AMERICAN EXPRESS PUBLICITY COMPETITION
Hello Everyone,
Thanks so much to all of you who entered our Free Publicity Competition. I really appreciate all the effort and ideas that you sent me.
I’ve included the ideas below so all the members of our group can use them to grow their own businesses. I’ve also included the contact info of the people who sent in the ideas as a way to further promote them for entering the competition.
AND THE WINNER IS … SHARMEN LANE OF SHAR SPEAKS.
Sharmen Lane is a radio host, author and motivational speaker. She has a radio program called “Success Made Simple” on VoiceAmerica.com and WebTalkRadio.net. She has a listening audience of over 15,000 people worldwide and she has offered to interview me on her radio show about The NYC Business Networking Group.
Please check out Shar’s website at www.sharspeaks.com. You can contact her at 917 583 3830 or at .
I chose Sharmen as the winner because I was looking for one idea to get the name of our group out to as many people as possible, to help grow the membership of this group. With an audience of 15,000 that’s the biggest market I can hit in one go.
The other reason I picked this idea is because once the program has aired, I will have a promotional and marketing tool that I can use over and over again to keep promoting our networking group. This will be invaluable and really cost effective in the ongoing use of this broadcast.
Please check out all the ideas below to market your own businesses. Thanks again to all of you.
Cheers, Ilana
Word-of-mouth is the best form of advertisement, so let's develop that into a concentrated viral marketing effort. Start with the existing members, such as myself. I have attended hundreds of networking events and joined your group because I saw the word business in the title. Ive never attended an event, but incentivizing members such as myself and others would certainly change that philosophy.
Turn these networking events into promotional opportunities by allowing members to host at their offices OR at their client's. In exchange, they musy invite and guarantee 10 business professionals attend the event (10 potential new meetup members). They showcase their services or clients and
at the same time you have each of the 10 signup to your meetup.
Paul Harrison, Managing Partner, Blu Chip Marketing, D: (212) 842-1396
E: , W: www.BluChipMarketing.com
Hey Ilana,
I will give you up to $1000 credit on a single purchase of promotional products at list from one of the following of my suppliers (see below for additional minor conditions):
www.leedsworld.com (excludes flash memory), www.starline.com, www.gemline.com, www.bicgraphic.com (only pens & bags)
You have to order at least the first quantity shown on the left of the pricing grid of an item. Note there are usually setup charges, and unless specified that it is a “four color process” imprint, there are additional setup & run charges if the imprint is more than one color. I will get your art in order within reason. All items will be co-branded—my company may have to appear first for me to get the special pricing from the factories which enables me to make this offer, but your name & website will appear as well, & I’ll have the art designed to feature both equally as much as possible.
--I will want a one way link back to my site from any sites you control, & a blurb as “The Official Promotional Products Supplier” (or some such) of your organizations, and advertise that I offer special discounts to members. I can arrange for the info to be placed on your web site without you having to pay someone to do it as long as you can provide the back end logons & passwords.
--I would like to address the meetup at which you give this away as a featured speaker—5 or 10 minutes will do the trick.
--this has to be ordered before holiday season—by early September at the latest. You could still use it as a holiday gift, but the order will have to be shipped to you.
This should enable you to promote one or more of your meetups with a nice giveaway. You could buy 500 $2 items, or 100 $10 really nice bags or expensive looking pens. If you feature “item xyz” to be given to each attendant, with a nice picture I can supply for free, it’s sure to increase attendance—everyone likes to receive something of perceived value for free. I’d be happy to go over some of the items on the above web sites with you & make specific suggestions, depending upon the theme of the particular meetup you want to promote.Best,Dave David Stein, 212-868-1813,
Hi Ilana,
1) Text Message Campaign
People keep personal devices close to them and it's easy to receive or get a text message
that alert you of an action. I say create a contest with existing members where the first person
to get 200 (or some other arbitrary number) members to sign up using the person's meetup name as a referral in their introduction Will get something that will help them be more productive or network (i.e. a contact, a business plan make over, 90 Day personal coaching with an Authority on helping business grow [I know of a few that would probably be interested You can also throw in a secondary requirement where if someone brings 10 people they win something useful(iphone).
2) Promotion
Throw a launch party for group. Not really a launch party but a relaunch party with a campaign name. "1000 Business Owner Challenge." Invite various members of the media to come out...maybe have it sponsored by American Express? Record this an place it on youtube as promotional material that is shared from meetup and other sites.
3) Use of Technology in business.
There are a lot of people that use digg, twitter, facebook and other web technologies to communicate with one another. You can run a contest for those who use these services in the most interesting ways to promote their business. They could be featured speakers at one of your networking events. This would bring out those crowd of users that leverage those technologies
that help them network. This can open a bigger discussion of how to use technology for spreading the word and have the group come up with new ideas to help you spread your meetup.
The difference here is that you've already gathered the audience of technologists in one location!
Attached is my proposal that I believe can help you increase NYCBNG’s membership. I have also included a graphic I designed that I hope you like enough to use as the chapter’s logo.
Submitted by: Moreno Perazzolo B.Sc MBA, Creative Impact Ltd.
www.Sales1Up.com, , 604 781-2552.
