1-888-353-5012With technology at my fingertips, I am a better friend.
In my younger days, I relied on my memory for all the important dates in my life and the lives of my friends and family… coffee dates, dinner plans, birthdays, anniversaries. But as I’ve aged, my memory bank is overloaded with too many “files”, and there are a lot of details that I unintentionally forget.
Family and friends are important to me. And if I start to forget about what’s important in their lives too often, it’s likely we would become disconnected and possibly drift away from each other. So I put EVERYTHING into my smartphone calendar and each week I check to make sure I remember to keep commitments, show up on time, and celebrate important upcoming events.
In a way, each time I do that, each time I connect with loved ones and acknowledge their life events, I am “marketing” myself and the benefits my friendship provides. See how much I care about you? See how valuable I am as a friend?
Sound familiar? It’s just like the relationship you have with your existing customers. It needs to be fostered. They need reminders of how great you are and why they should visit you more often and choose you over the other options available to them.
And just like friendships, your customer relationships can be fostered based on current events. How many times has a holiday appeared, a special occasion, national day, or some big event that has everyone’s attention and you’ve thought… “Hmmm… I should have tied some marketing or an event to that.” Then you think… “I’ll do it next year for sure.”
“In a way, I am
“marketing” myself and the benefits my friendship provides.”
An Election, the Olympics, the Academy Awards, National Car Care Day, Burger Day … there’s an unlimited number of events in the year for your business to capitalize on. Not to mention all the regular marketing leveraging seasonal changes in your business, new products, and special events. These events are on your customer’s mind ALREADY. Why not leverage them? This is called slipstream marketing. It’s a very powerful technique that gives your marketing relevance. It should be part of every business marketing calendar.
“Hmmm… I should have
tied some marketing to
that.”
As a business owner, it can be difficult to remember to plan for what’s approaching in the future. But planning a marketing calendar in advance is critical for any successful business. We’ve all heard the old Chinese Proverb,
“Dig the well before you thirst.” If you don’t sit down and make a conscious effort to decide what will work best for your business, and schedule out a plan, those opportunities will stay in your hindsight.
As you look forward to the end of another year, we encourage you to gather the key players in your business and start a marketing plan for 2022. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, just a rough guideline of the milestones and markers that are relevant to your business, that you can tie into your marketing.