There are many business networking events on the market for you to join but if you were to join all of them you would end up parting with a serious amount of cash you probably never do anything else.

It is however just like any other business investment and you can mitigate the risk by weighing up your options carefully. In order to help you I have prepared some business networking advice for your convenience.

Ask yourself the following question; what am I trying to achieve through business networking? If you are struggling to answer the question then frankly you probably are going to end up wasting your money. But consider some of these potential answers:

* Find contacts with potential clients or with folks who share a similar customer base.
* To become more confident at presentation.
* Get advice or ideas from other business entrepreneurs.
* Develop you network of potential suppliers.
* Contribute to a network of like-minded individuals that mutually support each other.

My next business networking advice is to think about who you want to network with:

* Are you looking for direct contact with your potential customers or maybe people who work with a similar customer base to yourself?
* Would you prefer to mix with men and women what would a single sex group be more your cup of tea?
* Do you need to concentrate on a particular industry sector such as telecoms or manufacturing?
* Is the size of a relevant? Think about whether you prefer large groups or small groups when meeting new people.  Read more...

It is no surprise that most business owners do not get the most out of their business networking events. Successful networking takes time and effort to establish the relationship beyond the first meeting. People who have successfully tap on the networking platform as part of their marketing channel will see tremendous result for their businesses. The following are some of the advices for having more businesses through successful networking.

If there is only one thing that is important in business networking, that would be follow up. Following up with your contacts is extremely important not only you can maintain a much deeper relationship with your contact but also explore new collaboration opportunities to help one another. Based on my experience, I think less than 80% of the people follow up within 24 hours after networking event. Timing is another important factor when following up and you must make sure that your contacts still remember you! Most of the time, sending a personalized thank you email after the event is a good start.

Positive attitude is also one of the factors for successful networking. When you are meeting new contacts, it is very important to express your positive and proactive attitude because most business owners would like to do business with these high energy people. No one will want to have business deals with someone who is low energy and always focus on things that do not work out. As a rule of thumb, I always look back for the past one month for good news for my business so as to share with my new contacts when we meet up.  Read more...

A few weeks ago I went to a networking event. There was a good speaker there – Andy Lopata. I hadn’t actually heard of him before but apparently he’s known as Mr Networker by the Sun. I liked what he went on about as it seemed very aligned with our thinking here at Position Ignition and what I have learned through working with Simon and also what I have observed and learned through my own experiences. The points outlined below aren’t just a regurgitation of what I heard from this talk. The talk spurred me on to think about this topic and in this article is what is occurring to me now.

Networking has been quite a ‘hot’ topic recently and seems to be the ‘thing to do’. Everyone is doing it! I thought that it might be useful to jot down a few learnings and observations of what feel like pretty common mistakes made when ‘networking’ or building connections:

Attending a networking event and ’selling’

Ok, so when we ‘network’ -many of us have the underlying agenda where we are after something. Usually we want the people we meet to help us in some way. We are after a promotion, a new job, some insight and inspiration on what to do next and so on. We would like the people we meet to help us in our career and lives. This is fair enough – however, going to a networking event and spending all of your time trying to ’sell’ yourself or whatever your company offers isn’t particularly useful. How many people are there to ‘buy’? None right? So don’t sell! Go there to get to know the people around you. Don’t shove your life story or current major problem or need in their faces. They don’t know you yet so they aren’t going to help you if you just ’sell sell sell’. No-one likes a salesperson – so don’t be one.  Read more...

Build your network is a challenge for most people. How do you meet people and build relationships? Here are three important things you can do to take advantage of your network.

Join your professional association, but the One?

If you’re not a member of your professional association, you will lose the opportunity to network. There may be some challenges here, so we try to address them.

One of the challenges is that there is more of an association of your profession. That do not participate? Ask your boss and other managers this question: What are the professional associations do not you subscribe? If he belongs to all of them, the newsletter of the association and / or magazine you read regularly? And the monthly association meetings, conferences and meetings did you attend?

These questions, and you know that the association to join. You can also learn why your boss is an organizational value above the other.

Another challenge is associated with poor publicity and meetings. As a result, feels a waste of time and money. Do not Give Up.

If there are good local experience, check out your city, state and national associations. Many times these larger versions of the same organization provides publications, meetings and networking opportunities you seek.

Whereas almost all professional associations allows you to participate as guests, so you can see all of them to discover the best to join.

The Number one thing to do  Read more...

I had a client today that was having some difficulty in understanding the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy. Businesses need both of these as an integral part of there business plan. First let me explain the difference between each and then I will give you an idea how to create both.

A marketing strategy is an over all vision of your companies goals. It includes fundamentals such as target demographics of your customers, a definition of your business, comparison of your companies marketing with you competitions and how your products and services relate to your customers.

Where as a marketing plan gives you a road map to implement your strategy it might include types of marketing (internet vs. print), pricing and discount models and a sales strategy for your company. As you can see it is impossible to have a marketing plan without a market strategy. I highly recommend to all my clients to spend the time with a professional marketing consultant and include both marketing plans and strategies as essential components of their business plan.

There are some essentials that you need to include in your marketing strategy, including a mission statement that defines your strategy, definition of your customer or client and your objectives. While the essentials of marketing plan are specific marketing ideas and ways to track each of them to measure their individual performance. In conclusion set a goal for what you want your marketing to achieve (marketing strategy) then set up a road map of how to achieve that goal that you can track on an individual level.

Although text marketing has already established a permanent presence in modern marketing campaigns, many businesses are still failing to maximise their results.

Let’s look at three fresh ways to brighten up and sharpen your text messaging campaign to lift it to the next level.

If you are in any doubt about the effectiveness of SMS marketing, consider the findings of the Chicago-based business that used on-site signage, end of aisle displays, and TV advertising. In their TV advertising campaign they gave out their phone number and website details, but on a different channel they gave out their short code and asked people to text in to win a prize.

The result? The text ad result was greater than the other three combined.

So, with that in mind let’s plan your next strategy.

1. Give things away. It might seem trite to remind you what you’re going to have to offer something to convince people to give you their mobile number. After all, most consumers are very concerned about their privacy and won’t be giving this up easily. But, if you offer an incentive all give people the chance to vote for something, you’ll be surprised at how readily they will participate. If you give something away, it will look less like spam and you’re more than likely to have an increased success rate.  Read more...