Use the “fishbowl” method to collect an e-mail address from every single customer or prospect that you encounter in your local business this week. This simple method is something you can implement in your brick-and-mortar business by the end of the day today, and it will lead to the collection of pure gold (aka e-mail addresses) for your business – gold that can be leveraged to move the needle again and again for your small business! Here’s how it works:

1. Procure a large bowl that will fit in a prominent location either to the right (as one exits) of the front door of your store at eye level and/or at each your point of sale/cash-wrap stations.

2. Create a sign to affix to the bowl that has a big, bold headline that says something like “Join Our E-Mail List for a Chance to Win!”

3. Add subtext under the sign’s headline, create an irresistible offer that fits your business that follows this basic idea: “Once a month, one entry from that month will be awarded a $250 gift certificate to our store!”

4. Watch the e-mail addresses pile up.

5. Enter the e-mail addresses into your e-mail system at least monthly BEFORE the award notification is made.

6. On a monthly basis, choose an e-mail address and make the award. E-mail them the award notification with an inquiry for their mailing address, so that they’ll come into the store. Also include in that e-mail a suggestion such as the following: “We value you as a customer, and we’re thrilled that you’ve won this prize. You are definitely deserving! We’d love it if you’d share some ideas of what you’ll be buying with your gift certificate with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. You can connect with us there at facebook.com/business name and on Twitter @businessname. I hope you won’t mind that we’ll be letting everyone know who won this month in our e-mail newsletter and through our social media channels as a way to encourage folks to enter this month’s new contest! Thanks again for being such a fantastic customer! We really appreciate your business!”

7. Post who won and what they won and how folks can enter the next contest on Facebook. Tag the person who won if possible.

8. Post who won and what they won on Twitter and @ reply the winner, if possible.

9. Include the winner’s name and a call for new entries in your next e-mail newsletter.

Happy fishbowling! You’re going to love the results you get from this great marketing tip!

Maybe you just made the newspaper or a local magazine – or better – you just got interviewed for a major trade publication, the Wall Street Journal or a mainstream lifestyle slick. Maybe a prominent blogger is going to blog about you – or feature you in an upcoming e-newsletter. Maybe you think you’ve thought of something so smart that an influential person tweets about your article, stuff or activities…

These days, publicity comes in all shapes and sizes – but one thing is the same. It will give you a boom. The boom will be short-lived if you’re not prepared to leverage it into long-term sales for your small business. Here are a couple of tips that will help you leverage publicity into long-term growth for your local business.

Get ready for the traffic on your web site.

This seems obvious, but you really should actively prepare to capture customers as a result of the publicity, especially on your small business web site.

1. Make sure an e-mail list signup form (that is short and simple) is strategically located at the top right hand side of all of your web site pages or posts. This will help you grow your e-mail list.

2. Make sure your social media profiles are apparent at the top and bottom of each page or post on your web site, so that folks can connect with you there.

3. Make sure there is fresh and relevant content and that all contact information, forms, store hours, and directions are up to date.

4. Make sure that your web site has the ability to be SHARED so that when people get to your site, they can – with a single click – share your business with 1300 of their closest *cough* *ahem* Facebook friends…. or Twitter followers or other social media connections. We recommend the ShareThis button at the top and bottom of each page or post on your web site.

5. Similarly, install the Facebook LIKE button at the top of each page or post on your web site, so that with a single click and half a thought, your web content or article can be posted to their Facebook Wall and their friends’ newsfeeds. This exposes you to their friends.

6. Finally, install the TweetMeme’s Retweet button at the top of each page or post on your web site. This button not only allows the sharing feature on Twitter, but it allows YOU the measurement to see who shared your content – so you can thank them and otherwise engage them via Twitter.

Prepare to leverage the publicity on social media.

Social media is where you will turn the publicity into a boom for yourself. Often media in and of themselves are not a direct connector. But the power of your network mixing with theirs can really work magic. Here are a few things you can do to stir that pot:

1. Tweet with the news writers and folks in the media on a regular basis (that means, ideally, BEFORE the story hits). When they post a story about your business or referencing you or your business in any way, use all available methods to THANK them for their kind words. Tag them on Facebook, and tweet out a thanks to them.

2. Do the equivalent of the “reprint.” Re-publish the news at least twice – maybe three times after it happens. Facebook and Twitter news cycles are short these days, so posting an article Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon are likely to expose your story to a different group of folks. If you have over 1500 fans or followers, you should also post the story again later at night (between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.) as well.

