Speed cameras are fun

My brother (hi Ant!) sent me a link to The Fun Theory today.

It’s a Volkswagen project focused on making everyday things more effective by making them more fun. The current video on their homepage is about making speed cameras more fun (yes, really!).

This is a great marketing campaign on a number of levels:

• It’s a cool viral campaign (viral means that people watch it and spread it amongst their friends).
• It differentiates Volkswagen from their competitors as people who think differently.
• It’s probably intended to be attractive to a younger client base than their standard customers.
• It engages with the audience and starts a dialogue, by virtue of being a competition.
• It makes you think (and smile!).

What makes this project interesting to Volkswagens market is that it’s all about taking something ordinary and boring, and flipping it into something fun. You can’t help but be curious about what solutions have been suggested.

Making something fun, when you don’t expect it to be, is obviously an attention-grabber.

Are you wondering if this can work in your business? Read on to find out how.

forthcoming events:

Marketing Systems
Friday 17 September 9.30am-5pm
**waiting list now open**

Learn the 4 key systems you need to automate your marketing, plus a step by step guide on how to set them up. With the right systems in place you will save time and money, reduce anxiety and have more energy for the parts of your business that you love to do.

click here for more information

Insider’s Guide To The Media
Tuesday 28 September 7pm-9pm
**waiting list now open**

Are you confused about how to use the media to boost your business? This workshop demonstrates the huge benefits of raising your media profile, taking you through the ins and outs of how the media works, so that you can make it work…for you! As well as this we’ll be teaching you about what makes a good story, and how to pitch that story to different types of media. If you’ve always wondered about how you can reach a far wider audience for your business by using the media but haven’t been sure where to start then this is the workshop for you.

click here for more information

For information about more events from The Entrepreneur’s Finishing School go to our events page.

this week’s tip: make it fun!

When I went skiing in St Anton a couple of years ago, we kept going back to one restaurant. The reason we returned time after time? They had a slide to take you down the stairs to the toilets. As anyone who has ever tried to walk downstairs in ski boots knows, it’s not easy. This made it positively hilarious!

Have you ever tried to get a little kid to eat their dinner by playing aeroplanes or trains going into a tunnel?

That’s two examples of making something fun that have been around for sometime, so Volkswagen don’t have a monopoly on this marketing technique, and you can use it too. Just be a little bit brave about it.

Now your business might not be terribly ‘fun-oriented’ (hello lawyers, hello financial planners, hello insurers!), but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun with your clients.

Remember when you went to the dentists when you were little and you got a lolly-pop if you were good? That was a non-fun business (dentists), making doing business with them fun (sweets), in order to attract a target client group (kids).
You can do this in a number of ways:

• Run a competition with a really truly fun prize (a holiday, not supermarket vouchers)
• Put jokes about your industry in your newsletters (not ones that make your industry look stupid though!)
• Can the usual hold music on your telephone system and go for a stand-up comedy routine instead
• Run or sponsor a fun event in your local community
• Have computer games or table football in your reception area
• Invent a fun mascot (a la Compare the Meerkat) to represent your brand.
• Or, take the Volkswagen approach and reinvent a specific part of your business to be more enjoyable to interact with.

Are you already doing something fun in your business? Let me know what it is on my blog.

The QVC effect

What do you think of when someone says to you “QVC”? Is it strange gadgets, permanent tans, and presenters who can talk for half an hour about a letter box.

Or do you think of £359.7million in sales in 2008?

Yes, that’s £359.7 MILLION!

Want to bet that QVC has a formula that works? They certainly do.

The QVC formula is actually very simple: they take 2 presenters, and get them to have an involved conversation about an item, and then they offer it for sale at a special QVC price for a limited number of units. (There’s a lot of extra little things that they do, but this is the essence of it).

This method sold £359.7million worth of goods because QVC draws us into a conversation between the presenters, they’re not just shouting at us and telling us to buy in a high-pressure manner. Our brains process the conversation as impartial opinion, even though we know it’s not, which makes us more likely to buy. Then, they create urgency based around the price and the number of units available.

