Episode 204: “BNI’s Multi-Touch Marketing”

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Synopsis

A BNI member suggested to Dr. Misner that BNI wasn’t doing any marketing. If you look at the following slide, you’ll see that BNI actually markets itself through a multitude of channels such as

• Referrals!
• SuccessNet Online
• BNIPodcast.com
• BusinessNetworking.com
• BNI-Facebook Group, LinkedIn, Ecademy, Xing (plus more)
• Traditional Media (radio, magazines, papers, press releases)
• AskIvanMisner.com
• BNIBusinessIndex.com
• Videos
• Books & CDs
• Online Educational Programs
  • yourBusinessChannel.com
  • AskJim.biz
  • NetworkingNow.com
• BNIFoundation.org
• International Networking Week
• Articles and Author Mentoring
• BNI Websites (News Briefs & RSS Feed)
• BNI Connect (Online “Social Network”)

 

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 204 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, CA. I am joined today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you and what are you sharing with us today?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. Today I am talking about BNI’s multi touch marketing campaign, or marketing program. I’ll tell you it stems from an email that I received from a director who was contacted by a member who basically said, “Oh BNI is good. What are they doing for marketing? I just don’t see anything. I don’t think BNI is doing any marketing.”

And I had to smile. I had to figure, okay, not everybody sees what we are doing. I think to some extent, the BNI program is much like the tip of the iceberg. Members only see what is happening in their local chapter. Occasionally, they will see regional stuff. They don’t really see what is going on, and a lot is going on- particularly when it comes to marketing.

So I thought what I would do is, first of all, attach to this podcast a one-page PowerPoint that bullet points many of the things that I am going to be talking about here. This isn’t everything that BNI does in terms of marketing, but it’s a pretty good overview of the kinds of things that we do. There is a lot on here.

It starts with referrals, but I actually want to end with referrals, but the first thing it talks about is referrals. Of course, we are a referral organization, so that is an important part of what we do, but I’ll talk about that at the end. So the ideal with this PowerPoint is- and I did this as part of a presentation at a directors’ conference, where I wanted to show directors, here are the kinds of things that we are doing to get our name out there as an organization. Just because you don’t necessarily see it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening and that the public doesn’t see it. You know, not out there, not available to members.

There’s a lot that is out there, and I just want to kind of go through the laundry list and talk about them. A number of them I’ve talked about here before, like SuccessNet. SuccessNet is a powerful medium for marketing the organization. It is open to the public, and we have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, including BNI members and a ton of content. It creates a lot of visibility for the organization. The domain for that is BNISuccessNet.com.

This podcast has turned into one of the best things that we have done. What episode are we on now?

Priscilla:
2004. I’m sorry, 204.

Ivan:
204. 2004- I look forward to that one, Priscilla. 204. We have done 200- this is the 204th episode. Each podcast is, what, 10-12 minutes, Priscilla? That’s a lot of content that’s out there on the internet, to not only support members but to market the BNI brand.

Here is one that is not BNI-oriented but definitely points people to BNI. That’s BusinessNetworking.com, my blog. We do that to the general public as a way of directing people to BNI. It is one of the number blogs on the topic- probably the number one blog on the topic of business networking on the internet today.

We also have a lot of activity that we help manage and coordinate. I’m relating to our Facebook groups, LinkedIn, ecademy, chain- all of these online social media. BNI is very involved in. Twitter. These are things that help to get our name and our brand out there to the public.

Of course, traditional media like radio, magazines, newspapers, press releases. I think a lot of people don’t know this, but I do anywhere on a slow year from maybe 75 interviews for media, radio, newspapers, etc. On a big year, 200-250, particularly when I have a book come out. The books, we’ll talk about that, but the books are a way of marketing the organization. On a really big year, we’ll have over 200 interviews in one year. In all those interviews, I have the opportunity to talk briefly to extensively about BNI.

There are a couple of websites that are reasonably new. They are, again, a way of building the BNI brand. AskIvanMisner.com about business networking. That is open to the public, and it’s a great way to funnel people to BNI. The BNIBusinessIndex.com, which we will be talking about in an upcoming podcast. That’s a great way of getting the media to BNI because you are talking about the pulse of entrepreneurs globally. The media wants to see what entrepreneurs are saying about the status of business, and they are going to BNIBusinessIndex.com.

