description of your group is very clear so that you are attracting the right people to join your Meetup group. Adding the specific area (i.e. Women Business Owners of Atlanta, Foodies in Chicago, etc.) gives the feel of a large group designed specifically for the people in that area.
2. Create more than one Meetup Group. Meetup allows you to create up to three Meetup groups for one quarterly fee. As of now, the quarterly fee is just $45/per quarter, which amounts to $15/month. If you have three Meetup groups that amounts to just $5/month per Meetup group and you can create very specific niches of your target market and tailor your meetups to this specific niche (i.e. women who are vegetarians, men who are in finance, etc.). The more specific your niche the more specific you can make your Meetup, but keep in mind a broad category will attract more people and a specific category will attract a smaller group.
3. Have consistent Meetups for your Group. The most effective Meetup groups I have seen have been groups that have consistent events that are planned out well in advance. For example having a meetup every first Monday of the month or every other Tuesday, helps to show that your group is consistent in the events that they offer. Even being consistent with the type of event you are having can help to build up your Meetup having a monthly or bi-weekly outing, breakfast, luncheon, workshop, networking, etc.
4. Create a leadership team. It always helps if more than one person is assisting with the organizing of the group and running of the Meetups, so having a co-organizer or other members of the Meetup as your Leadership team is very helpful.
5. List your business as a sponsor of your Meetup Group. This is nice subtle way to put your business name out to the group without feeling like you are hard selling your products or services, you can even offer a discount to individuals from the Meetup who decide to purchase your products or services.
Have you created a meetup group to help grow your business? If so, share what has or hasn’t been working for your meetup group.
People want to get to know you and your business. The best way to accomplish this is by having events. Events are a great way to showcase your business and let people know about your products and services. When planning an event it doesn’t have to be a large event sometimes the smaller more intimate events are a better way for you to get to know your clients and your prospects, and for them to get to know you and your business. Here are four main things to consider when having an event to promote your business:
Are you consistently having events to showcase your services or products? If so, what types of events do you have, and how do you make sure your events are successful?