Are you thinking that this couldn’t work for you? This works as well for pies as it does for £150,000 diamond rings on the shopping channel, so why shouldn’t you be able to use something here? Read on to find out how.

forthcoming events:

Simply the Best – with Jo King
**DATE CHANGE** 6 AUGUST 10am-3pm
click here for more information

Marketing Systems
Friday 17 September 9.30am-5pm
**waiting list now open**

Learn the 4 key systems you need to automate your marketing, plus a step by step guide on how to set them up. With the right systems in place you will save time and money, reduce anxiety and have more energy for the parts of your business that you love to do.

click here for more information

For information about more events from The Entrepreneur’s Finishing School go to our events page.

this week’s tip: how to employ the QVC effect in your business

So you probably don’t run a shopping channel, or have a multi-million pound business (yet!), but you CAN get a little bit of QVC magic into your marketing with a few simple steps:

1. Don’t rely on what you say about your products and services to make your sales for you.
2. Get happy clients to give you written, audio, or video testimonials focusing on the effects that your products or services have had on them or their lives (not focused on how fab you and your work is). It should be almost like a mini-case study.
3. Use these testimonials in your marketing materials – not just on your website. You can also post them on your blog, your social media profiles, in your brochures or catalogues, and even use one on the back of your business card.
4. Use scarcity in your marketing – but do it in a genuine way please! This might mean that you have a special offer for a limited time, an extra gift available with the first 10 purchases, create a limited edition version of your top product, or you just tell people how many units are available on a first come, first served basis. Most small businesses have scarcity built in, but don’t tell anyone. This is part of who you are, so don’t be afraid to use it!

Pay-per-click demystified

I’ve had a lot of conversations this week with people who are concerned about their Search Engine Optimisation and Google Rankings (for those at the back, that means how easy it is for your website to be found on search engines like Google).

Good SEO is important, and it takes a bit of time to build it up and a lot of work to get it right. However, there is another way to get found on Google that is INSTANT, and that is through Google’s Pay Per Click (PPC) programme called Adwords.

The benefit of PPC is that you only pay for the ad when someone clicks on it, and you get to set the amount you want to pay per click, and the maximum you want to spend in a day or a month. This gives you complete control.

Studies show that when someone wants to find out information about a topic, they are more likely to look at ‘natural’ search results (the ones you need good SEO to achieve), but that if they want to buy a product or service they will go straight to the PPC ads on the right-hand side of their Google results page.

My point is that Google Adwords are a great tool for people wanting to sell products or services, and especially good for small businesses because you have complete control over your ad spend.

However, here’s a word of warning: Adwords are very easy to set up, and if you don’t keep an eye on your Adwords account, it’s very easy to spend more money than you expect. It’s also very easy to write ads that will get you lots of clicks but won’t get you the right sort of customers.

There are 2 things you can do about this:

1. Learn how to do it yourself. This is totally feasible and there’s lots of great training on Google’s own site, and some really good books you can buy to help you.
2. Get someone who knows what you’re doing to do it for you. This is my preferred route, and this week I have a guest article from someone that really does know what they’re doing when it comes to Google Adwords – Olga Sladeckova of Marketing Resolutions.

I hope you find Olga’s article useful.

increase your sales with google adwords
by Olga Sladeckova

google search engine – adwords outlined in redgoogle ad words

Google AdWords Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is one of the fastest and most cost effective ways to promote your business.
Here are just a few of the benefits that advertisers can enjoy:

- No minimum or maximum spend
- You are in full control of how much you spend
- You decide on the keywords that will trigger your advert on Google
- You decide on the most appropriate page to send visitors for each keyword
- You can track your sales/conversions/signups etc.
- AdWords gives you account performance data which you can use to optimize your account for ever improving performance
- Brand new advertisers are eligible for an AdWords voucher worth a minimum of £50, so you really have nothing to lose.

All you need to do is open your AdWords account, set up your campaigns and start advertising. This can only take a few moments however if you really want to get the most out of AdWords it is crucial to educate yourself first.

