Power Panel Headlines Make a Referral Week Content

Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and author of Masters of Networking, Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and the Go-Giver, and Bill Cates, author of Get More Referrals Now make up a panel of what may be the worlds greatest single collection of thought leaders on the subject of referrals.

The live web conference is scheduled for Tuesday, March 10th at Noon CST and will be hosted by John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing. To register for the conference - click here

The conference is the headline event of the educational component of Make a Referral Week. More info on the entire week can be found here.

Make a Referral Week

About Make a Referral Week

As the talk of recession crowds the news and economic stimulus package debates rage in Washington DC, it’s time for small businesses to take the matter into their own hands. Therefore we hereby declare March 9-13, 2009 - Make a Referral Week.

Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small business economy one referred business at a time. The goal for the week is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the impact of a simple action that could blossom into millions of dollars in new business. Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention so often saved for corporate bailout stories.

The week long virtual event will also feature daily education programs focused on teaching small business owners and other marketers how to tap the power of referral marketing. Featured guest experts include

Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and author Masters of Networking, Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and the Go-Giver, Bill Cates, author of Get More Referrals Now, Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing, Guy Kawasaki, author of Reality Check, Rich Sloan, author of StartUpNation, Anita Campbell, publisher of Small Business Trends, Scott Allen, author of the Virtual Handshake, John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, Scott Ginsberg of Nametag TV, Michael Port, author of the Contrarian Effect and Book Yourself Solid, Susan Solovic Wilson, founder of SBTV.com and Pam Slim, author Escape from Cubicle Nation.

Individuals around the globe will be invited to make at least one referral to a small business and visit www.MakeAReferralWeek.com to share the referral details, including information on why they referred a particular business. Each day during the week one referral story will be chosen as the “best referral of the day” and the referred business and referral source will each win a Referral Gift Prize featuring signed books from recognized referral experts.

The Refer-O-Meter will monitor the march towards 1000 referrals given throughout the week.

The Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network will be hosting Make a Referral Week MeetUps in communities around North America to create live offline small business networking and referral opportunities in conjunction with the week’s online activities.

A large blog and media outreach is planned to spread the word of the make a referral message and opportunity and drive participation in the educational components of the week. Banners Ads and buttons will be available prior to event and RSS feeds and widgets will be available during the week to stream the content and referral updates to participating sponsor sites.

Please forward this below in an e-mail to your colleagues,friends and other small businesses. Lets take matters in our own hands.

Make a Referral - jump start the economy
I’m pledging to make a referral to a business I want to help as part of a national campaign to make 1000 referrals March 9-13. What a great small business stimulus plan - won’t you join me.
VISIT

Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small business economy one referred business at a time. The goal for the week is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the impact of a simple action that could blossom into millions of dollars in new business. Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention so often saved for corporate bailout stories.
The week long event also features a killer list of referral experts providing valuable marketing advice.

Do your part to stimulate the economy by telling your world about making referrals and Make a Referral Week - you’ll be in good company.

 

Make a Referral - jump start the economy

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I’m pledging to make a referral to a business I want to help as part of a national campaign to make 1000 referrals March 9-13. What a great small business stimulus plan.

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6 points to Marketing today

Small Businesses usually don’t have million dollar advertising budgets, and even if you did, you might want to invest more in defining your strategy before throwing money at different tactics.

In my years of advertising and operating a small business and not so small business, I have dealt with Million dollar budgets and practically no budgets. One of the biggest mistakes I see, is when a business will market a large event, which may be productive that weekend or at that moment, but only to see their advertising dollars disappear along with their company for a period of time. No ads, no mention, no awareness and no profits. The next time an event comes up, the cost per lead goes even higher to get maybe, maybe, the same results. The difference? It will cost more to accomplish less. It is a medium to long term failure of a concept.

Good marketing advice would be to avoid trying to time the marketing event of the week. Many people and organizations market around events, product launches, seasons, and many other  single occurrences.  But my advice to you is to do a little marketing each day. And if you do that, your single events and your marketing will be a much greater success.

