|
|
Don't Reinvent the Wheel, Just Get Yours Rolling
"There is no new thing under the sun" wrote the wise author of
Ecclesiastes. The wheel was always present, it just took man
catching up with the idea to implement it. So, there is no need
to reinvent it, is there? But is your wheel rolling? Is...
Look Past the Bottom Line for a Property's Investment Potential
Look Past the Bottom Line for a Property’s Potential It’s unfortunate that many real estate investors tend to look at the bottom line when deliberating about a property, rather than the big picture. The real moneymakers in real estate investments...
Public Domain Profits
---------------------------------------------------------- Permission is granted for the following article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes...
Small Cards, Big Ideas: Alternative Uses for Business Cards
Aggressive business card marketing isn't about handing your business cards out to everyone you see. The card itself must have a new use, an innovative design, or something other than the usual contact information printed on it. To make your little...
To all Managers: How does ADD affect your workplace?
Tent caterpillars create a cocoon for an entire colony. Within one colony there are two types of caterpillar. One type, pioneers, weave long threads forming the skeleton of the tent. The others, the workers, weave cross threads filling in the...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
How to Use Community Relations to Grow Your Business
Community relations is one of those marketing strategies that isn't talked about much, even though I venture to say practically everyone ends up doing it at one time or another. Basically, community relations is when you and your business become involved in your community. For instance:
* Your business donates money to nonprofit organizations. * You or your employees volunteer at a fundraising event. * You or your employees volunteer for a nonprofit organization. * You or your employees join a service club. * You or your employees network and/or volunteer at industry association meetings or business functions (such as Chamber of Commerce events). Some people might consider this networking and not community relations, but I would argue networking falls under community relations. Regardless, you get the idea.
I'm going to go through the pros and cons of community relations in a moment, but first I want to encourage all of you to think about ways to not only add community relations to your marketing strategy but also to get better at leveraging those opportunities to grow your business. But first, let's go through the pros and cons.
Pros: * Builds credibility for you and your business. * Builds personal relationships with customers. * Works well with advertising – similar to public relations, community relations is a "soft" sell approach that can make your customers more receptive to your advertising. * Can be a stepping stone for PR. * Creates goodwill (and good karma).
Cons: * Time – community relations can consume a ton of it. All that volunteering can suck up a lot of working and/or leisure hours. * Long wait to realize results – like public relations, you implement a community relations plan for the long haul. And I do mean the long haul (even longer than PR). * Difficult to track – I'm talking mainly about the non-business networking activities here. You may never be able to trace sales to community relations. Actually, chances are you probably won't. You need to trust it's working on some cosmic level and let it go. * No payoff at all – this can happen if you find yourself donating time and/or money to charities that are wonderful causes but offer little advertising and/or promotional opportunities. Now, that doesn't mean I'm advocating only supporting high-visibility causes. On the contrary, there are many good reasons to have a community relations program in place. For one, the good feeling
you get knowing you're supporting a worthy cause (not to mention all the good karma you build).
Basically, you can sum up the cons to this: spend lots of time or money for little/no return.
Not a good marketing strategy.
But, it doesn't have to be that way. You can and should find ways to increase your ROI (return on investment) for all the community relations activities you take part in. And one good way to do that is to leverage them into marketing strategies.
Creativity Exercise -- How to get a return on investment with community relations
Grab some sheets of paper and a pen (I like the fun gel pens myself) and get ready for some brainstorming.
First, list all the activities you're doing that are considered community relations. Write them all down.
Next, analyze those activities. What ROI are you currently getting from them? Do your customers know you donate time and/or money to those activities? Do you get sales because of your involvement? Are you building your brand and/or awareness of your business because of your donations?
Don't know? Well, then you probably aren't getting much return.
Next, I want you to brainstorm ways you can start leveraging those activities. Can you devote a section on your Web site to telling people about your involvement? Can you use your Web site to help raise money and/or volunteers for the causes you support? If there's an event involved, can you more aggressively market your services during it? (Set out flyers or brochures or have a really good elevator speech if you're able to introduce yourself.) Can you send out press releases? Can you have your logo added to the organization's marketing materials? Or have the organization link to your Web site?