Here are some tips for setting up your first Google AdWords account.
Google AdWords account is very easy to open. Just go to this link www.AdWords.Google.com, follow the instruction and you can have an account open within 3 minutes.

Make sure to get at least £50 Google AdWords voucher from Google if you are a brand new advertiser and keep in mind that vouchers can only be redeemed in the first 2 weeks since you opened your account.

Once you open your account you will need to start thinking about what products or services you want to sell through AdWords. Write them down on a piece of paper and then brain storm other variations to these words.
For further help with keyword variations use the free Google keyword tool on the following link: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

The length of your keyword list will depend on the number of products or services that you are selling. Once you are happy with your list, group the keywords by services or products.
These groups will later become your Google AdWords campaigns. Split up your keywords further into subgroups which will later become your Google AdWords ad groups.
You have now created your AdWords account structure:

You will now need to write ads for each ad group. It is a good idea to write 2 ads per ad group and test which one is getting better performance. Make sure to include a strong call-to-action at the end of you ad. A call-to-action can be: ‘Buy Now!’, ‘Order Today’, ‘Signup Now!’, ‘Learn More Now!’, ‘Book Today’ etc.

When writing ads the rule of thumb is to use the keywords in your ad text. This will help in increasing your conversion rates but also help reduce your cost per click.

Olga Sladeckova is a google ad words approved individual. For more information and tips on advertising with AdWords download the FREE Google AdWords Guide

What’s your CPD?

Did you know that I used to be a sustainable construction consultant? The construction industry really likes its CPD. CPD stands for Continuing Professional Development, and it means that if you have a job that is regulated, you have to do a certain amount of training each year to keep your regulated status.

Of course, this is not limited to the construction industry. Medical professionals are required to do CPD or they could be struck off. Solicitors and barristers also have to go through the same process in order to keep working.

However, entrepreneurs aren’t required to do CPD. You can set up a company or become a sole trader without knowing the first thing about business. And in those situations, many people get it wrong and find themselves in trouble, so it’s important to do your own CPD.

What made me think of this is a guy I met this weekend on a speaker training course run by Joanna Martin. His name is Simon Coulson and he was on the course too. We got chatting at the Saturday night party, and he told me that he ran no less than 11 businesses! The man is a multi-millionnaire. He is also currently speaking to audiences of 3000-6000 people, yet he was still on the ame speaker training course as me, doing his own CPD and working on his skills.

You might think that it’s easy for Simon to see what he should be spending his time learning about, and I’ll show you how to do the same.

So you want to keep your business education up to date, but you don’t know where to start? It’s actually a simpler process than it first appears:

1. Assess your business priorities. What does your business need right now? What is it going to need in 1, 2 or 3 years’ time? Write a list. This could include topics such as ‘new marketing campaign’, ‘better financial management’, ‘new website’, ‘social media presence’

2. Identify the knowledge gaps. Look at your list and assess which items you already have the know how to implement and which you need more knowledge of or support to acheive.

3. Eliminate. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to learn everything yourself. Look at your list and identify the areas where it would be quicker, easier and cheaper to buy in or delegate the learning. Put a cross next to these items.

4. Prioritise. Look at the remaining items on your list. Which is the one that it would be quickest for you to learn? Which is the one that will have the biggest impact on your business? If the answer to both questions is the same – this is your focus! If the answers are different, make a judgement call.

5. Find learning resources. Look for courses, classes, books and other learning tools around your priority subject area (such as the Social Media Training Course I’m running next week)

6. Take the training. Book yourself on the course, download the podcasts, watch the webinars, or do whatever you need to do. Only do 1 course at a time though, and give yourself time to implement what you’ve learned before starting the next one.

If you go through this process every 6 months, you will be streets ahead of the majority of other entrepreneurs in terms of your business knowlege.

Remember: Everyones learning style is different, so you have to find a way of learning that suits you. This is why I run a range of different types of training, including seminars, 121 mentoring, and my new online course, which I’ll be telling you about very soon!

What’s your experience?

