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It is a known fact among marketers that very few people, if anyone will buy from you at your first meeting.  To get prospects to commit you must send regular messages to reinforce your value and position your company as the one to purchase from. My rule is 8:16, eight communications within a 16 month period before a prospect will do business with you. It stands to reason that getting prospects onto your opt-in mailing list is critical. Doing so eases your prospect’s commitment anxiety (less fear associated with a newsletter than plunking down cash) and for you it gets them into your sales communication funnel.

A clever way to use your mobile phone to grow your opt-in list is to add a mobile-friendly version of your mailing list registration form to your website.  Now when you meet people at networking events, speaking engagements or while shopping at the mall you can use your phone to access your mobile page and easily allow your friend to join your list and willingly become part of your sales (or referral) chain.  In addition to feeding your list, I bet you get a few “wows” as well and you are certain to be remembered. When you use this tactic be sure to bookmark the mobile registration page for quick access.

What is your best approach to growing your mailing list (comment below)?

Unless you have been hanging out on Google Alerts web news monitoring service, FastPitch! Networking probably sounds like a group of ex baseball players turned tech consultants.  In reality FastPitch! is a web 2.0 enabled, social networking site that among other things matches business owners with online networking partners based on compatible industry profiles to share leads and collaborate.
 
This day Bill Jula, the FastPitch! Networking CEO and founder is “here” to deliver the kung-fu on effectively networking in the FastPitch! space.  Even if you are not a member, Bill’s kung-fu might just work in any online community.  Before you ask, I do have a FastPitch! profile (click here).  Read on Grasshopper.

[Q]: What are some of the tactics you have seen your best members use to grow their business through the FastPitch! network?

[Bill]: Members who make Fast Pitch! a regular part of their work week tend to benefit the most from the network.  These are typically people who regularly log-in and make connections with new people AND add new content to their profile such as press releases, blog articles, pictures, etc… Active members tend to receive preferred ranking throughout the network and therefore receive maximum visibility and ultimately have more people reaching out to them with new opportunities.

[Q]: Beyond simply featuring a video, what should be included in a good FastPitch! member profile video (testimonials, special offer, information to educate networking partners, etc)?

[Bill]: First of all, I wouldn’t necessarily limit yourself to one video.  As a Premium Member you are able to add multiple links to your profile – which means you can link to multiple videos. 

If you were to add just one video, my suggestion would be to create at the very least, a 1-2 minute video ‘pitch’ whereby you introduce yourself and make clear what you have to offer and what makes your company better (competitive advantage).  You should also consider embedding this video into your profile.  Each time someone visits your profile, they will be greeted with your video.

Additional videos might include:  product demonstrations, tours of your office, customer testimonials, etc… 

[Q]: What features are you planning for upcoming releases of the FastPitch! infrastructure?

[Bill]: We typically don’t discuss upcoming features until we launch them… however, at a high level I can tell you that we’ll be doing more and more with mobile applications in the coming years.  Location based networking using mobile phones is something that overtime will become more accepted (i.e. receiving alerts when people in your network are nearby AND/OR when someone who is looking to buy what you have to sell, etc…). 

There are also many cosmetic changes we will be making to the site overtime, as we continue to grow and add more features.

The last few weeks I have written a lot about creative ways to work with networking groups. No, this is not a lead in for a topic shift.  I want to continue by discussing an opportunity to turn your networking group member profile into a 24 hour referral generator by adding your company’s or your personal video.

After the home page of a networking group’s website, the member profiles are the most highly trafficked pages.  Existing members browse profiles to learn more about their referral partners and site visitors (your prospects) drop by to determine if your business can help them. By adding either a personal video or your company’s video commercial to your profile you can,

1. Teach:  Show and tell your referral partners about the mix of products and services your business offers.  Your referral partners cannot sell your business within their contact spheres without a working knowledge of who you are and what you do.
2. Stand out:  I can almost guarantee you that you will be the only company in your pod doing this.  Browse the Business Networking International (BNI) chapters right now and tell us how many of the summaries feature video…few to none I bet, so who do you think will be remembered?
3. Communicate efficiently:  You can put a lot more information into a short 1 minute video than you could usefully add to a networking group website profile page (narration, visuals, music and text).
4. Increase clickthroughs:  It is an established fact that web promotions that feature video have significantly higher clickthrough rates than those with text and images alone.  In order for you to get profile browsers into your sales cycle you will want them to clickthrough to links pointing to your company site, blog or newsletter and your video’s content will give them a reason.

Here is a link to my business profile for one of the networking groups I belong to (click here).  Is your company video featured on your networking group’s website?  Give us the link so we can watch it (add your link).

I recently sat in on a meeting with members of the Synergy Partners networking group and was quite impressed with the group’s disciplined approach to generating business opportunities. In addition to the standard, “lead sharing” activity that most groups like this engage in, the team hosted an informative talk by Synergy member Dan Colby of Pinstripe Inc. covering the business benefits of Web 2.0 practices and technology.

I wish I could share the presentation with you but they did not record it, which brings me to the point of this post. I thought if the group considered streaming a video of Dan