The basic premise of networking is that you meet with a group of  like minded business owners to learn more about them while they learn about you – and see if your products or services are a good fit for them or someone they know. Your local Chamber of Commerce, trade shows, seminars, and anywhere your ideal prospects hang out are all good opportunities for networking – and many towns have dedicated networking groups like LeTip or BNI that meet on a regular basis.

Remember though that with networking, it’s usually most effective to try to capture contacts and leads than to try to close a sale on the spot, so get your elevator speech ready and have plenty of business cards on hand. It’s really best to focus on your prospects and get their business cards instead of trying to thrust your card into the hands of everyone you meet.

Bob Burg’s book “Endless Referrals” is an excellent guide to making the most of networking events and will show you how to get more referrals for your business no matter what you do.

If your town doesn’t already have a networking group that you can join, consider starting one of your own! A networking group can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be, but at it’s most basic all you need to get started is a small group of business owners who want to grow their businesses and a place to meet. Make a short list of say 10 local business owners that you’d like most to network with and either call or mail them an invite to your group, and ask them to invite 5 or 10 business owners that they think highly of.

Most groups that I’m aware of either meet in a conference room at a local hotel (some chambers of commerce have meeting rooms available for their members) or at a local restaurant that has a private room available for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Chances are good you can negotiate a discount on the food you order since you’ll be providing the restaurant with a small group meeting on a regular basis, and each member can pay for their own meal at the time of your get together.

From what I’ve seen, most successful networking groups allow only one type of each business in so they all get more or less equal exposure, but if you’re the organizer of a group like this – you get the most exposure as the leader.

Whether you attend just one networking function, join a local group or start your own – networking can be an effective way to grow your business with just a small investment of time each week.

Have you attended any networking meetings or are you currently part of a networking group? Let me know about your experiences and how well they’ve worked to help you grow your business.

Photo Credit:  Teamwork and team spirit from Yuri Arcurs Website

To learn how to properly craft a winning sales letter or direct mail piece, I highly recommend reading Dan Kennedy’s book “The Ultimate Sales Letter”, and you can also learn a lot from my friend David Frey’s article on writing a winning sales letter.

You’ll find a wealth of great information written on direct marketing from guys like Michel Fortin, David Garfinkel, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, and many more experts. Here are some sites where you can learn more:

http://www.successdoctor.com – Michel Fortin’s main site

http://www.world-copywriting-institute.com – David Garfinkel’s site

http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com – Home of the Gary Halbert Letter

http://www.dankennedy.com – Dan Kennedy’s site

http://www.srds.com – The Standard Rate & Data (SRDS) List Book is a great resource to locate mailing lists of nearly any type you can imagine. You can also find it available in some larger city libraries.

http://www.referenceusa.com – Reference USA is a great place to get compiled lists by industry, SIC, demographics and more. It contains names, addresses and lots of other great information on more than 12 million U.S. businesses, 102 million U.S. residents, 683,000 U.S. health care providers, 1 million Canadian businesses, and 11 million Canadian residents.

http://www.usps.com – The US Postal Service website has a variety of tools and educational materials about direct mail as well.

Yellow page ads need to be benefits-driven, with your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) stated clearly and boldly (remember, this is the one place where your prospects will see your ad alongside all of your competitors).  You want your ad to stand out from the clutter, so use a direct response type of ad,  and again,  offering free gifts or premiums will work well here.

For more information about writing effective yellow page ads, be sure to check out www.ypcommando.com and also www.yellowpagesprofit.com – Alan Saltz’s excellent course on Yellow Pages advertising.  I own it along with several other books about YP advertising and it’s the best resource I’ve come across.

If you’re going to do a space ad it will generally get better results if you use the same layout as the editorials so it looks less like an ad and more like a news item.  Use the same font styles and sizes for the headline, body, etc.  If the newspaper uses 2 columns per article on the page your ad will appear, use 2 columns in your ad. If they use 3 columns, you use 3.  The “advertorial” approach almost always does better than traditional space ads that scream “advertisement”.

Learn to experiment in many creative ways to find out what works best for you and always test different components of your ads to see what brings you the most results.

I know one local paper that has both classified ads and space ads and I noticed that one company has their space ad featured upside-down in every weekly issue.  At first I thought it was a mistake, but after seeing it upside-down week after week, I suspected they found that their upside-down ad stands out from the clutter.  People think it’s a mistake and read it. Y es, it’s a gimmick, but you need to test different approaches and see what works best for you.

If you own a lawn care business for example, distributing your flyers directly to homeowners with lawns is smart, sticking them on windshields at the local Walmart – not the best, because you don’t know if those people live in homes or apartments, or even if they live in your service area.

The easy thing with flyers is producing them, as you probably already have all you need to design them on your computer, and they can be printed by just about any local printer or copy shop for a few cents each. If you need help designing a flyer of your own, take a look at www.stocklayouts.com – or check out a program like Microsoft Publisher that can help you design your own flyers on your computer.

Once printed though they’ll need to be distributed, and here is where you’ll need to do the work yourself or hire someone to do it for you. Many cities have flyer distribution services so do a search online and see what you can find in your area, but you can always hire a few local high school students to help you out after school or on weekends, or post an ad on Craigslist and hire someone looking to make a few extra dollars.

How’d you like to have your flyers produced and distributed for free? That’s easy – just do the following…

• Find one or two other business owners who want to advertise to the same prospects you do.
• Have them design their flyer and deliver it to you.
• You have the flyers reproduced and charge the other businesses enough to cover your production and distribution costs too!
• If you want, you could even charge enough to make a few extra dollars for yourself while still keeping it affordable for the other business owners you’re working with!