How many online friends have you made a real life connection with? This weekend I attended an event where I finally met face-to-face with a friend, Julie, who I met a couple of years ago through an online community. We both had a lot in common and though we hadn’t met yet, connected online and eventually offline, building a relationship that crossed the boundaries of screens and logins.

Neither of us knew the other was attending the event this weekend, but when if you’d seen us greet each other you would have thought that we were old childhood friends. Our friendship had a strong bond because we activated old and new modes of connection. It’s something we did naturally, for personal reasons, but a routine that works very effectively in business as well. Especially in the current cluttered online climate.

Whether it’s attracting new clients, doing field research or promoting new products if you don’t pick up the phone you will have a hard time achieving your results. Smart phones, tablets and technology have become so commonplace that it’s hard for your message to get through effectively.

Increasingly business owners are seeing the numbers of client conversions, event registrations and product sales decline because there are more options and less connections than before. If you business model was built on a marketing model that hasn’t been updated in the past year, chances are you’re finding it more difficult to achieve the results you once did. Here are some tips to push get you over the hump:

1) Take a look at your engagement. Who’s opening and clicking through your email? These community members are your best targets and your first stop for developing a follow up plan. 

2) Aggregate all of your client data in one place. Do you have names, email addresses and telephone numbers? You should. If you don’t, reach out to your warmest leads and request that they update (add to) their contact profiles.

3) Start making phone calls. Whenever you add a new type of connection to someone you deepen the relationship and extend it. Julie and I had two points of connection, online and voice. Now that we’ve met we have a added a third layer. We now have a stronger bond and inner circle between ourselves.

4) Extend your offer, or a referral, in a spirit of service. When you’re able to have a real conversation with someone and vet their needs the best “next step”  is to give them a solution that you truly know will solve a need. If it’s you, great, but if it’s not, and you have a resource, extend it to them in the spirit of service.

To cut through the clutter these days you need to build real connection, and step forward from your brand with a focus on your core values. It will endear others to you and increase your results exponentially. To get strategy, analysis and management for your brand, set up a brand strategy session. If you have a solid system in place, share  some of your best tips, or recent results, below.

Thanks,

Beatrice