Raising the bar on marketing

As part of larger entrepreneurial effort in the Central New York region, I received a modest grant to produce a speaker series geared towards small and micro business owners, as well as business students. The first event was last evening and featured a gentleman who has owned a dozen businesses in total, seven at one time, and currently owns 3 - 4. When asked about marketing, he demonstrated how he gets information into the hands of interested parties. And then he talked about the number of business cards he gives out every month -- 500 business card! While some of us have been taught to give business cards and literature to people that we feel are truly interested, his belief is to give a business card to everyone and to leave them everywhere. He joked that people say they can tell where he has been by the trail of business cards.

Later, I talked about this with someone else who was at the session. The number of business cards and promotional pieces we give out each month is much less. Yet what would happen if we gave out more? What if we challenged ourselves to give out (a modest) four business cards a day (or 120/month)?

What does this have to do with you?

How many people each day or each month do you tell about your digitization program or your digitization services? How many business cards or pieces of literature do you give out each month? What if you increased that? What if you did like last night's speaker and left a trail of literature similar to the bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel?

One more thing...even though his newspaper's web site received thousands of hits per month, that was not good enough for him. He worked with his web team to develop the site so that it would get even more. How many hits is your program's web site receiving? If you don't know, find out. And then challenge your team to increase it!

For me, the bar has been raised on marketing. Hopefully today, you will raise your bar too.

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Technorati tag: Marketing