Marketing needs to emphasize client relationships based on trust and knowledge.  This approach is not necessarily unique, but it’s never been more vital than today.  So here’s a few simple steps that I would advise you to try:

1. Think long term: Clients receiving a constant barrage of information that is seldom useful and generally of little value will in fact, become tuned out and seldom even notice most marketing information presented with. So stay away from the flashiest ads or the biggest displays and instead go for consistency on a regular basis. Send a message. Educate.

2. Review your marketing plan: In theory, we all work from a plan, don’t we?  However, in reality, emotions still play a big role in marketing. During times like this, it is even more important to stay away from the marketing idea of the week. Lay out your plan on a calender  and  be prepared to track the results. At the end of that period, review your plan, review your results and make the next calender period. Thats a good start and a good middle that will lead to a better result.

3. Use the present volatility to your advantage: Recession, downturns  naturally make us all nervous, but if you have been complaining the past few years about competition, now is the time for you to shine. In a recession people will take less risk and take longer to make a decision. They may make better overall decisions as a result.  Consider this, you may be better off and find more market share, even though sales are down. If you have been or are being smart with your frequency, focused on the right target market, used the calender and sending the right message you will be ahead of the competitors.

4. Stay focused on your goals: Never forget what your organizations vision is and stay focused. Look at how you are generating zero cost leads, your referral system, repeat business and programs in place to position yourself i front of new customers. If you don’t have a pre-planned referral system or conversion system, you need to immediately.

5.Talk with your customers:  Your customer base is the single most important item you must address. You must emphasize these relationships through out your organization daily.  Unless your company was under-performing already the answers are probably not out-of-the-box.  You must become fully involved in making your clients successful.  You need to take the timing to listen to understand their needs and to clarify how your company can help.  Constant feedback is imperative for you to provide the exceptional service that you need to demonstrate.

6. Seek professional advice: You may need other tools that you personally don’t have in your bag. Avoid making direct hires and adding staff.  The opportunity is there to seek out very experienced individuals to help you reach your objectives. It’s during these times that you need to know that there is someone you can rely  on and who can help you through these times.

Marketing is your livelihood.  There’s never been a time like the present to put a solid marketing plan in place. Taking advantage in a downturn will reap tremendous benefits in the future with employees, profits and having your business serve your life.

The use of Social Media

Lets take a look at social media. Social media is, well I’m not sure I can define what social media is, but we can figure out where it’s going and what we can do with it.” I heard a saying that rings true, “After all we don’t know what Play-do is, but we all know what to do with it.”

Twitter. Many people have pondered the question: how can Twitter be used as a marketing tool? Twitter is becoming a powerful tool to market your websites, content and products. If you’re running a niche website, Twitter is an indispensable tool in your marketing arsenal. Twitter has become a key tool for building readership and interacting with readers. Not only can you build a strong readership, but networking with other professionals will create relationships that can be very exciting.

The new mentality is transparency and people are going to demand transparency from their companies and anyone else they do business with.But being open isn’t enough. You have to be relevant, too. Part of relevance is giving people what they want in a format they want.

A demand for relevancy is driving the news industry to the brink. The average age of the people watching the daily, evening news is dwindling.

The smart newspapers will be the ones who find ways to maximize new and different ways for readers to access information.

In the end, it is all about making the connection — as genuinely as possible.

The future for social networking is bright.

Back to the Fundamentals webinar

In the second installment of Palo Alto Software’s “Back to the Fundamentals” webinar series, we welcome John Jantsch as he presents

“Simple Marketing Tactics that Pay off Big in a Slumping Market“.

John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system and has been called the world’s most practical small business expert for consistently delivering real-world, proven small business marketing ideas and strategies.

John will bring his extensive knowledge and know-how to this new webinar, exclusively for Palo Alto Software.

Learn how to:

* attract all the clients your small business can handle
* work only with clients who value what you have to offer
* significantly increase what you charge for your services

For Recorded version, please visit Here