Almost any event is a potential marketing opportunity. Of course, you don’t want to get tacky or annoying, as anything taken to extremes will backfire. However, you should always be asking yourself, “How can I turn this into a marketing opportunity?”
Recent examples from my own businesses:
1. Making a marketing opportunity out of something bad that happens to you. This week I invited subscribers to my newsletter to a free tele-conference about my most recent book. Lots of people came. But someone I managed to disconnect myself twice during the call. Guess how many books I sold after the call? (If your guess is higher than 0, you are incorrect).
So I wrote up a long summary of the call and sent it to subscribers on my list, as a bonus to those who couldn’t attend. That sold some books/programs.
2. Making a marketing opportunity out of something good that happens. Last night you may have seen Edner Cherry win the featured boxing match on ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights. One of the trainers on my Boxing Fitness Institute website helped get Edwin into shape, and was in his corner. So that’s a great opportunity! I sent out a mailing to the newsletter list of the Boxing site congratulating Edwin and the trainer, and letting people know more about the trainer’s Certification program on the site.
3. Piggy-backing on holidays or events. It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow. I have two sites catering to parents. So I sent out a very low-key, non-salesy email to the mailing lists for these sites wishing everyone a happy day and celebrating Motherhood (with a message from one of my partners who is a mother to twins). We didn’t sell anything here, to contrast ourselves to all those flower sites making pitches for mother’s day gifts.
What examples can you share?
May 14th, 2006 at 7:26 am
I was at a dinner event one evening, and we were all given a name tag to write our name on and stick to our shirt. You know, one of those “Hello! My name is…” jobs. On a whim, I put the name of my blog down right underneath my own name. The guy sitting across from me at the table just happened to be a local horse breeder, and was in the market for a website for his business. Bingo–We’ve got an appointment to sit down and talk next week.
May 14th, 2006 at 7:36 am
Holy **** is it mother’s day tomorrow!?
Other than that great advice.
For real though, is it mother’s day tomorrow?
May 14th, 2006 at 9:26 am
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May 14th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Andrew, you may want to point out it’s mothers day in America, and not Europe, in your post ;) I’m sure a few people almost had a heart-attack in EU when reading it!
May 14th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Dean C: I sure did! :p
May 14th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Dean C,
Thanks for the clarification and sorry for any heart attacks. When is Mother’s Day in Europe? Who came up with the holiday first — Europeans or US?
May 14th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
I’m in the Netherlands and I’m pretty sure it’s mothersday today, if it wasn’t mothersday, I think my mother would be more suprised receiving flowers this morning.
May 15th, 2006 at 1:46 am
It varies from country to country I think Andrew. In the UK it’s the fourth Sunday of lent :) According to wikipedia, no-one knows exactly where the tradition emerged from, but if you ask me, I’d put my money on some gift-retail establishment ;)
May 15th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
It varies from culture to culture. In Nepal, the mother’s day was celebrated about a month ago.
May 15th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
In Soviet Russia, Children have day…
May 16th, 2006 at 12:07 am
in the uk we apparently also have daughters day and sons day but nobody ever celebrates them or even knows they exist.
May 16th, 2006 at 8:54 am
Off-topic: I remember asking my father “Why isn’t there a ‘Kids Day’?” when I was 10 years old. He grumbled and replied “Practically every day is Kids Day”.
Whoops.
May 16th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Off-topic: I remember asking my father “Why isn’t there a ‘Kids Day’?” when I was 10 years old. He grumbled and replied “Practically every day is Kids Day”.
May 18th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
I heard that Mother’s day came about during World War I when the Mothers of the soldiers marched the streets asking for their sons to be returned. Then the retailers picked this up and called it Mother’s Day and then created a day for Father’s too. Don’t know how accurate this is. :)
May 18th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
More around the subject, I own an old convertible beete (1973) that one day broke down in the middle of nowhere going to a meeting (but lost anyway).
out of nowhere another beetle turns up and stops to help.
After introducing myself and explaining I’m more a computer guy than mechanic, the nice guy that had stopped turned out to own a spare part shop for beetle looking for a website…
He fixed my car, I bought parts from him and he bought the website in less than an hour…