3. When you post, drive the traffic to the story via your web site.

How does this all turn readers or viewers or listeners into sales? Again, as in the first edition of Leveraging the Boom: Turn Events into Sales the goal is to make new connections – to capture contacts that you can turn into relationships and then keep as customers for a long and profitable lifetime value of the customer. It’s about short-term tactics that lead to marathon relationships and long-term growth and profitability.

What say you? How have you turned publicity into sales?

Photo Credit: Eivind Z. Molvær

By design, you’ve got customers and lots of them – because they are attending an event that you are hosting or sponsoring. They are a captive audience. Now what?

How do you hold on, keep the edge, make the big event pay off? It’s all about “Leveraging the Boom.”

When you have a dense customer population in your small business – a.k.a. a boom – you MUST make the most out of the event attendees literally while it’s happening in order to grow your business for the long-term. This is the only way to truly get the most return on investment from your event.

To make the most of the bump, you must make smart use of marketing tools to do two things:

1. Capture new customers.
2. Educate them about the benefits of using your company.

There are a lot of ways to accomplish these things, but here are three easy ways to connect that are extremely easy and efficient to accomplish – and fast – ways to turn a short-term boom into long-term sales and business growth for your small business:

1. E-mail. Get that e-mail address! It might not be a hard fact, but it seems like at LEAST 50% of folks have an e-mail enabled smart phone. For example, here’s a fun way to gather a bunch of e-mail addresses at a large event venue: Ask attendees to send an e-mail to you during the event. Then, announce the winner of an immediate prize: move to the front row, get a chair at the chef’s table, win a free dessert, receive an upgrade to the super-duper best package. “Just e-mail us, and we’ll pick a winner… right now.” Taking the 3-5 minutes at an event venue may net you 15 to 100 email addresses – easy.

2. Facebook + TEXT (SMS). While there is a lot you can do with text messaging, here is one free way to gain a connection to your new prospects and customers so that you can sell them more stuff over and over again for a long time.

Start by looking at the number of Facebook “Likes” or Twitter followers you have before the event begins. During the event, post signage and also just ask folks to text “LIKE YOURPAGENAME” to FBOOK (36556). For us we’d say “text LIKE RESULTSREV” to FBOOK on your phone right now. Guess what — you just got a new like! Live events can produce huge bumps in the like numbers for a Facebook Page.

3. Twitter + TEXT (SMS). The same thing holds true on Twitter. Have attendees text FOLLOW RESULTSREV to Twitter (40404). Yep, that’s all it takes to start tweeting. They’ll get your tweets on their phone – even if they’ve NEVER signed up for Twitter before.

But at the end of the day, did that ring you more sales? Probably not today – but it did make sure that you made contact with the people who attended your event. Now, tomorrow, you can stay in touch with them and get to know them better and expose them to new elements of your business – and yes, increase your sales accordingly. It will blow your mind. I promise.

What about you? What is your best method to turn an event into long-term customer relationships (and sales)?

Photo Credit: mastermaq

Dear Traditional Advertising Agency:

Reference: See my previous post about the three key elements of a brand.

Leaving your client’s web site URL off of their print advertising does the following harm to your client and it wastes all of their money:

1. This mistake gives you nor your client any way to measure the value of the print advertising by tracking incoming traffic to the web site.

2. This mistake leaves the reader (and potential business prospect) with no real actionable place to go to learn more without making a phone call. (In 2010, we just need a URL. Period.)

3. Worst of all, this mistake leaves the impression that your client is behind the times and isn’t worth considering for important business.

Instead of allowing this sort of image torture to happen for your client, I would recommend that if you insist on pushing print advertising into your client’s budget that you at least implement the following strategies to give the ad spending the best shot at giving a return on investment:

1. Build a vanity URL (www.clientname.com/magazinename).

2. On this specific web page (within your main web site), put valuable, advertisement specific copy, images and links to a wealth of business information, testimonials, and include another call to action to the prospect into your sales funnel deeper. (How about asking them some information about them or providing them with a valuable tool for free to grow their loyalty towards your client’s business?)

3. Put a call to action in the print ad that answers the “What’s in it for me?” question for the prospect and lures them to the vanity URL you created earlier.

4. Collect the data about who visits the page including geography, what else they look at on the site, what information is working and not working and conversion to next step or other actions within your sales funnel.

5. Help your client make adjustments in their process based on this new business intelligence.

Sound simple? Well, it really is pretty simple. No matter how complex the business model, a simple strategy like this followed through to the end (with measurement and continuous improvement) will show your value to your customer as an advertising professional.

There are a million ways to kick that idea up another notch, but for now, let’s start with getting that URL onto the advertisement in the first place and having a web site that’s ready to accept traffic. That’s the first step to building credibility and brand legitimacy in 2010.

Thanks for listening.

Sincerely,
Marianna