Thou Shall Make Thy Net Work

We’ve made it! You’ve now reached the last com­mand­ment. And what bet­ter way is there to end this book that’s chock-​​full o’ mar­ket­ing secrets other than by telling you about some­thing I truly hate. I hate net­work­ing. Really, I do!

I hate it because, in my expe­ri­ence, it hasn’t brought me any­thing sub­stan­tial in return. You’re prob­a­bly say­ing right now, “What? Is he crazy? Has he lost his mind?”

But wait a minute, hear me out. Net­work­ing isn’t a bad con­cept. Far from it. If the pre­vi­ous com­mand­ments have been prop­erly fol­lowed, net­work­ing can be a fan­tas­tic mar­ket­ing tool to lever­age them. If you can be at the top of your prospects’ minds, you can also be at the top of your network’s mind, right?

Your spe­cial name, tagline, “unique” prod­uct, free reports, lead gen­er­a­tors, celebrity sta­tus and sup­port sys­tems, all added to a net­work of friends, clients and asso­ciates, can bring you an incred­i­ble amount of business.

How­ever, here’s the prob­lem. Hav­ing a net­work and hav­ing a net­work­ing sys­tem are two entirely sep­a­rate things. When you’re only net­work­ing, for instance, often peo­ple will want some­thing in return or else they will either stop send­ing you clients or sim­ply lose inter­est (if you don’t take the time to rec­og­nize their efforts, and that’s if you have any time left at all).

So, how can you reward your net­work? Bet­ter yet, how can you turn your net­work into a net­work­ing sys­tem? The answer is by devel­op­ing a net­work of strate­gic mar­ket­ing alliances… Or mar­ket­ing joint ven­tures.

All through­out this report you have read about tech­niques in set­ting up strate­gic alliances in some form or another. They were included in the many exam­ples you’ve read up to now. There are as many dif­fer­ent forms of sys­tem­atized net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties out there as there are businesses.

I strongly encour­age you to vig­or­ously seek them out. In my expe­ri­ence, I have found that they mainly fall into three major cat­e­gories. The first is what I call the info-​​network, the sec­ond is the auto-​​network and the third, the intra-​​network. Let’s take a look at each one and how you can apply them.

Info-Networking

The information-​​based net­work is one in which a strate­gic mar­ket­ing alliance is cre­ated in which infor­ma­tion is exchanged in some form or another between par­ties. Basi­cally, that infor­ma­tion includes qual­i­fied leads that both you and your alliance share, or infor­ma­tion about each other that is pro­moted to each party’s tar­get mar­ket or clien­tele (also known as “cross-​​promotion”).

As long as your strate­gic alliance log­i­cally shares the same mar­ket with­out directly com­pet­ing with you, there is an immense poten­tial for you.

For instance, I men­tioned the power behind the free report and espe­cially the newslet­ter. Adver­tis­ing space can be sold at a nom­i­nal cost in order to pay for the print­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of your newslet­ter, or it can be offered to those that might be hap­pily inter­ested in being directly pro­moted to your market.

In turn, you should seek out ad spaces in newslet­ters, cor­po­rate lit­er­a­ture, brochures or cat­a­logues of poten­tially mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial alliances. The obvi­ous advan­tage is that it can save you money by swap­ping ads.

This also refers to mail­ing lists where you can swap prospect or client lists. Mail­ing lists seem to have increased in pop­u­lar­ity these days and, if used prop­erly, can pro­duce pretty good results. Mail­ing list bro­kers sell or lease mail­ing lists that you can use to con­duct direct mail and tele­mar­ket­ing cam­paigns — lists of peo­ple that match your demographics.

How­ever, beware. Bro­kered mail­ing lists will be lim­ited to the demo­graphic data you spec­ify and not the psy­cho­graphic ele­ment of your tar­get mar­ket — that’s impos­si­ble to dis­cern, unless you or the bro­kers were psychics!

Also, elec­tronic mail­ing lists are a lit­tle more com­pli­cated. Email is a more inti­mate medium and pri­vacy is an increas­ingly impor­tant issue these days. There­fore, if you choose to use a broker’s list for your direct email cam­paign, make sure to choose a rep­utable firm where you are guar­an­teed that peo­ple have vol­un­tar­ily sub­mit­ted their addresses (also called “opt-​​in”).

In order to cur­tail both prob­lems, a bet­ter solu­tion is to seek out strate­gic alliances and ask, rent or buy their list of prospects and clients. (In the case of email, you are not swap­ping lists but endorse­ments and spe­cial offers.)

Most of them will approve espe­cially when you trade your list of clients or prospects with them. But if you have to rent their lists, the cost will def­i­nitely be far less than that of one com­ing from a bro­ker — they’re not cheap!

Most strate­gic alliances are not accus­tomed to the idea of shar­ing their lists and will there­fore be happy with just a few bucks. But the added advan­tage is that, since you know from where these lists orig­i­nate, you’ll have a bet­ter han­dle on the qual­ity (i.e., the psy­cho­graphic ele­ment) of the recipients.

