Marketing & Advertising the Focus of January BBA Meeting
Jan 29, 2018 06:00AM ● By Pamela Johnson
Cathy McAuliffe of SendOutCards
story & photo by Pamela Johnson, Contributing Writer/Publisher
It wasn’t the weather, so perhaps it was just too soon after the holidays; whatever the reason, the January 10 meeting of the Bellingham Business Association (BBA), held at Lowell’s Restaurant, was sparsely attended.
Roughly a dozen members listened to Bellingham Bulletin Publisher Pam Johnson speak about various advertising mediums and the challenges each is facing in the ongoing digital revolution, highlighting in particular print advertising’s benefits and perceived drawbacks along with workarounds for them. (You can view Johnson’s presentation by clicking on the PDF file below.)
After the dinner that followed Johnson’s presentation, the group was introduced to Cathy McAuliffe, a business solutions specialist with SendOutCards. She promotes relationship marketing, which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a primary focus on sales transactions.
According to McAuliffe (pictured above), it is more important to recognize the long-term value of customer relationships than to spend the bulk of your time marketing, and to extend communication beyond “intrusive advertising” and sales promotional messages. This, she estimates, requires spending 80% of the time on building relationships and 20% on marketing.
“The world is changing in how we communicate,” she read from her presentation. “Technology has made it faster and easier to stay in touch, yet people are less connected today than ever before.” McAuliffe posited, “There is much more competition today; therefore there is less loyalty.”
According to information from the U.S. Small Business Administration and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 68% of your customers/clients leave because they perceive indifference toward them on your part. After reciting a few more facts about customer retention, McAuliffe emphasized that if you change how your current customers feel about you, your business’s profitability will improve, because 80% of your future profits will come from just 20% of your existing customers.
So what can you do to change how your customers feel about you? McAuliffe says it’s by sending cards, such as thank you notes, birthday cards, holiday cards, congratulations, etc. And rather than hiring someone to do it for you if you don’t have time, the solution may be SendOutCards. The company offers packages, a monthly subscription, or pay-as-you-go. Subscribers choose a card from the online catalog, write a message to personalize it, and then SendOutCards will print, stuff, stamp and mail it for you.
For more information on Cathy McAuliffe and SendOutCards, visit www.SendOutCards.com/CMcAuliffe, or email her at [email protected].
The BBA’s next meeting will be held on Feb. 7 at Rock ’n Coal Pizza in the Bellingham Marketplace on So. Main St./Rte. 126, and will feature a member presentation by Mass Renewables, Inc.
For more information on the Bellingham Bulletin, you can email Johnson at [email protected], visit www.BellinghamBulletin.com, find the Bellingham Bulletin's Facebook page, or call 508-883-3252.)
For more information on the BBA, visit www.bellinghambusinessassociation.org or email Secretary/Treasurer Sue Grady at [email protected]. The BBA may also be found on Facebook and LinkedIn.
It wasn’t the weather, so perhaps it was just too soon after the holidays; whatever the reason, the January 10 meeting of the Bellingham Business Association (BBA), held at Lowell’s Restaurant, was sparsely attended.
Roughly a dozen members listened to Bellingham Bulletin Publisher Pam Johnson speak about various advertising mediums and the challenges each is facing in the ongoing digital revolution, highlighting in particular print advertising’s benefits and perceived drawbacks along with workarounds for them. (You can view Johnson’s presentation by clicking on the PDF file below.)
After the dinner that followed Johnson’s presentation, the group was introduced to Cathy McAuliffe, a business solutions specialist with SendOutCards. She promotes relationship marketing, which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a primary focus on sales transactions.
According to McAuliffe (pictured above), it is more important to recognize the long-term value of customer relationships than to spend the bulk of your time marketing, and to extend communication beyond “intrusive advertising” and sales promotional messages. This, she estimates, requires spending 80% of the time on building relationships and 20% on marketing.
“The world is changing in how we communicate,” she read from her presentation. “Technology has made it faster and easier to stay in touch, yet people are less connected today than ever before.” McAuliffe posited, “There is much more competition today; therefore there is less loyalty.”
According to information from the U.S. Small Business Administration and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 68% of your customers/clients leave because they perceive indifference toward them on your part. After reciting a few more facts about customer retention, McAuliffe emphasized that if you change how your current customers feel about you, your business’s profitability will improve, because 80% of your future profits will come from just 20% of your existing customers.
So what can you do to change how your customers feel about you? McAuliffe says it’s by sending cards, such as thank you notes, birthday cards, holiday cards, congratulations, etc. And rather than hiring someone to do it for you if you don’t have time, the solution may be SendOutCards. The company offers packages, a monthly subscription, or pay-as-you-go. Subscribers choose a card from the online catalog, write a message to personalize it, and then SendOutCards will print, stuff, stamp and mail it for you.
For more information on Cathy McAuliffe and SendOutCards, visit www.SendOutCards.com/CMcAuliffe, or email her at [email protected].
The BBA’s next meeting will be held on Feb. 7 at Rock ’n Coal Pizza in the Bellingham Marketplace on So. Main St./Rte. 126, and will feature a member presentation by Mass Renewables, Inc.
For more information on the Bellingham Bulletin, you can email Johnson at [email protected], visit www.BellinghamBulletin.com, find the Bellingham Bulletin's Facebook page, or call 508-883-3252.)
For more information on the BBA, visit www.bellinghambusinessassociation.org or email Secretary/Treasurer Sue Grady at [email protected]. The BBA may also be found on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Downloads
BBA_20Advertising_20Presentation.pdf
