Networking

I haven't been to any networking events recently for one reason or another, but this week I'll be going to two and James will be attending another two. It must be the time of year.

I was amused at an event during the spring when a veteran networker stood up and announced, while firmly looking in my direction, that his business does no marketing and relies 100% on referrals. Having given his spiel he worked the room handing out lots of business cards. His morning included a networking presentation, business cards given, business cards taken and all useful contacts were probably followed up by email and logged in a database. That was probably more marketing done in a morning than many businesses do in a year.

This man is an interesting case study: he has considered his target market of local businesses; educated his network (us) about his business; positioned his business as successful and popular (so much so, remember, that it does no marketing but gets plenty of business from referrals); and found a low cost form of marketing that brings in sufficient enquiries to meet his one-man-band capacity. He works very hard at his marketing (I mean networking) and I imagine this commitment pays off.

It would be rare for us to recommend to a client that they put all their marketing eggs in one basket in that way. We prefer clients to undertake a number of different marketing activities, backed up by suitable information (online and offline), and evaluate the results. If, however, your business is restricted by lack of available time or budget for a broad range of marketing activities, and you have made a decision to concentrate on one form of marketing, it is essential to commit to it and do it well.

There are numerous guides to using networking in your marketing and they all recommend preparation. My extra word of advice is first to review the basics: your business offering; your target market; your key messages. Then consider who will be in the room with you, and how much all this will make sense to them. After you've presented who you are, what you do, and who you do it for remember to be clear what it is you'd like the assembled networkers to do for you - buy from you themselves or refer suitable customers to you?

I hoped I had been doing all this for Henmore and thebestof sites we manage in Derbyshire, but I've realised I've been makimg a hash of it. Chatting to someone who knows me quite well, I was asked a simple question the answer to which I address every month in my networking presentation. This is disheartening feedback, but I'll endeavour to take it positively and review my presentations for my networking week ahead.

Put your footer down

Emails - we all dash out loads everyday. Here, we have lots of Henmore Marketing email accounts and various accounts for each of our local areas of thebestof.co.uk. Most businesses have similar arrangements. I know for a fact that we do not make the most of our emails to update clients on other things that we are doing. So here is my 'blinding flash of the obvious' (as ActionCoach pal Neale Lewis would say) shared here today.

Footers on your emails. When was the last time that you updated yours?

I was reminded of this BFO twice today. Once when I was looking for someone's telephone number and thought it would be quickest simpy to open one of her emails to me. I opened them all, and not even a basic footer with contact details to be found on any of them. Let alone all the business about registered company details etc. The other time I was discussing with another client a forthcoming industry event they are exhibiting at and ways to maximise an award they have just received. This business has 120 people, all sending dozens of emails every day. Simple and cheap marketing - a footer with exhibition dates and the award logo is going out to all staff with instructions to update their email footer.

My personal BFO is to apply all this good marketing sense to my own emails - how many accounts did I say I'll have to amend . . . ?

pdf downloads

We have spent the week reviewing and revising most of the pdf download materials for one of our clients. It was quite a fiddly job, with close collaboration between client, copy writer and graphic designer (our web designer has yet to do his bit and upload them all to the client's site).

Many of the pdfs had been in circulation for a while and needed the content editing to reflect new sales messages. To complete the set we researched and wrote new copy for both fact sheets and case studies. Meanwhile on the design side, the client's corporate image has evolved over the years and the pdf fact sheets and case studies now looked dated. It was time for a new template style to be designed and implemented across the whole set. They are now all proofed and with the client for approval or amendment.

Whilst working on this project we received a call from one of our printers wondering if there were any printing projects on the way. I confessed that these pdfs are unlikely to be printed because our client makes them available from their web site and uses them to email to potential clients. Posting printed material is a bit last century.