I work with real small business (and micro-business) owners who are tackling tough marketing challenges on a day-to-day basis – and winning!

The cumulative knowledge and experience of these folks is priceless, and I’m pulling it together into a special report which you will have free access to once it’s complete.

However, I don’t want to go just on anecdotal evidence. I want to put together some real stats from genuine entrepreneurs and this is where I need your help and the benefit of your experience.

Please give me 3 minutes of your time to complete this 4 question survey, about your biggest marketing challenges and successes.

All results will be reported anonymously, and all respondents will be entered into a draw to win a free 1-hour marketing consultation (normally £295).

Click here to take part in the survey

I’ll show you how you can put surveys of your own togetherbelow.

You can use surveys for all sorts of things:

• Post project/order feedback
• ‘Taking the temperature’ of your market
• Defining your pricing
• Staff satisfaction
• Getting information on your market for articles and press releases
• Finding out what your customers are specifically looking for in terms of features or services
• …and lots more

There are different ways to do a survey. You can call people on the phone, have paper feedback forms sent out with your product or invoices, or you can create an online survey and email the link to potential respondents.

This last option is one of the quickest, easiest and cheapest.

I run all my polls and surveys using Constant Contact (free trial available). The benefit of using Constant Contact for me is that it’s also my email marketing software, so I have all that stuff in one place and don’t have to be exporting contact lists every time I want to run a survey.

I have also used Wufoo, which creates online forms (basic account with up to 3 forms is free). This means that you can have surveys and questionnaires actually embedded in your website.

Some of my clients have used Survey Monkey as well (basic account free – for up to 100 responses per survey and 10 questions per survey). This is probably one of the best known survey tools.

Both of these are extremely good tools also.

To get started, sign up for the account of your choice and watch the tutorial or quick start guide. This will save you many headaches later (justsayin!).

Figure out what you want your questions to be before you start with the software though! This is actually the hardest bit. You need to keep the questions clear and concise. Give example answers where necessary and use multiple choice where you can (easier for people to complete and for the results to be analysed).

When you have completed your questionnaire, get someone to test it, to make sure it’s not too difficult or time consuming to complete.

Then you have to invite people to complete it. You may have to ask more than once, but that’s okay as long as you don’t pester people every 5 minutes.

The best way to ask people to complete your survey is to:

1. Tell them what it is ( e.g. customer satisfaction survey, article research)

2. Tell them what it’s for (e.g. to help you develop better products, create a report)

3. Tell them how long it’s going to take them to complete (e.g. 5 questions, 15 minutes)

4. Give an incentive for taking part (e.g. free copy of the results, prize draw entry)

woah-oh, I’m half way there….

Yes, I was at the Bon Jovi concert at London’s O2 arena last night! It was fab, with lots of big hair rock, hand-waving and singalong action. A great night out.

As a result, I’m still buzzing with excitement today, and just couldn’t wait until tomorrow’s newsletter to tell you about the amazing event I am running NEXT WEEK (that’s why I’m “half way there” – geddit?!)

It’s the second of my successful Marketing Mentor Taster workshops and the last one that I’m going to be doing this year – so if you want to attend, this is the session that you really need to come to.

What attendees said about this event:

“It’s a breath of fresh air to meet someone of your professionalism and knowledge”

(Rachel Bradman www.bossrecruit.com)

“Tamsin’s workshop helped me to take a step back and work out my vision for where I want to be. By the end of the session I was well on my way to planning how I might achieve that vision. A very valuable 2 hours”.

(Carole Seawert www.caroleseawert.co.uk)

This is a 2 hour session with a very limited number of places available. Together we will be giving your business an “enthuse injection”, helping you to set real marketing goals.

The cost is just £25 and the workshop is being held at the delightful Kensington Hotel on Queen’s Gate (close to South Kensington tube) from 9am to 11am on Wednesday 30 June.

Click here to book now.

Come along and see if your marketing can be a “bed of roses” and remember that “I’ll be there for you” to help you pull it all together.

If you don’t want to, I’m not going to make you – but you really should think about it

I’m not having that conversation again. Ever.