Ilana Eberson’s goal is to grow the NYC Business Networking Group, which will benefit all active members. The competition and the winning entry will be judged by Ilana on the most creative idea that helps to promote and grow the group into the best business networking group in NYC.
Finding qualified potential clients is the most time consuming and costly sales activity business owners face. Letting other people help find potential clients that on their own they never will is a winning strategy. Sales1Up pulls this critical component of business together for them in an easy and trouble free way.
Giving NYCBNG members the opportunity to use this unique online referral tracking and management tool (at a greatly reduced cost) will help increase their sales and an opportunity to earn passive income; this benefit will encourage new members to join the group. The resulting increase in connections made through Sales1Up that links business owners to multiple contacts will also encourage new members to join the group. Harnessing the referral power of all the people you know.
Sales1Up.com has been designed to radically increase sales for successful micro and small business owners who don’t have the benefit of a dedicated sales team.
Commission Driven Referral Sales is the most powerful business sales growth and referral marketing strategy on earth . . . Sales1Up.com is online referral sales tracking and management at the touch of a button!
I look forward to your decision. Cheers,Moreno Perazzolo
Ilana,
I have a submission for the contest, the commercial that I described for you earlier. I will send another email with an attachment, but in case that doesn't go through you can download the video here. http://www.commercialcreator.com/nycbn.mov
The idea behind this is that you can use it as a marketing tool on websites such as meetup. I can send you a copy that is optomized for youtube and you can upload it for free, and either embed the youtube movie or link to the movie that just tells perspective new members about the group. It also gives credibility to this group over others. I hope you enjoy it, and again you can find out more about my company at http://www.commercialcreator.com.
Joshua Weiss, . The number is 646-472-5723.
12 random and not completely
thought-through ideas for how to increase membership
(but what the hell! Who’s checking?!)
Ideas submitted by Tom Griffin, with the goal of winning some free publicity!
Email:
1. Ask members to list outcomes that membership has brought them. Try to be as specific as possible. Cite these on the Meet-up Website or video them.
2. All members will be filmed doing a 30 second video elevator pitch with their website across bottom or screen. (Could combine this with number # 1 above)
3. ‘Bring a friend’ to next meet-up campaign
4. Set up a blog (eg. I use blogpost) that all members may access and post to (with control maintained by you, the moderator) and that can be accessed very easily from the meet-up website. Each member is allowed one post and may link out to their own website. Posts describe each meetup and showcase members or other speakers. Some content could be syndicated from elsewhere.
5. Incentivize current members to act as agents and sign people up. (How? Monetary incentive?)
6. If it doesn’t already exist, add a "Member of the NYC Business Networking Meetup" button to Linked in and get members to add this button to their own Linked In profiles. (when anyone clicks through, they’re brought to the Meetup website)
7. Re-contact the expired, passive members again. Check why the became inactive? Any common patterns as to what they obviously not getting from the Meetups?
8. Attract ‘fresh flesh’ by hosting presentations that will draw people who are not necessarily interested in membership, but ARE interested in hearing that presentation. The speakers might be present members with expert knowledge (eg. about real estate ("Buying and flipping property"), about marketing ("Going into a recession: how you and your company can survive")) or outsiders who are invited to come present to the group (new biz book authors) and whose upcoming speaking engagements can be advertised to entirely new demographics of people.
9. Speaking of new demographics, what about targeting....
- business studies students
- (very) young entrepreneurs?
10. Email newsletter that builds ‘mindshare’ about the group. To be emailed every second Friday or something and contains snippets about biz-related events going on around NYC. Each email finishes with a reminder to forward this to someone you think might be interested.
11. Make it a live broadcast/stream one evening, so that anyone who wants to can watch.
12. Equip current members with tools to ...
(a) make it easy to recruit new members (link-back buttons that they can install on their websites that link back to the Meetup website/blog) and
(b) ways to help them remember to do this in the first place anyway (eg. bi-weekly reminders in the above-mentioned email newsletter, ‘Meetup’ referral business cards, fridge magnets)
Hi Ilana,
How to grow membership:
* Partner with other meetups. Let other meetup hosts know what happens at your meetings and why it's good for their members.
* Put an ad in a New York paper - in their calendar sections
* Do a "bring one friend" themed meetup meeting
* Put up a youtube video about what happens at the meetup
Best! Senia
The first idea that comes to mind is to join LinkedIn and publish and connect with new business contacts through the website. I just sent you an invitation so if you accept invitation we will be connected and you can start growing your profile. I don’t have your last name but I think you should still have the invite?
Also, not sure if you have a budget for this group but I would post a banner on the LinkedIn site to encourage LinkedIn members to join!
It would be great to ask affluent professionals who have expertise in relevant topics such as “how to grow your business and successful tips in surviving as shaky economy”. People are always interested in listening to success stories in a fun but information platform. Meetings with keynote speakers would encourage members to participate rather than just open forum discussion groups.
I will keep you posted on more ideas as I think of them! Alane.
Okay here’s the scoop on how to build your network group:
Analyze the competition – You are not the only one with the idea you are presenting and there has to others out there that are running a smoother and more successful operation. Even if you were the comparative of Warren Buffet in your field, you would need to rely on the basics of how to analyze yourself and your investments to make the best decisions and the best way is to look at yourself and to look at the competition and decide what works best for you. Copy the competition!