Storm Dawg Marketing

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