Growing Business Through Advertising Strategies – “Using Follow-up Systems”

In today’s fast moving world, using innovative advertising strategies has become an imperative. You can’t survive by just working in silos, without letting the world know what you are up to. It’s a common practice that people usually carry a business card while they go out somewhere, so that they are able to leave a token of their remembrance with the other person. That’s a very good advertising strategy, I must say, but the general fate of a business card, is what really bothers me. You just tend to oblige the person by taking it from him, you feel it and then it simply goes into your pocket. See with this, the whole idea of your well framed advertising strategy piece goes wasted, by just this simple ignorance of the other person. A time may come when it becomes fateful enough to take it out of your pocket, you touch it again and you may now think, ahh finally the advertising strategies will pay off, but what happens generally is that, it is just put onto your working desk and then when you see it again, you again put it in your big bucket of cards.

Now you’ve seen how a well structured framework of advertising strategies also fails in situation where the other person is just bothered or we may say completely informed about the importance of what you have given him after so much thought. This is how the business card reaches its so called destination “the bucket of cards”, during this cycle one gets so multiple opportunities of exposures to these cards. But, what you actually do with these business cards once you have them is all the more interesting. You don’t even bother to make note of the important details like name, phone no. etc.

Start Executing Your Advertising Strategies

Well, if you ask me how I myself execute these advertising strategies – what I do with them is I first put them into a system, to input the information into a database. I do not use a most sophisticated “CRM”, customer relationship management for this. I normally use my email, my Gmail for this purpose. This in turn helps me make a stronger advertising strategy to make my business grow. What I do is, when I take a business card and I take the name, email, and the phone number from it and I type in all the details myself into the system, I don’t prefer any secretary or assistant or an intern or even a scanner for this purpose, probably it may not be the most efficient way to take out the information. But one advantage that I get from this activity is that I am able to remember most of the names from whom I had taken these cards. It helps me connecting with those people well by just remembering their names and the last time I had met them. I make it a practice to take cards from all the people I meet during any of the events I go, but I don’t stop this process here.

The most important step in this process is to do a “Follow up”, without this step being done properly all theadvertising strategies efforts which the person had made previously, would go wasted. So, I always make it a point to send all of them the follow up emails. Doing this is not at all easy. It requires discipline and requires commitment, since the follow up has to be religiously done the very same day I get the business card. Although, it takes just 5 minutes to write an email the same day, as it would take after two weeks. But the “value” starts to diminish exponentially with time, say if this activity is delayed by some days or several months and that is where you realize how good was your advertising strategy which became an integral part of your growing relationships and thereby has brought you some good business.

Most Integral Part Of Your Advertising Strategies – How To Make It Right?

Now the question arises, what to actually write in this follow up. What you need to write in this is just simple – what you actually talked about in the event with the person. If I had talked about something interesting, I’ll definitely mention it in the follow up mail, so that it’s easy for him to remember me. But at the same time you need to be creative and smart enough while reciting the same otherwise your audience won’t be interested in it. You may write something like this to remind them, “Remember we talk about….”, “Remember I was the guy with the red tie…..”, keeping your positioning clear.

If you do this religiously every time you get a new business card, your contact database would be your biggest asset. And even if you move to a different business, you would always have a ready made contact database with you. But you would wonder, how would this help me, why should I invest so much time in this, what would be the returns for me? All these questions troubling you would be answered soon. I’ll just tell you a real life example. Once, I met a guy who was a sales person, but was out of the business for couple of years, worried about this current situation, he was looking for some person who could help him get a good job. I asked him, why he did not use his database contacts, he was a sales guy; he must have had relationships with many people/consumers and suggested him to explore those contacts rather than asking people to help him reach to the person who can actually help. In response to my suggestion, he said, “my entire contact list is cold, I need to start from scratch”, that’s the belief he had, with which I didn’t agree at all. According to me, he had already done the biggest mistake of his life by being out of the business, and not keeping the contacts fresh and alive, ignoring the strategic aspect of maintaining those relationships. But, you should never do such a mistake otherwise you won’t find a way back.

All you need to do this is to strategize and maintain an active contact database.

Moving Ahead With The Follow-up Advertising Strategies
To start with, you need to categorize your customer list on the basis of their importance. This you can do in many ways using your creativity, one is you can start by making 3 categories – most important, second most important and least important “everyone else” group. In general, around 75% of the people in your database would come under the “everyone else” group. This categorization would help you in setting up a timeline for yourself for different groups. For example, I would like to keep in touch with “everyone else” group once a quarter or once every 3 months. Around 20% of the people in the database are the ones who likely know and trust me, so I would like to keep in touch with them once a month and then there would be 5%, whom I call my “key success partners or target consumers”. These are the people, who are most likely to help me achieve my goals today and tomorrow. Some of these people, would include my close friends and family, some clients, or may be some active business partners as well. This would be your main market from where you’ll get your business, so keep good focus on their developments. It’s the kind of advertising you do with this group will eventually make difference in your business. I would like to keep in touch with these people once a week to maintain strong connect and a good brand presence with them.

