As a business owner, we all know when we hit a home run with a marketing effort. It might be that you get tons of phone calls, website visits, or orders. We've all experienced it -- that time when you say "Wow, that was a brilliant idea!"
I had one of those last week.
Many of you attended my seminar earlier this year titled Marketing Your Business in the Facebook Era. During that seminar, I gave the audience some real world examples of how I use social media to build our company and make connections with influential people. If you were there, you heard a story about how my goal was to connect with Brad Sugars, a 38 year old CEO of one of the fastest growing international companies. He was on Facebook, and I wanted him to know me.
To make a long story short, I ended up contacting him and doing various things to try to make a connection with him. Some worked and some didn't. But then, I took my online experience offline and sent him a birthday present as a "thank you" for being the highlight of my seminar. I mailed him a bottle of his favorite drink, 10 Cane Rum, a clear rum from Trinidad and Tobago. In the package, I also included a DVD of my seminar and some money I had raised for his favorite charity, Cancer Schmancer.
I knew my efforts were a hit when Brad posted on my Facebook wall several week later that he was drinking my 10 Cane Rum and watching my Social Media Seminar. This is a guy who spends every other day on an airplane traveling the world. I was very honored that he actually took the time to watch my seminar. "It worked", I thought, "I've hit a home run!"
But it didn't stop there. Last week, I was listening to one of Brad's Mastermind Series where he interviews various business people. He has interviewed many of the people I admire, including Jeffrey Gitomer. But this time, he was interviewing Mari Smith, a well known expert on social media. Eighteen minutes into the interview, I hear Brad talking about me, a small business owner from Minnesota, who connected with him on Facebook and then used knowledge gathered on Facebook (his favorite drink) to make a personal connection.
It wasn't until that moment that I realized how successful my efforts were nearly 9 months earlier. I had been truly "memorable" and made a lasting impact with my efforts. So, the next time you think about trying to make a marketing connection, ask yourself, "would I remember this a year later?"