Storm Dawg Marketing

Good morning StormDawg fans,

While the Dawg’s away, I thought I’d take a moment to update you about the StormDawg Small Business Stimulus Plan and some other pro bono work StormDawg is doing.

We’ve had close to 200 submissions for this month’s contest, and let me tell you… these are some compelling stories. I’ve even noticed that many of you took the time to Fan the Stimulus Plan’s Facebook page, so thanks! StormDawg assembled his S.W.A.T. team early last week, and we can’t put your stories down! Picking a winner for this month’s free marketing giveaway is going to be tough, but we’re getting close. Members of the S.W.A.T. team might be calling some of you to ask a few questions and flesh out more of your story, so be nice and throw them a bone. We’re going to try and do something for everyone, even if you’re not picked as this month’s winner. And if you’re not this month’s winner, there’s always next month!

It occurs to me this morning that we’ve been so caught up in this contest,  it’s easy to forget how it all started. Do you remember reading about Trinity United Methodist and Mick Doyle’s? (If not, take a quick minute to read them.) It’s how this how contest got started. Trinity and Mick Doyle’s were hurting because of our economy and needed help… so StormDawg came to the rescue. Here’s an update on each… think of it as a small taste of what our monthly contest winners can expect.

Trinity United Methodist
Trinity faced two challenges: building their congregation and funding their new community center. To help the former, StormDawg had Trinity work with American Church Lists (ACL), a division at infoGROUP that specializes in helping churches build their congregation, and Triplex, a division specializing in helping nonprofits. ACL has put together four postcard campaigns to help the church get its message out to local residents and new movers in the area. (We’ll post the designs online soon!) Triplex is doing a tremendous job getting the word out about the new community center. They are helping Trinity put together a benefit dinner and inviting local donors to attend. Triplex will send an introductory email to potential donors, asking them to watch for the invitation letter, then sending the letter, followed up with another email. What a great integrated marketing approach to getting the most attendance for their benefit dinner. (We’ll put these designs online, too!)

Mick Doyle’s
Mick Doyle’s has been marketing for years… their marketing just needed a bit of a kick. They currently market through word-of-mouth, Yellow Pages, and their website. And for a while, this worked just fine, but with the current economy, they just have not been seeing the traffic they need. The S.W.A.T. team decided to tackle this one together. We’ll help Mick with three tools: paid search advertising, an integrated marketing campaign, and we’ll take his word-of-mouth marketing into the social networking spaces. We’ll use Google’s paid search advertising to drive more traffic to his website, which we’ll also search engine optimize. We’ll do a targeted direct-mail and email campaign, aimed at his best prospects. Finally, we’ll make sure Mick has a presence on the area’s most popular social networking site, Facebook, and all the tools and training he needs to successfully engage in this space.

Think of Trinity and Mick Doyle’s as a small appetizer, and YOU can be the MAIN COURSE! Keep sending in your stories for the StormDawg Small Business Stimulus Plan, and if you’re picked, we’ll put together a plan like this for you!

As StormDawg would say… “Don’t work too hard!”

Bryan D. Jennewein – StormDawg S.W.A.T. Team

Hey all,

A couple of months ago I decided to try something new. I wanted to write a blog. My goal was to find a way to talk to small businesses, have them talk to me, and to each other. I knew that social networking was coming like a tidal wave, but I wasn’t really sure how to use it, so I just jumped.

My first story was about my sister Jeana, the bar owner, and over the past few months I’ve shared other stories about businesses and communities, but I was just scratching the surface. There is an old adage that says “the best way to learn about something is to try and teach it.” Although I’ve found research to post to the blog and articles about small businesses, the biggest learning experience of all is what I have learned from you!

We are making progress with Reverend Nan, and with the help of my colleagues in American Church Lists, the marketing plan for the church is starting to take shape. The fundraising event for the community center is scheduled, and with the help of my colleagues at Triplex, our non-profit group, we are hopeful it will be a success.

Mick Doyle is kind of elusive, but it too is starting to take place.

So many people sent me stories in response to the StormDawg Stimulus package that I’ve struggled to keep up, but I finally did it and have now read every story. In the next few weeks, with the help of a group of few colleagues that I’m going to call the “StormDawg S.W.A.T Team” I will pick a winner. The stories run the gamut from very small startups, to businesses that have been around for a long time. It’s amazing how much thought and effort went into each submission. The next thing I need to do is figure out how to share them with you, but even more importantly, I hope to come up with a plan to help all of them out. I’m certain that with the help of the StormDawg S.W.A.T team, I will come up with something.

On a personal note, my daughter Samantha is returning from Semester at Sea. Kim and I will be taking some time off to go out to Fort Collins and help her move into an off campus house. So, I may have a few guest bloggers comment on the research and articles that will be posted this week.

Have a great week and don’t work too hard!

StormDawg

Hey All,

I am kind of changing gears, but I have a story to tell that isn’t really about a business but more about churches, the community and communication. My church, Trinity Methodist in Ralston had a grand opening for a new community center on June 4. The community center has a full gym, meeting places, and a full commercial kitchen. It will give the community a place to get together for meetings, community and social events. This is the result of hard work by folks in the church and members of the local community. They recognized a need in the community and went to work to raise the money for construction and committed to funding the community center in the future.

The church’s ability to fund the community center in the future will mostly rely on commitments and pledges from the existing congregation, but the future also depends on bringing new members into the congregation. Churches by their very nature are conservative and don’t really think they are in the marketing and recruiting business per se, but they are. I suggested to our minister, Reverend Nan, that she should tap into technology to reach out to new people moving into the community and local area. We could use emails, social networking pages, but we need to also use this grand opening as a way to collect data in addition to recruiting new members to the congregation. My company, infoGROUP, has a division, American Church Lists, specializing in marketing to and for church congregations. Using the marketing information that exists in our church database along with information on new homeowners and new movers is a great way to reach out to potential new members of the congregation.

I will have some work to do, convincing the finance and membership committees to do some different things, but with Nan’s help I am sure we can convince them to use the new technology and some of the marketing techniques I talk about. By doing this, we can focus on increasing the church membership, which is essential to maintaining our commitment to the community center and to the community.

I am sure there are some other great examples of how other congregations have raised awareness to increase their membership and I would love to hear your stories.

Don’t work to hard.

StormDawg