It’s that conversation where I try to persuade a business owner that they ought to start using social media to help them create relationships with people who are interested in their products, promote their businesses and support their customers, and they resist the arguments in favour.

I am going to gracefully accept that some folk just aren’t cut out for the likes of Twitter and Facebook, and if they lose out as a result, it’s not my fault – however bad I feel about their losses.

However, I am going to take this opportunity to lay some information out for you to consider before you say that social media “is not for your business”. Consider the following:

• Global social media usage is increasing 82% year on year.
• What you say on social media (and how you say it) is more influential than what you have on your website – and you think your website is worthwhile, don’t you?
• The heaviest social media users spend the most online, on both virtual and real-life products and services.
• Dell computers have made over $4million in sales from Twitter alone.
• You have to be where your customers are – and they’re on social media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and 4Square.
• 19% of all Tweets are about customer service.
• Customer service is the fastest growing use of Twitter – which means customers are starting to expect to converse with their favourite brands and service providers on social media.
• AT&T, Nokia, and Samsung have at least 15 Twitter accounts each – mostly for customer service.

As an aside, I managed to gather all those statistics from conference presentations that are being reported on Twitter RIGHT NOW. So it’s all current info, and it took me about 5 minutes to find it all. Useful, huh?

Do you think your customer’s aren’t using this amazing resource to gather product and service recommendations from their contacts? Of course they are!

…and one last thing: Apart from your time, social media is FREE (unless you want to develop fancy apps or fan pages). So, think about the amount of money you spend on press advertising, Pay Per Click campaigns, flyers, leaflets, business cards, networking and your website, and compare that to FREE.

In this week’s tip, I’ll show you how to assess the value of social media for yourself, even if you’re terrified of Twitter, fearful of Facebook, or don’t fancy lingering over Linkedin.

this week’s tip: do your social media research

Despite the solid statistics and information above, I know that there are a number of people reading this newsletter who still think that social media is not a useful tool for them.

Well, if that’s you, I applaud your healthy skepticism, and I understand that you would probably like some proof that relates directly to your business. Here’s how you get it in 3 simple steps:

1. Do a search on Twitter, Facebook and/or Linkedin for the keywords related to your business, your service and your products (e.g. if you are an accountant, your keywords should include “accountancy”, “tax” “VAT” etc). If there is a conversation going on that references any of these, and you’re not part of it, you’re losing out.

2. Have a look at your 5 main competitors. Do they have social media links on their websites? If they do, and you don’t, you’re losing out.

3. Do your competitors have Twitter profiles or Linkedin/Facebook pages? If they do, and you don’t, you’re losing out.

It’s that easy. You may need to set up an account in order to perform the search, but don’t worry – you can always delete it.

Get started in social media OR learn advanced strategies, OR both!

Because of the topic of this week’s newsletter, I want to give you advance notice of a brand new social media training workshop that I am running on July 16th.

This is a very special event for 3 reasons:

- Firstly, it is tailored to whatever stage you’re at. We have a session for absolute beginners in the morning, and an advanced strategies session in the afternoon.

- Secondly, it is a hands-on workshop. You will sit at a computer and work through each activity as we teach it, so that, on the basic course, you will leave with your social media profiles set up and customised, your first posts up there, and your first contacts/followers in place. For the advanced course, you will leave with a Facebook page and Linkedin page for your business, a custom Twitter profile, accounts on 3 different automation tools, and a social media strategy for your business.

- You will get individual attention and support. We are only taking 15 people per session in order to give everyone maximum 1-on-1 time.

I am pleased to be working again with Keren Lerner, of Top Left Design, and fellow Faculty Member at The Entrepreneurs’ Finishing School to bring you this hands-on workshop. Keren is an experienced web designer and online marketer, and has been creating custom social media profiles for her clients, and training business owners on social media for the past 2 years.

Both of us are active social media users for our own businesses, so we teach tips and techniques that we have tried out for ourselves – not things we’ve learnt second-hand from books and blogs.

