Unless you are living in some totally isolated part of the world as a hermit, without any interaction with any other human, you are involved in networking.

You may have family networks, or they may be geographic, social or business, or they may even overlap with each other.

Businesses can range in size from small home based businesses, to large multi-national corporations. These businesses may have clients in a small geographic area ranging to a world-wide client base. Any business, regardless of its size, geographic location and client base is involved in marketing.

Marketing to me is a generic term which covers everything any business does to obtain and then endeavour to retain all customers and clients. This includes all print and media advertising, any promotional programs and all interpersonal communication and interaction between anyone in the firm and any client or customer.

So networking and marketing in effect do go hand in hand.

Large firms can spend large sums of money advertising, just to create brand awareness. Smaller firms may not have the luxury of being able to do this.

So, you have a great product and/or service available. Who are your potential customers and/or clients for this product or this service? What are the cost-effective ways of letting this potential client/customer base know about your product and/or service?

Now, there are countless texts that have been written and courses that are available on marketing. I am not going to write a new text here, or provide a new course. But I am going to make a few suggestions that are based on my own empirical evidence.

• Carefully consider all the pros and cons of any proposed spending on advertising
• Believe in yourself and your product and/or service. If you personally don’t believe that what you are offering is good value and worthwhile, you will have considerably more difficulty convincing others.
• Develop networks, get involved with people. Work with others to let them know how your product or service is going to assist them personally, and/or assist their business’s profitability.
• “Look after” existing customers and clients any way that you can. It is far more costly obtaining new clients/customers than it is retaining existing ones.

The title of this page is “Networking and Marketing”. There are many social and business networking sites on the World Wide Web that are available to assist in your marketing efforts. Most of these sites are free to join, and the majority also have a paid membership component. I have published a page on another web site of the networking sites that I have found worthwhile. Click on the link to go there. However, the site that I have found most useful is ecademy. Clicking on the ecademy link will take you to my profile on that site.

There are pros and cons with most things that we do in life, and that includes involvement in networking sites. They can become very time consuming, and how effectively one spends their time is an important consideration for any business person. Networking sites are a great way of meeting many people globally to potentially market your product and/or service. However, be prepared to get many requests to join in all sorts of affiliate marketing programs. I have more to say about some of these programs on the page called Notions of Potions & Lotions on this web site.

©Ian McKenzie - 2008

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