29th: Be part of local events
Feb 12, 2024
Community outreach programs are excellent for networking, lead generation, and brand building. Participating in such events can provide a very high ROI. Your target audience, prospective lenders, suppliers, or even general people who have nothing to do with you may start seeing you as a reliable, smart, friendly business. Such events provide good opportunities to bond with the community and spread love!
Here is what you can do to get more local visibility:
- Sponsor local events. You may sponsor charitable events or fun events such as sports, food festivals, music festivals, etc. Sponsor those events where there are high chances of finding your target audience.
- Become a host or speaker for local events, conferences, etc. If you are not good at it, you can ask anyone from your management team to do it. You don’t necessarily have to talk about your business. Prepare a speech that provides value to the listeners, so they get curious to find out about you.
- Offer free services/products at local events. You might restrict your offering to a select audience such as for veterans, children, single moms, etc. whatever suits your budget.
- You may sponsor products or services to your local libraries, schools, old age homes, etc. You may not find your target audience there, but it can help you build trust and emotional connection with the local people.
- Conduct free educational workshops that may interest the local audience (not specifically your target audience). If you have an IT expert in your team, you conduct a free off-line/online workshop on how to stay safe from cyber fraud. You may organize a get-together for single moms who can come and share their struggle stories to motivate others. There is no dearth of such ideas but choose the ones that go well with your company’s objectives.
Participating in local events is not just a good business strategy; it is a way to take some time off and enjoy being out there with others.