To learn more, and take advantage of a really fabulous early-bird discount, please click here.

Don’t believe the hype!

Last week I organised an event for Nice Networking, which was a select afternoon tea gathering called ‘Cake-working’.

As the name suggest, this event was supposed to be “nice” so I did some research and picked The Gore Hotel in Kensington as our destination. I chose The Gore on the strength of their write up on afternoontea.co.uk, their own website and their mid-range price point for afternoon tea with champagne.

Click here to look at their website. Doesn’t it look like a fabulous place, and wouldn’t you expect a really refined and delectable afternoon tea to be served here?

Unfortunately, two things happened – the afternoon tea was okay, rather than really nice, and the venue itself didn’t quite live up to its glossy web photos.

Was I disappointed? You betcha! My disappointment was because my expectations had been built up unreasonably (that’s the key word), not because anything was fundamentally bad or wrong.

In this week’s tip, I’ll tell you why this happened and how to avoid it.

this week’s tip: don’t believe the hype

Most small businesses that I meet are better than their marketing, so they won’t fall into this trap, but here’s why it might happen to some businesses:

• Your marketing agency/ department are masters of spin
• You have got complacent about the value of your product/ service
• You believe your own hype

I think that my recent experience is due to all of the above.

You can avoid these pitfalls by following these pointers:

• Keep it real – tell your clients what they actually get from you and if that doesn’t sound good enough, improve your product/ service!
• Keep asking your customers what they think – use surveys, suggestion cards, client appreciation evenings and focus groups to identify what you could do better and how
• Don’t believe your own hype! To keep checking in with the reality of your business, take your customers journey to see what it’s like, rather than relying on marketing phrases like “superior customers service”, “great value” or “cosy ambiance”

Don’t freak out! 5 ways to beat your control freak perfectionism

Are you a control freak? I confess that I have control freak tendencies and it’s something that I have learned to keep a lid on.

In marketing, being a control freak is good in some ways (you want to get the details right), but very destructive in others, as it can stop you from promoting yourself effectively – or even at all.

How do you know if you’re a control freak about your marketing? If you can answer ‘yes’ to any of the following:

• You become paralyzed by fear of not getting those important details right, so you don’t send that email out.
• You get stuck in a never-ending spiral of improvements so that your promotion never sees the light of day.
• You agonize over which offer to run until the deadline for submission has passed.
• You can’t make up your mind about which product/service to promote, so you end up throwing something together at the very last minute which is not up to scratch.
• Only YOU can deal with emails/calls/meetings/customer service.
• Your website has been ‘under construction’ for 6 months or more.

If you are an entrepreneur, the chances are that you’ve fallen victim to at least one of these. Don’t despair, however as help is at hand. There are several ways to trick yourself out of your control freak perfectionism, and in this week’s tip, I’ll give you 5 ways to do so.

this week’s tip: don’t freak out! 5 ways to beat your control freak perfectionism

Perfectionism and being a control freak holds you back. You simply won’t get the stuff done that you need to market your business effectively.

Here’s 5 things that you can do to get around this problem:

1. Set deadlines. Break each marketing task down into it’s individual parts, and use your calendar to remind you that your task is due. e.g. “Website homepage copy to developers today”. If you can break everything down into small bits, it’s easier to just get it done.

2. Make your deadlines external. This means telling someone else what your deadline is, and having them chase you for it if necessary. e.g. Tell your developer when they will have your website homepage copy – you’ll be more likely to get a move on if someone else is waiting for your action.

3. Use a timer. If procrastination paralysis has hit you hard, take an oven timer (or use an online timer) and set it for just 10 minutes. Focus on that task for those 10 minutes and when the timer goes off, you are allowed to stop. This is a great technique if you have several things to work on at once.

4. Start using the phrase “good enough”. Nothing will ever be perfect, so tell yourself that your marketing only has to be “good enough”. Statistics show that it is consistency, rather than quality, of marketing that really drives sales. In an ideal world, your marketing will be consistent AND high quality, but that’s something you can work up to.

