Do you live by your Core Values? One of LIFT Enrichment’s is “Give Back” and I got the chance recently to create a value-packed event for a room of 30+ local entrepreneurs, vice presidents and marketing professionals.
It’s not everyday that you can ask a panel made up of 35+ years of marketing expertise your most important questions to help grow your business…but that’s exactly what attendees of EO Accelerators Learning Event experienced last Tuesday, October 19.
Hosted at Workuity, a co-working office in Chandler, Arizona, I stepped up to the podium in a crisp blue dress shirt and suit jacket… (my first time having worn a fancy outfit in well over a year).
I was a combination of tired, a tad nervous and excited to address my peers and lead the event, as I had just flown in at 6:00AM that morning from Billings, Montana after attending a weekend conference full of school educators to promote my business. Looking into the crowd, I asked the question I ask myself constantly:
“How do you get new leads in the pipeline?”
Without marketing and sales, your business will flat line. This is why I chose “Marketing” as the theme of this event so I could learn some new techniques and create a memorable event for the Entrepreneur Organization Accelerator Program of Arizona, where I serve as Learning Chair to our group of 50+ entrepreneurs.
To my left, I introduced our panel of marketing experts for the evening:
Adam Arkfeld is the owner of Paracore, which for 13+ years has specialized in pay per click advertising using Facebook, Instagram and Google Ads. More info can be found at www.paracore.com or adam@paracore.com
Brett Farmiloe is the founder of Markitors, which specializes in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to help businesses get to the top of the google rankings. More info can be found at: www.markitors.com and brett@markitors.com
Tanya Gagnon runs Miss Details Design and is our Branding expert to help founders tell their story to engage their customers through their website, social media presence and more. Check out: www.missdetails.com Tanya@missdetails.com. You can also check out her blog and sign up directly for her emails here.
Josh Weiss is the owner of 10 to 1 Public Relations and brings 25+ years of public relations experience to the table so that businesses can strategically partner with reporters to get their stories out to the world in newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, podcasts and more. Check out www.10to1pr.com or Josh@10to1pr.com for more information. To join his newsletter scroll to the bottom of this site
The evening started with guests mingling over charcuterie and drinks. It’s a great chance to catch up with fellow accelerators and meet new members and plus ones. At 5:00 pm, guests knocked back their last drink and headed into an adjacent room for the event.
The nice thing about a panel discussion is that there’s no one person who has to carry the evening and, as the moderator, my job was to make the panelists shine. Here were some of their takeaways:
Adam: Do your research when you’re hiring someone to run your ads, whether it’s an agency or freelancer. Also, be realistic in how the process works as there are lots of factors that play into the success of a campaign including the ad picture, copy, landing page, funnel and much more.
Brett: A quick and easy way to boost your online visibility is by sharing your expertise on platforms like Terkel, HARO, and Qwoted.
Tanya: The way to create a unique and consistent brand identity is to use your core values as a foundation. Once you define your brand, you can create unique visuals and a voice/tone which helps everything you do become more memorable. This could be a set of designed templates and set of standards that your team can easily access to make sure your brand consistently shows who you are.
Josh: To get your name out there, first focus on simple stories and small community media to build credibility. This could be your local newspaper and small blogs, which is easy to get going and can yield quick results.
We also discussed the importance of social media, and to only focus on a handful of platforms where your target audience congregates. Be strong on a few channels and ignore the others until you start getting a lot of traction.
After an hour, we transitioned to our Marketing Worksheet, which you can find here. It’s a simple 1-pager designed to get business owners to think of their target customer, where that customer hangs out, and how best to reach out to them.
Using the “correct’ Marketing Channel is a tricky subject, because there are dozens of ways to bring in clients: from Trade Shows to Referrals to Webinars to Joint Ventures to Social Media.
The key is to find out where YOUR target is and work on at least 3 channels. Then, you can optimize those channels before adding new ones. Start slow and get tangible results (i.e. money in the bank) BEFORE moving on to a new one.
After the workshop, attendees connected over good food and drinks until we literally had to kick everyone out because the co-working spot was closing.
Dozens of hours behind the scenes had paid off, as guests got to know the panelists and shared how they got a lot of value from the event.
To learn more about EO Arizona Accelerator program, go here
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