I did a little exercise recently where I looked back over the leads I’ve had in the last three months, and I worked out where each of them came from.
The results were interesting:
5% from online casting sites (I rarely use these anymore, so these were legacy customers)
8% from LinkedIn
16% from my website
21% from email marketing
And 50% from networking
Some of these were repeat clients, but I looked at where they had originally come from.
I knew that networking accounted for a good number of my leads, but I hadn’t realised it was as high as that!
Having this information means I know where to double down on my marketing efforts, and it’s obvious that I need to keep networking, but not everyone keeps networking over the summer…
Of course, this is the time when many people take holidays, especially those with school aged children, but hardly anyone is away all summer, and everyone needs to keep their businesses going, so why stop?!
To be fair, most of the networks I belong to have continued to meet. There may be fewer people than usual in the room, but sometimes this can be an advantage – you can get to know people a bit better when there aren’t so many to talk to.
It’s also more likely that you’ll get asked to attend meetings on someone else’s behalf over the summer. I’ve just been asked to be a substitute for one of my contacts at a local BNI meeting. Unfortunately, I can’t make it, but I enjoy going to these meetings now and again – it’s a free breakfast and a chance to meet some different people!
I’ve heard the argument more than once that only small business owners go networking, so if you want to work with bigger businesses then there’s no point going to networking meetings. However, it’s not often the people in the room that you end up working with – it’s the people they know, and they may well know people that work for bigger organisations.
For example, I would love more work in the heritage sector, and I’ve been mentioning this at all the networking meetings I go to. As a result of this I was recently introduced to someone who works for English Heritage – a national organisation.
People may have spouses, or relatives who work for large companies, or they may have worked for a big business in the past and still have contacts there. You just never know!
So, I’m not taking a break from networking this summer – it brings a lot to my business so I’d be foolish to stop.
Do you know what your biggest source of leads is?
Are you a fan of networking? If you are – are you continuing over the summer? Let me know!