A question plaguing anybody who has to do any marketing – not just referral networking at BNI – is “how do I get through to my target market, and how do I get action?”
I was speaking to a friend recently who said he had placed an advertisement in the newspaper and it had returned absolutely zilch.
Sometimes I hear some BNI members saying “referrals could be better” or “I don’t get too many referrals but I come for other reasons such as meeting with like-minded people”.
The newspaper advertisement in that context was a waste of money and time.
Meeting with like-minded people at your BNI is good – and BNI offers many such benefits – but you still want a return at the end of the day. Don’t you?
So how do you get heard, and how do you get action?
The simple answer is “frequency”.
Of course you know that. We all do, but we fail to act on it for reasons of budget, time, energy etc.
If you want to get more out of your newspaper advertising, you have to come up with a compelling over and a big budget and make sure you appear in every single edition of the newspaper for months on end. Then you will get a response.
The same applies to BNI. Come up with a compelling offer and repeat it regularly, week in and week out. You should also be in frequent contact with your referral sources.
Fortunately you don’t need a big budget to do it the BNI way, but you do have to be energetic, committed, tenacious and persistent.
Or you could always do networking part time, and get on with enjoying the company of like-minded people.
That’s good too.
