A story of how business networking and newspaper advertising
can work together
Newspaper advertising is often used to develop business networking referrals and to generate leads. It also is "image" advertising to spread the word and create additional touchpoints, as this story shows.
Here's a case study of how it really works!
My client Bob already had an impeccable word-of-mouth reputation and didn't feel the need for any local newspaper advertising.
You see, Bob already had a very successful portrait and wedding photography business.
He was the "go to photographer" in the five-town area for members of a particular social group. (You remember all the referral stuff about how people want to do business with people like themselves they know and trust?)
Even though he was getting a lion's share of wedding photography from people in this group, he wanted more work to fill in some time gaps... but he didn't know how to solve the problem.
We told him that even with all of his business, there still were other groups in the local towns who didn't know about him. Here's the question. "How was he going to break into those groups where he could also thrive?"
His target markets all had active, informed people who read every word in the local weekly newspapers. Naturally, not everyone would need Bob's services "right now".
So to generate long-term interest and reminders, we came up with a series of small ads illustrating his work that were published each and every week.
The results? For the first few months, Bob was pretty skeptical about what he called "disappointing" results. Naturally impatient, he really didn't realize how long it takes to establish a reputation with new groups of people.
But the ads were getting noticed, and so was he. It took about six months before his target market started to respond and call. A couple of years later, he thanked us and said, "that was the best thing I ever did for my business."
Symbiotic? Sure. One plus One can equal Three!
Since you employ the business networking technique every day at work anyway, make it go further and try to combine it with another advertising vehicle, like we were able to do for Bob.
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