To experience an explosion of knowledge about word-of-mouth referral marketing, stick around. BNI members and staff are living the referral marketing experience every hour of every day in every corner of the world. Members and staff add to the base of knowledge about referral marketing throughout the world every day.
Five years ago, there were three BNI annual conferences in the world. Now, there are at least eight annual conferences on referral marketing, and all eight are sponsored by BNI. This increasing number of conferences is like a series of brainstorm sessions. New information, experiences and knowledge are shared among the thousands of participants, then recorded and then shared further a field.
Consider the following from the Association for Computing Machinery (www.acm.org): "More new information has been produced within the last three decades, than in the last five millennia. Over 9,000 periodicals are published in the United States each year, and almost 1,000 books are published daily around the world. In every 24-hour period approximately 20,000,000 words of technical information are being recorded. A reader capable of reading 1,000 words per minute would require 1.5 months, reading eight hours every day, to get through one day's technical output, and at the end of that period, he would have fallen 5.5 years behind in his reading!"
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HUDDLE TIME
6 Simple Steps to a 'Slightly' Famous You
By Steven Van Yoder
Some business owners attract clients and customers like magic. They do not cold call or rely on advertising. Everyone knows their name, and they get all the business they can handle. These people are "slightly" famous: just famous enough to make their names come to mind when people are looking for their particular product or service.
In today's noisy world, many businesses are embracing slightly famous marketing methods and attracting clients and customers without spending a fortune.
Want to join them? It starts with an understanding of six basic principles for creating a slightly famous you.
1. Target the best prospects
Many entrepreneurs try to sell to the widest possible market; but slightly famous entrepreneurs target only the best prospects.
Alex Fisenko, the "the Dean of Beans," is a coffee expert who started his first espresso shop in the 1960s. Now he sells his expertise on launching a successful coffee business to aspiring entrepreneurs through seminars and a training course called "Espresso Business Success."
His website generates thousands of dollars a month in product sales and consulting engagements throughout the world. "By targeting the best prospects, I now make more money through book sales and consultations than when I ran coffee shops," says Fisenko.
2. Develop a unique market niche
Slightly famous marketers establish themselves within a market niche that they can realistically hope to dominate.
Dan Poynter is a successful self-publisher who writes books about parachuting and hang-gliding. He sells books to skydiving clubs, parachute dealers, and the U.S. Parachute Association. He developed a reputation in skydiving circles and has enjoyed steady sales of his books for more than three decades. Best of all, he has the market all to himself.
3. Position your business as the best solution
Positioning is about identifying a key attribute of your company, not offered by competitors, that is valuable to your target market.
When Harry Shepherd started his bookkeeping service, he mastered a popular accounting program and marketed himself as a "QuickBooks Software Training Consultant." He went from blending into a sea of competitors to occupying a compelling market position.
Word spread fast among accountants as they referred him to their clients. He charged higher fees and even trained other bookkeepers to use accounting software.
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