Promoting Your Business During Tough Times

Our second meeting was light in attendance since the devastating hit from Hurricane Ike; although we had some good discussion about staying positive and focused on our businesses. Some suggestions for promotion and marketing efforts were directed toward inexpensive and FREE ways of accomplishing this. Some ideas offered by members included:

Robert - Get a shirt with your company name on it and go volunteer somewhere. What a great idea! It's exposure for your company, excellent community service and the cost is a shirt and some time.

Susan - Buy vintage cards (often 20 - 30 for less than .50) at estate sales and garage sales. Use these cards to send a personal hand written note to clients or prospective clients. Often they may have the perfect image or saying to capture the sentiment.

Dr. Angie - Angie offered exposure for fellow business owners in the Bay Area Networking Group through her 'New Mom Mondays' (if your services/products relate or if you have promotional items to include as giveaways) as well as counter or lobby space for promotional material.

Kandi (suggested week before) - Newsletters mailed or distributed in the community to let people know about you or to let existing clients know that you're still in business and ready to assist with (your service/product here) - offer specials or discounts to track your efforts

Susan- Check your internal and external links for your website. Internal links are links on your site that include your page navigation, text links, and links that go to other sites from your site. External links are links that are on other people's web sites that when clicked come to your site. You should talk with colleagues within your industry about exchanging links with each other, especially those that would be complementary.


If anyone would like to add suggestions to our meeting topics, we would love for this to be a site to refer back to when we need to. So give us your ideas and thoughts and let's continue growing our companies!

Cheers~

Our Second Meeting is scheduled

We have our topic for the second Marketing Round Table at Seabrook BANG on October 28^th where we open the floor for discussion and brainstorming.

We will be talking about how to endorse your company, sell your products or services, and let people know who and where you are, during not only a tough economy but during a clean up and re-build after Hurricane Ike. So many of our friends, co-workers and family were just devastated by Ike. Our thoughts go out to all.

So, suggestions and tips for the floor will include economical and free ideas, inexpensive ways to make the holiday season work for you and how we might be able to help others worse off than ourselves. We are looking forward to a helpful and informative meeting and invite all to join us. Tell your friends, family and co- workers. October 28^th at 7:30 am at Tequila Boom in Seabrook, TX.

Staying in Touch with Your Clients

Our first Marketing Roundtable was quite successful, informative and entertaining! (Thanks Mad Hatter Mike – for the info and the fun).

Below are the highlights of the topic “Staying in Touch with Your Clients” shared by our members during the meeting:

Mike gave a short presentation on promoting your/your company’s ‘unique-ness’ and thereby causing the question – “What is that? Why do you have that on? or What is.....?” and opening the door to tell someone about your company. For example, Mike wears 3 watches, Larry and Bob always wear their embroidered company shirts, Anna always wears her name badge. Mike’s point was to do something that fits you, your personality and moreover your company. He also brought up the ‘rule of 250’ – when one person hears about something and tells a couple of people and they tell a couple of people....well, you get the gist. Some research has shown that ultimately a minimum of 250 people hear about the one thing you told one person.

Then he escaped from a straitjacket.

Anna also shared her ‘touch points’ program. In this she looks at her Top 30 clients, based on her own criteria, and utilizing her program, she makes contact with each of them 30 times in a year. She pointed out that this may sound like a lot but that it is actually pretty easy to do. She sends a postcard every month with helpful information that may or may not relate to her industry but is ‘good to know’ stuff. (In Aug. she talked about tax free weekend) She also does a monthly mailer o those 30 that is again not about her as much is just good informative knowledge. Then, given her business, she knows when they bought their house – sends a Congratulations card, and a birthday card. Twice a year she sends something personally related to her and her business. Not too difficult! She would confirm that it is a proven positive method. She also pointed out the higher success rate of actually being read by the recipient when the card is handwritten and stamped with a real stamp.

Other excellent points made by members include:

Kandi – Taking the time to make a follow up phone call after the sale – make sure your client is happy. Excellent point!

Dominic – Take notes when meeting with a client – helps you remember key points and not-so-key points that help with follow up meetings

Robert – Make your ads simple and catchy – you want to make your name synonymous with your service or product. Don’t clutter ads with long lists or bullets of everything you do.

Melissa – She uses the 3 + 3 + 3 program – this is client contact after 3 days, after 3 weeks and after 3 months with info/questions geared to your own company that help you continue business with the client.

Larry – If you give promotional items to clients – make sure it is something your client will use – not throw out or put in the junk drawer.

We discussed organization of these programs:

Anna uses spread sheets. She has offered these for anyone in the group that would like to use them – you would just change the heading information to your own company name. Thanks Anna!

Melissa uses a rotating system that helps her keep track of which ‘3’ her client is on. She uses her computer but also suggested an easy collapsible file folder for rotating.

One other point Anna made that was fantastic – she asks callers on her voice mail to please tell her in their message who referred her to them. The great point is that 99% tell her in the voice mail. They can’t wait to say it. Referrals & networking WORKS!!

About the Marketing Round Table

The ‘Marketing Round Table’ is part of the Bay Area Networking Group (B.A.N.G.), a meeting of local business owners that gather to learn about and help grow each other’s businesses through a referral system based on trust, honesty and integrity. BANG meetings are held throughout the Clear Lake Texas Bay Area and surrounding cities. There are no dues or fees and no exclusive businesses. Please visit http://www.bayareanetworkgroup.org to find out more.

The ‘Round Table’ occurs on the second Tuesday of each month at the Seabrook, TX area location and is different than our regular format in that the floor is open for discussion on a variety of marketing topics. This blog is for furthering the discussion of these topics, offering suggestions for subsequent topics, and staying up to date with the freshest marketing techniques in today’s business world.

We will post the highlights following each meeting with a category title. We welcome comments from BANG members and from those who don't live in the area and can't join us physically at our meeting location. You may offer additional comments or information pertaining to the topic as well as suggestions for future topics.

As our blog grows so will the layout and category listings.