Reviewing & Pruning – An Important Aspect Of Advertising Strategies
Then comes the time to start “reviewing”. I start off with a Friday Review, wherein I scan those 5% of the group. I cross check if I have touched base with all those people, if not I will shoot them an email. This is how I complete my weekly review. In my monthly review, I pull out my 20% of the group, while in the quarterly review I go through the whole thing. Along with these reviews one of the thing I do on a regular basis is to prune-off the poisonous people from the database. These are those, who are negative accounts and are no long in my email lists/contact lists. People whose energies are not viable with me, are always comparing, bad customers, I just prune them. People to whom you may be giving your time and energy, but they are not giving you anything back in return, can certainly be considered in the poisonous group and are not be considered in your top 5% or top 20% list. If you are able to identify them, and the quicker you move away from them, better it is. My father once told me, when he moved from School to College, he used to spend his time with positive and vibrant people. When I asked why – he said “Because I always wanted to have good grades, so I preferred hanging with people with good grades only, and stay away from the company of the bottom scorers. This would help him stay in the contact of the intelligent group, and to stay competitive at the same time.

One must always focus on the most valuable relationships.

Apply The Pareto’s Principle In Your Advertising Strategies
Here, I would like to focus on a very important rule “80:20 rule” of marketing which will help you in executing your advertising strategies. It says that, one must always focus on the most valuable relationships.

While, the biggest mistake people make while networking is, they say “I do not know enough people whom I can tell about my product, I need to make fresh relationships”, instead of saying “I need to network with the people I know now, the people that are currently in my contact database to tell them about the products I have”.

Going Beyond Emails – Adding Personalization And Being Creative With Advertising Strategies
My mother used to always say that thank you cards, emails and thank you SMS are worth their weight in gold. The mail space is getting less and less crowded as digital space is getting more and more crowded. To stand out in this crowd, you really need to be creative and do something different, like writing a thank you card, hand written with real signature and stamp. I myself have written a lot of thank you cards and believe me it actually pays dividends which are huge. So, do what you can do to stand out, do something physically- add a touch of personalization. Always remember, the person out there would be going to touch and feel your response, so in order to make your mark in his mind it should be something special. If they find it special, they may even keep your thank you notes for rest of their lives, some people do so. They may pin it up on their walls, may talk to someone else, that “I got thank you note from that guy”. Just imagine how good you would feel them. And if it’s just an email, they will see it and delete it, without thinking for it ever again.

Social Media – Yet Another Way To Achieve Desired Outcome Of Your Advertising Strategies
Another way to stay in connect with contacts that reside in your database, is “Social media” which can help you in achieving the desired outcomes of your advertising strategies. I use it generally to communicate that is public, especially for generic advertising. Once I had a conversation with somebody on Facebook. He made a post and I commented on it, and in response he replied back saying ‘’hey how are you”, “what’s going on”, “what’s new” etc. I responded “I to coming to Mumbai (this man I am talking about was also from Mumbai), hearing so, he sent me an invitation to his event, which I accepted and we later exchanged a lot many messages. Then I realized, hey, my conversation with that person is pretty much available on my wall for all the people to see, as well on his wall. I could also connect with people who were linked to that post of the person at no extra cost but this all is too personal. “Social media” can be also be a passive way of following up different people at no additional cost. Your work as an advertiser becomes pretty much easy. Rather than being into one to one relationships through emails, you are able to make one to many relationships in lesser time with wider reach.

One of the most promising social media platform for communication in today’s age is Twitter, which is becoming an increasingly important part advertising strategies. Through it you are able to easily remind people that you exist and remain at top of their mind. That’s what your aim should always be “To have a distinct position for yourself in their mind” That’s how, I use social media. I admit my understanding of it is not super deed, but I am definitely able to connect well with people on it this is what I can assure you from my experience. But since, it’s too public, one word of caution that should be kept in mind always wherever social media is concerned, i.e. you should carefully decide your target group and the kind of advertising strategies you would use keeping the actual intention subtly hidden and covered under wraps.

By Tarun Gupta

International Networking: Few Examples of Marketing Strategies

What about breaking into a new country without any marketing strategies? Would you not want to have a trip to a new country? Do you not wish to go to a new country earn dollars there and comeback richer? Won’t you like to be a called a rich international entrepreneur? If you ask me, I personally have a wish to be able to travel the world on company’s dollars and come back richer. But you would wonder – How would I do that? Well at the core of it lies your strategy. You need to have a strategy and a focused plan to make this happen.

So, when it’s decided that you want to do business somewhere in the other part of the world, everybody would start saying – I can’t help you, since I don’t know anyone there or have no examples of marketing strategies for there. But what will you do then. How will you go ahead with the entrepreneurial instinct inside you that just arose. Would you just let it burn off? I’ll take this up later. First, think about this. Have you ever noticed unemployed people saying “I will take any job” but just with this information you won’t be able to think anything about it. But, if he says that I am an electric engineer and I want work for a fortune 500 company like IBM. Hearing IBM all of a sudden, you would realize you probably know someone at IBM and you can put him in touch with that concerned person. Here, in this case you were able to help the person because he became very specific.