As far as email and pri­vacy are con­cerned, info-​​networking doesn’t mean that there has to be an actual mail­ing list exchange. You can swap ezine ads, solo ad mail­ings or exclu­sive spe­cial offers endorsed by each list owner.

Nev­er­the­less, should you decide on using tar­geted mail­ing lists to mar­ket your free report offer, real­ize that it should yield a sub­stan­tially greater result than ordi­nary, unso­licited, untar­geted gen­eral pub­lic mailings.

For instance, mail directed to the pub­lic usu­ally results with less than 5% in response, while direct mail to a pre­de­ter­mined demo­graphic will likely pro­duce more. But if your free report is used in your cam­paign, and if your goal is only to gen­er­ate leads and not sales, your response rate will be a lot higher.

Auto-Networking

Auto-​​networking is the process of cre­at­ing referral-​​sources that auto­mat­i­cally sup­ply you with good qual­ity leads, auto­mat­i­cally, with­out you hav­ing to lift a fin­ger. Things like brochure stands, posters, fly­ers, coupons and busi­ness cards can be placed at the offices of poten­tial referral-​​sources.

Again, I hate net­work­ing, espe­cially when I have to work for them (or, in other words, nur­ture them). So auto-​​networking doesn’t mean to give out cards to a pos­si­ble referral-​​source and then hop­ing it will pro­duce some­thing in return. It means set­ting up a sys­tem between both of you where, since you are both cater­ing to a same mar­ket, you have made an arrange­ment to con­stantly sup­ply each other with col­lat­eral mate­ri­als, leads and information.

Here’s an exam­ple. A drycleaner dis­cov­ered that the largest clien­tele of a nearby restau­rant was mostly made up of com­pany exec­u­tives hav­ing “power lunches” (those busi­ness lunches the tax peo­ple love to hate). The drycleaner, know­ing that her great­est clien­tele is also made up of exec­u­tives who bring their shirts or dresses to have cleaned, saw an opportunity.

Coupons were made up and handed out by the restaurant’s wait­ers and wait­resses along with their clients’ food tabs. They offered a 5% per­cent dis­count on dry-​​cleaning ser­vices and the coupons could be accu­mu­lated up to a max­i­mum of 25% — of course, they were valid for a lim­ited time only.

In return, the drycleaner handed out coupons (clipped to their clients’ gar­ment bags) offer­ing a free appe­tizer or dessert at that par­tic­u­lar restau­rant — good for one per per­son per lunch — with every load of $30 worth of dry-​​cleaning.

But it didn’t stop there.

They exchanged posters, fly­ers, coupons and printed mate­ri­als (such as the restaurant’s menu and the drycleaner’s brochure, which were both left on each other’s coun­ters). They also mar­keted the cam­paign under the ban­ner of:

“Don’t let the spot on you shirt from the juici­est roast beef in town at Carmicheal’s Restau­rant ruin that big deal! Bring it to Sparkling Clean­ers, the first drycleaner for the busy exec­u­tive, because ‘Power Lunches Deserve a Clean Image.’ With both Carmicheal’s Restau­rant and Sparkling Clean­ers, you can take your clients to lunch… And take a bite out of dirt!”

By the way, I must take a moment to ask you a ques­tion. (“Here he comes with another pop quiz,” you say.) In the pre­vi­ous exam­ple, par­tic­u­larly in the mar­ket­ing approach the drycleaner and restau­rant took, were included some other com­mand­ments. Can you guess what they are? The obvi­ous ones are hard to miss. They both car­ried the trade­mark sym­bols, indi­cated that they spe­cial­ized in one area, and had taglines added to their names.

But the one that might have gone unno­ticed is the cat­e­gory in which the drycleaner placed itself. Being the first drycleaner spe­cial­iz­ing in exec­u­tive dryclean­ing is prob­a­bly a lit­tle mis­lead­ing and most likely untrue, but by call­ing itself the first drycleaner for the “busy” exec­u­tive, it has cre­ated its own unique cat­e­gory. (All right, all right. I was just checking!)

Another form of auto-​​networking is, as the say­ing goes, “You can’t teach an old dog a new trick, but you can surely teach a new dog an old trick!”

Cre­at­ing net­work­ing sys­tems with referral-​​sources who are either approached by com­peti­tors or already impli­cated in other com­mit­ments may be a dif­fi­cult task. So, what can you do? Get them while they’re just start­ing out, espe­cially before they become poten­tial tar­gets for your competitors.

Pre­vi­ously, I showed you how impor­tant it is for you to get known in your indus­try as the expert — the celebrity in your field. By con­duct­ing speeches, sem­i­nars, guest lec­tures, spon­sor­ships, evening classes and the like, you are cre­at­ing that all-​​important top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness. Many of the mem­bers in your audi­ence should encom­pass poten­tial referral-​​sources.

But referral-​​sources have to come from some­where, don’t they?

So, if you can approach them before they can be approached by your com­peti­tors, you can save your­self a lot of effort let alone grief.