Try and brainstorm 20 ways you can increase your ROI. Some will be silly, some will be completely impractical -- but that's okay. All you need are one or two gold nuggets to really jumpstart your marketing and make that investment in time and money really start to pay off.
About the Author
Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of "Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money." She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com. Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek
|
|
|
|
|
Creativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
Creativity (or creativeness) is a mental process involving the generation of ... Wallas considered creativity to be a legacy of the evolutionary process, ... |
en.wikipedia.org |
  |
Creativity For Life |
An exploration of creativity in everyday life, with articles, quotes, reviews and other creative resources to awaken creativity in daily life. |
www.creativityforlife.com |
  |
AdCritic.com: Commercial Ads |
FROM CREATIVITY: Emerging Directors, Unite In the time it took to write this, three new directors popped up. Here are twenty to get acquainted with. ... |
www.adcritic.com |
  |
National Curriculum in Action - Creativity - |
Ordering Creativity packs: print and video materials. This website gives practical ideas on how to promote pupils' creative thinking and behaviour. ... |
www.ncaction.org.uk |
  |
Ten Steps for Boosting Your Creativity |
Experiments performed by the JPB Creative Laboratory show that watching TV causes your ... a weekly report on creativity, ideas, innovation and invention ... |
www.jpb.com |
  |
Category:Creativity Techniques - Mycoted |
This is a general category of Creativity and Innovation Techniques, ... I like to think of these creativity techniques as tools in a toolbox in much the ... |
www.mycoted.com |
  |
Creativity at Work: The interplay of business, art and science |
A resource for training and development in creativity and innovation in organizations. Has a newsletter, and some articles and essays by 'Corporate ... |
www.creativityatwork.com |
  |
Crayola Creativity Central |
Crayola Creativity Central offers kids arts and crafts ideas for rainy day fun. We also have coloring books and pages, art and craft projects, games, ... |
www.crayola.com |
  |
Pages tagged with "creativity" on del.icio.us |
All items tagged creativity ??? view popular ... Perspective for Creative Leaders · save this. by aromay to creativity business management ... 1 hour ago ... |
del.icio.us |
  |
Creativity Web - Resources for Creativity and Innovation |
Creativity Web Home Page Resources for Creativity and Innovation ... The Creative Process · Multiple Intelligences · Idea Recording · Your Creative Space ... |
members.optusnet.com.au |
  |
gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": how to ... |
So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. ... Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion ... |
www.gapingvoid.com |
  |
Creativity Quotes | Creativity Quotations | Creativity Sayings ... |
Quotes on Creativity - part of a larger collection of Wisdom Quotes to challenge and inspire. Find Creativity quotations and links to quotes on other ... |
www.wisdomquotes.com |
  |
Ideas by Creativity Pool |
A free database with new ideas and possible inventions. Add your own, or bring an existing idea to life. |
www.creativitypool.com |
  |
CREATIVITY |
Creative problem solving depends on using the right tools, tricks, ... Search for the latest books on Creativity (or anything else) in the Quantum Books ... |
www.quantumbooks.com |
  |
Creativity Tools, Creative Solutions & Creative Problem Solving ... |
This page explains a wide range of techniques which can help you generate creative solutions to your problems. |
www.mindtools.com |
  |
The 6 Myths Of Creativity |
A new study will change how you generate ideas and decide who's really creative in your company. |
www.fastcompany.com |
  |
CreativeClass.org |
Richard Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class" examines creativity and its effects on economic development. |
www.creativeclass.org |
  |
TIP: Concepts |
The relationship between creativity and intelligence has been always been a central concern of psychology ( Guilford , 1950). Much effort has been devoted ... |
tip.psychology.org |
  |
American Creativity Association (ACA) |
An incorporated non-profit organization promoting personal and professional creativity. Association membership is represented by four multidisciplinary ... |
www.amcreativityassoc.org |
  |
CREAX - Portal for creativity and innovation |
A resource for links on creativity and innovation on the web. A selection of 690 links is divided into 67 categories for the visitors convenience. |
www.creax.net |
  |
|