Doing the Freasy To Grow Business

Looking forward to 2010 and beyond, one thing is certain. You’ll have to continue to accomplish much more using less resource. Therefore you event marketing, sponsorship and business acquisition should become a champion of free and easy.  I’ve coined a term for this - FREASY. It just makes so much sense.

Doing the FREASY means making a change to at least a portion of the traditional way you conduct your marketing, promotion and customer service. It’s easy to pick up the phone and place an ad or radio spot. It helps populate events, but it’s not free. Once you have them, it’s figuratively easy to let attendees view exhibitions, attend conferences and meetings and then leave.  But not smart. It’s very easy to ignore all the yakkety yak concerning social media. Twitter this, facebook that. Flickr your picture. Especially if you have no interest in it or think it’s for kids. You’ve thrown this great free away.

Let’s look at two FREASY marketing and promotion concepts you should be employing for future business and event growth.

FREASY one: database
You can’t go past this formula for the ultimate in free and easy. It’s one I have used with enormous success for years to drive my business ever forward and forms a core of many of my business presentations.

Information + communication + automation =PROFIT.
Event success is significantly driven by the people that know you/ know about it and the referrels they bring. Advertising plus website and Internet strategies intoduce prospective attendees, sponsers and clients to you.  The desired outcome of attending networking events is to meet new prospects. It’s common sense plain and simple to put processes in place to ensure the time, effort and money spent is capitalised on, rather than being wasted. The three FREASY processes that spell profit are as follows.

Information
Collect information about all your customers and prospects and put it in a database. Ensure the details you keep are sufficient to target and be relevent to them (not only you).  This is free and easy.

Communication
Keep talking to them. Form a ‘what is in it for them’ (WIIFM) communication plan. Most events marketing get the communication plan completely wrong. Their approach is completely self centred. Instead turn it around focusing on how to make your prospective attendees more successful in the long term and beyond the event. Savings, better know-how,  great ideas, industry news.

Automation
The delicsiousness of this formula is the magic you can make. You use your  every day technology tools at hand to first work with the information you’ve collected and then to distribute the communications. Use a multimode touch. Emails. Print. Conversation. Sms, mms. This is simply clever thinking and it’s free.The result is you form your own database (rather than giving it away to credit card companies and flybys). You  use it to bring back and create attendees and sponsors when you want them. A database marketing

and communication strategy brings in income, adds value to your customer service and lowers your marketing, administration  and advertising costs. Most of it is free. And Easy

Three database tips

1. Never let anyone go (unless they ask). Have forms and signups on all sources of contact.  
2. Use the internet well.
1. Website that gives information plus helpful advice
2. Demos and how-to’s
3. Social media presence
3. Communicate regularly. Persistency pays. HEAPS! Most businesses don’t have the consistent WIFFM followthrough.
4. Use your software well to get the most time savings from it. Time is money.

FREASY two: facebook
Does your event demographics include individuals aged 15-35 and over 55? Then it is simply criminal to ignore being creative with facebook. Last week the social media community was abuzz with the story of how IKEA, the Swedish furniture company used this network to promote a new store opening in Malmo.

First they created a Facebook profile for the store manager. Over a two week period, they uploaded 12 different showroom setting photographs onto his photo album. A feature of facebook is the ability to click on part of an image and identify (tag) a person. When someone is tagged, all their ‘friends’ are notified and shown the picture. Thus it spreads virally.

Ikea put a clever twist on this feature. They created a promotion that the first person to tag their name on an item in the picture (a chair, bed cover, curtain) got to take it home. You can see how this would spread exponentially by word of mouth and the built-in viral nature of facebook friends. Just think how you can customise this. Faces in a crowd. In the audience. At exhibition stands. Offer to do it for your sponsors. Oh my goodness – the possibilities. Instead of tagging items, you could do a weekly spot the different item (akin to the Where’s Wally books). The permutations are endless.

Here is a link to the video detailing the campaign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE2LSp-hjbQ&feature=player_embedded

Here are six ideas for you.

1. Follow the fan pages of influential people in your industry. Watch what they do, learn from the articles and content they point you to. You’ll get a quick succinct education by following and learning from the correct people.
2. If you are keen to learn about social media and don’t have much time, sign up for the www.mashable.com facebook or Twitter page.
3. Have a smart phone? Download and use the free facebook application so you can learn in your downtime.
4. Join facebook with a personal page (don't do a business or event one until you learn and absorb). Become a fan to a selection of brands, products and company pages and events to find things you can emulate and eliminate.
5. Refer online to my “Time to Join the Facebook Revolution” article. Read it here http://bit.ly/4Bxb6E
6. Why not join my Facebook page? My focus is share knowledge.
   http://www.facebook.com/debbie.mayosmith.motivational.speaker

Debbie Mayo-Smith (BSc Hons Econ) is an International Motivational Business Speaker and Managing Director of SuccessIS! (http://www.successis.co.nz) and a leading specialist in easy practical ways to improve business profitability, personal productivity and Internet marketing. Debbie lives in NZ and travels the world speaking, writing and training. By the way, if you'd like to get lots of neat tricks like this, plus marketing and business development tips, why not enrol for our free newsletter?

 

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