For exam­ple, hair­dressers are often the biggest referral-​​sources for hair replace­ment sur­geons. I teach hair trans­plant doc­tors to become known among the hair­dress­ing com­mu­nity and set up strate­gic alliances with them by, among other things, set­ting up brochure stands in their salons.

How­ever, if they have been in the indus­try for a while, many of these styl­ists may have already been approached by other doc­tors or have a fixed idea of which doc­tor to whom they would refer their clients for cos­metic surgery.

In my con­sult­ing work, I help doc­tors to set up spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tions as “guest lec­tur­ers” at local hair­styling and beauty schools. Schools love it since it’s part of their cur­ricu­lum to teach future hair­styl­ists on the mechan­ics of hair growth and replace­ment. (My wife is a hair­dresser. I know!) Some provinces or states also make it an essen­tial part of their licens­ing requirements.

As for the doc­tor, he not only gets his name incul­cated into the minds of these future hair­styl­ists but also has cre­ated an almost impen­e­tra­ble bar­rier against com­peti­tors want­ing a “piece-​​of-​​the-​​pie.” By being part of their school­ing, these doc­tors became a part of their minds!

This tech­nique can be applied in almost every indus­try in myr­iad ways, with trade schools, busi­ness schools, com­mu­nity col­leges, gov­ern­ment ser­vices, unem­ploy­ment insur­ance sub­si­dized courses, skills train­ing and so on.

A gov­ern­ment soft­ware designer can give a small pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing courses the gov­ern­ment pro­vides to recently hired pur­chas­ing agents. A wed­ding plan­ning con­sul­tant can give a brief talk dur­ing “mar­riage prepa­ra­tion” courses. An accoun­tant spe­cial­iz­ing in cor­po­rate tax­a­tion can give sem­i­nars to young entre­pre­neur work­shops offered by local cham­bers of commerce.

Intra-Networking

Think of intra­cor­po­rate divi­sions, Intranets and intrapre­neurs (e.g., employ­ees own­ing a por­tion of their employer’s com­pany). “Intra-​​anything” sim­ply means two or more parts of a whole that are inde­pen­dent but also inter-​​dependent.

It’s like a net­work “within a network.”

Basi­cally, this is the old bar­ter­ing sys­tem that goes back since the begin­ning of time. But in terms of intra-​​networking how­ever, it is not a direct exchange of prod­uct for prod­uct or ser­vice for ser­vice (or even prod­uct for ser­vice), but an exchange of a ser­vice or prod­uct for pro­mo­tion, clients, refer­rals or leads.

For instance, a restau­rant makes an arrange­ment with a local gas sta­tion to offer coupons to each client that comes to pump gas. They were given the per­mis­sion to hang posters in the sta­tion, leave menus at the counter, and place fridge mag­nets on the pumps. For every 10 coupons the restau­rant received, the employ­ees at the sta­tion were given a free meal.

A free­lance writer spe­cial­ized in edit­ing cor­po­rate newslet­ters. She will then have her arti­cles and per­sonal adver­tise­ments pub­lished for free in asso­ci­a­tion newslet­ters that tar­get her mar­ket in exchange for edit­ing the publisher’s busi­ness cor­re­spon­dence let alone the newslet­ters themselves.

Here’s another exam­ple. Hotels make up the major­ity of the clien­tele of an adver­tis­ing agent spe­cial­iz­ing in ele­va­tor adver­tis­ing. Hotels place the agent’s brochures in all the vacant rooms and suites for free in exchange for free adver­tis­ing space in the ele­va­tors of other busi­ness office buildings.

What kind of prod­uct or ser­vice do you offer from which a referral-​​source may ben­e­fit (and one who caters to the same mar­ket your do)? Think of ways of being able to offer your prod­ucts or ser­vices for free in exchange for pre-​​qualified leads or, as men­tioned in info-​​networking, pro­mo­tional efforts.

Intra-​​networking can also become pow­er­fully effec­tive if you were lucky enough to stum­ble onto another com­pany that offers prod­ucts or ser­vices that com­ple­ment your prod­ucts or ser­vices well, while at the same time shar­ing costs (such as adver­tis­ing costs), leads, as well as clients.

Take the exam­ple of the strate­gic alliance between the printer and wed­ding plan­ner men­tioned ear­lier in the book. Now, the printer gives a spe­cial price break for your clients know­ing that you will refer them to him.

Obvi­ously, this might relate more closely to the auto-​​networking style. But if the printer agrees to print your own pro­mo­tional mate­ri­als, your busi­ness cards, your brochures, or your let­ter­head for free in exchange for a cer­tain num­ber of your clients, that’s intra-​​networking at work!

Alto­gether, info-​​networking, auto-​​networking and intra-​​networking are pow­er­ful tools to help you cre­ate good referral-​​sources that never stop work­ing. The idea is nonethe­less to net­work but to do so wisely so as to be able to cre­ate as many leads and clients as pos­si­ble with the least amount of effort.

Don’t net­work. Make your net work for you!

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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