5. Check up on yourself. Set a calendar reminder, use post-it notes, or get a colleague to ask you this question at least once a day: “Am I being a control freak”. This will help you to catch yourself before you slip too far back into your control freakish ways.

Is this where you’re wasting money?

How much money do you spend on networking? Really, honestly add it up right now and see what you spend. You have to include:

• The cost of attending the meeting
• Your travel ticket/petrol costs to get there
• The ticket price for the meeting, if there is one
• Your membership fee for the organisation putting it on, if there is one
• The value of your time whilst you’re at the meeting (if you charge £50 per hour, and the meeting is 2 hours long, the value of your time is £100)
• The value of your time taken to get there (if it takes 30mins each way, that’s another £50)

Now think about what you do when you get home from your networking meeting. Most people reading this email will take the business cards of those that they’ve met at the meeting and stick them in a draw (that’s if they even make it out of your pocket/bag/business card holder in the first place).

Those cards then stay there until you do a desk clear-out 2 years later, at which point you throw them away.

If, at some point in between gathering the cards and throwing them away, you decide that you want to get in touch with “that guy that you met at that evening event – you know the one, he was tall, and it was at that bar, and he does something with companies in the City that would be interested in what you do, and he told you to call him”, but now you can’t find his card because you can’t remember his name or where you met him. Does that sound at all familiar?

Do you see how you are wasting the time and money that you spend on networking if you don’t then do something with the connections and contacts that you make at those meetings? I’m not saying that networking is a waste of time and money, in fact I am very pro-networking as a business growth tool, but you have to follow up.

There are 2 key things about this situation:

1. You have to follow up with contacts in an appropriate and timely way.
2. In order to follow up with people, you need to have a system in place to do just this

In this week’s tip, I’ll share my own business card collection and processing system.

this week’s tip: create a system to deal with your networking followups

In order to follow up effectively on the contacts that you make through networking and other meetings, you need a simple system.

Here’s my system for networking follow up:

1. At the meeting I take notes, either on a pad if it’s a sit-down event or on a person’s business card if it’s a stand-up-and-mingle event. I note down 2 things:

• What I can do for them.
• What they have said they can do for me, or would like me to help them with.

2. The next day (or as soon after the event as possible), I sit down with my notes and send each person an email which includes whatever information I said I’d send them, or makes reference to what they wanted from me (in which case I include a suggestion of how to proceed).

3. I then take the cards of those people, and the cards of any other people that I met at the event and pop them in a file marked ‘cards to process’ that sits on my desk.

4. Once a week, the file gets opened, and all the cards inside are added to my mailing list (I use constant contact).They then automatically get a message from me that says something like “it was lovely to meet you and I’d like to keep in touch by sending you news and marketing tips by email, but if you don’t want to receive them you can unsubscribe at any time”. N.B. If you have read my free guide to email marketing you will know that asking permission in this way is VITAL.

You can easily set up your own system that will help you to manage all incoming cards and contacts effectively and quickly.

However, that won’t help you to deal with your backlog of cards that I just know you have sat on your desk or in a drawer. Don’t panic – Tamara and the team at TJ Consulting can help.

They have a Business Card Buster service, and are offering this service for 100 cards with NO VAT to pay when you quote code ENTHUSE 01. See below for full details

special offer from TJ Consulting:  business card buster
 
Are you a keen networker meeting a lot of new prospects every month?

Do you often end up missing out on potential business, as you haven’t got a system to manage those new relationships?

Do you spend your valuable time entering business cards into your contact systems (Outlook, iPhone, Blackberry or CRM)?

Why not consider passing over the responsibility to your virtual assistant TJConsulting. Your business cards will be safely processed and emailed back to you as an Excel spreadsheet ready to be imported into Outlook or a CRM system.

In May: we are offering you our Biz Cards Buster. Get up to 100 business cards processed and entered into Excel for just £50. And, what’s more, we have included the VAT in this price for all clients of Enthuse Marketing (saving worth £8.75)!

Contact Tamara to BOOK NOW and secure this amazing limited offer!

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