Here is the answer of the question I had left unanswered. Always be specific, even if anybody seeks help form you then specifically ask about the areas in which he/she needs your help like in the above case the engineer did and also vice versa. Always have a pertinent, specific, to the point answer. This is the most important part to be kept in your mind while framing a international networking and marketing strategy and organization’s marketing strategies.

Deploy Social Media Extensively In Your Marketing Strategies

Your marketing strategies may consist of A) List of companies B) List of decision makers and many such things. What is most important here is, you should be able to find a common means of communication between you and the other person because this would make things a lot easier for you and your marketing plan. Social media, for instance is great for this, specially “Linked-in”. Linked-in helps you know the professional profile of the person really well. On the other hand, you also have sites like Facebook, Twitter where you can have informal communication with the person as well. Thus, social media can help a lot in knowing the person.

Besides these, you can always Google the person, send mail to the person, send message to the person or even call the person say through Skype or VOIP. In short, this would enable you with all the information you wanted to always know. Sometimes companies invest heavily in their internet marketing, internet advertising strategies, online marketing or online marketing tactics to be present actively across all the social media forums to promote reverse/pull marketing strategies.

Creating Local Partner Model As One Of Your Key Marketing Strategies

Now, you know about the customer well, say through some of the social media means, but one question that still remains unanswered in your marketing strategies is – how to reach out to the customer? Answer is simple, instead of you yourself trying to reach out to the customer, you look for a liaising partner in between. You may try to find out a guy who has a good network and can help you to reach out to your customers. This is same as this situation, say I am selling a product for an education institution, so I have 2 options with me; either I can go to each institute on my own or else I can sell to the “X” guy who sells to these institutes. I would approach “X” and ask him whether he would like to sell my services as well, and will offer him good commission. These Intermediaries are generally known as Local Partners.

Thus knowing local partners and establishing connect with them in the specific region you wish to go would help you in 2 ways; first it would give you a good understanding of the region, second it will obviously help you in your business expansion. Apart from all this, one thing that is irreplaceable is you yourself. Before doing any kind of business in the new country, you first need to go there, meet people, get acquainted with their culture etc. Also, sometimes in some cultures people prefer to see you face-to-face before they actually do any kind of business with you. In this case, a local partnering model proves to be very helpful creating a win-win situation for both.

I will like to give you a small tip which someone had given me sometime back and it is a brilliant one. When one of my closest friend who had never been to Singapore before, landed at the airport he just called up the top 10 hotels of Singapore saying that he is a sales trainer by profession, and he will do sales training of their sales staff in the evening for free, if they could allow him to stay for two weeks in their hotel. Isn’t is something very creative and interesting to hear. I guess it’s certainly is. And guess what, his communication with those 10 hotels made him win a complimentary room in all those 10 hotels for 2 weeks. Since he had a pool of choices, he could choose the best among them.

But aren’t you thinking how was he able to get a free accommodation? All this happened because he asked himself a question “How can I go to Singapore on a budget?” And while thinking for an answer to this question he realized he could use his training capabilities in order to stay in a hotel. So, aren’t you asking this question to yourself – how can you make it happen instead of just relying on the normal belief that you cannot afford it since it’s too far or since you don’t know anybody there.

My same Singapore friend just called the place, offered his services and was there for good 2 weeks, and he just networked, networked and networked, probably didn’t get too much out of it in the first time. But he did the same thing again two months later and now Singapore has become one of the hub for his business operations. And now he is doing the same with Indonesia, Malaysia, China and other countries around Singapore. Now, he is even developing a hub in Dubai as well. Thus, the bottom line is “You have to go there, no matter how far is it, whether you know somebody there or not and that is the only marketing strategy one can deploy at that point in time”.

Just couple of quick tips on marketing strategies – as takeaways to expand your business internationally:
1. Give yourself a local phone number.
2. Get a local virtual office address.

They will facilitate your liaising with a local partner and will give a boost to your newly set business in the new country.

Here’s another very simple idea, just to show that you have an international mindset, add ‘+’ in front of telephone number, as all international numbers have. Start with a ‘+’ in front of the telephone number, then add the country code. This will help your local partners to know that you have an international mindset in type of marketing strategies you do and you can think on their lines as well.

Re-Validate Your Marketing Material And Marketing Strategies
Last tip, have a look at the marketing material created by your senior management or public relations cell, check if your marketing strategies cater to the international audience or does it only use lot of local lingos that might not be understood by even an English speaking people in the foreign country. This kind of research and planning is important because if they cannot understand your marketing material then whole idea behind creating that material and allocating huge finances towards them goes completely in vain.

Hence, all these points and marketing strategies are needed to be kept in mind in order to inculcate in your business DNA an international mindset.

By Tarun Gupta