Networking & marketing seminar in Plymouth
I went to an excellent marketing seminar recently. It was hosted by Barclays in the Novotel in Plymouth.
Apart from being a great marketing content, it was an excellent networking opportunity – especially if you were looking for an Accountant! I’m used to seeing several Web Designers and Design people at these events but to see somewhere between 10 and 20 accounts out of about 1000 attendees was a bit surreal.
The seminar was presented by Rob Craven, an excellent guy from Bright Marketing.
Apart from plenty of opportunities to network and good food, there was plenty of great material and ideas. Some of the bits I picked up and am already using or plan to implement were:
• Polishing my 1-minute ‘elevator’ pitch. As a regular attendee at breakfast and lunch networking events, I get plenty of opportunities. Until now I’ve not focused on the content and structure Rob suggested. This started with “We work with…”, and included “who have a problem with…”, “what we do is…”, “so that….” and “Which means…..”. Basically you outline the problem your potential clients have and describe how you solve it. Simple really!
• Conducting surveys amongst clients and prospects. For the former it gets you good feedback about your performance and can be used to gain valuable insight into what else they want. For the latter it’s a good way of assessing the demand for your services (and telling you what you need to add or change in your service/product set) and appearing as an expert. If you publish the data in a useful format as well, your standing can go up even further
• Look at how you got your last 20 clients – and what you spent to do that. Divide that into the amount you spent doing it and you have the cost of acquiring each new client
• When surveyed, most business people said that face to face (43%) or referral/recommendation (29%) were the best ways to get new business. Email, web, advertising, letters, exhibitions etc were all under 5% each
There was more but hey, there might be other Web Designers from Cornwall or Plymouth reading this and I wouldn’t want them to get too successful……