We have a lot of videos that are now coming out. They are on YouTube and different places, but if you just go to the BNI YouTube and the Ivan Misner YouTube, you’ll see a number of videos that are available about business networking.

Books, CDs- I’ve written more than a dozen books on business networking that are available to members. These books, of course, promote BNI. It’s part of our multi touch marketing campaign. I learned many, many years ago that the media- I’d go to the media and go, “Hey, could you do an interview about BNI?” They would say, “Take an ad out. If you want us to talk, take an ad out.”

But the media will interview any idiot with a book. I have about 14, so you get a lot of interviews. That is part of our structured marketing campaign, to produce books as a way of getting exposure for BNI.

The CDs. We have some great CDs. My two favorite ones are from Fast Track, the Fast Track CD set. They are excellent. The last two about networking and the very last one on visitors, the visitor experience- that is one of my best CDs that I had done. I hate listening to myself on CD, but this one, I really enjoyed listening to. It’s a lot of fun. I was on a chair and the Del Fuego ladies did a great job of interviewing me. That’s powerful marketing for the organization.

There’s a lot of online educational programs that BNI has participated in, like YourBusinessChannel.com, AskJim.biz, NetworkingNow.com. NetworkingNow.com- I’ve given this out on previous podcasts. Right now, if you are a member and want to get six months free, absolutely free, six months on NetworkingNow.com, go there and type in “freesixmonths” on your coupon code. The letters freezixmonths. Free six months. All lowercase, no spaces. You’ll get six months. There are hundreds of marketing materials there. That, too, is open to the public. This is part of our marketing campaign. Read the stuff, see the stuff and it keeps coming back to BNI. BNI is named in all this material, so it is bringing people back to BNI.

Our foundation, we just gave away last week and were starting to get a lot of media attention on this, a check for $50,000 for the Japan relief fund. I am so proud of that. That comes from BNI members and BNI HQ. We had a matching program. We just gave a check for $50,000. That’s great exposure for the organization in a very positive way.

International Networking Week. International Networking Week is an initiative of BNI. We created that. Tons of exposure for International Networking Week. We published hundreds and hundreds and hundreds- last year, I think it was , I think, like 700-800 articles about networking by myself and other BNI directors, all promoting BNI.

Our BNI website, our BNI connect system. All of these are part of the multi touch marketing campaign for BNI. And of course, referrals. I am going to end on that and close it up here. The bottom line is if you are listening to this podcast and you are near a computer, go to your computer and go to Google and type in “business networking”. I am going to do that while we are doing this interview. Now, this will vary from country to country, but right now as of today, I have 4, 990,000 results. Would you like to know what the top one is? Would you like to know that it is, Priscilla?

Priscilla:
I know it’s going to be us.

Ivan:
BNI. Almost 5 million hits. I’m telling you. BNI is one of the first one or two up there. It’s that way with the top three. There have been millions and millions of hits. This has been the case for years. Now, if we’re not doing marketing- and by the way, there is no SEO campaign in BNI. We have hired no one to do a search engine optimization. This is organic.

Somebody could do a search engine optimization. We haven’t done that in more than a decade. So this is all organic.

Is there any chance that if we weren’t doing marketing, that out of almost 5 million hits, we would be number one in Google rankings?

Priscilla:
That’s really impressive.

Ivan:
Yeah. We’re doing a lot out there for marketing. The PowerPoint that is attached, feel free to share at chapter meetings. The more members who know the kinds of things we’re doing, the better. But the most important of everything is to focus on the referrals and the referral process. A lot of what we teach and educate on, a lot of the materials that we do is how to do this through referrals. If the largest business networking organization in the world can’t build its organization through referrals, then something is wrong.

The reason I haven ‘t talked about it in this list is that’s sort of an obvious one, but the truth is it’s so obvious that it’s the most important. That said, I want our members to know that BNI is doing a lot of work to help market this organization in ways that clearly have been fairly effective, based on how we end up on the search engine rankings. I’m really glad that member asked the question and it gave me the opportunity to talk about this today, Priscilla. Thanks.

Priscilla:
Yeah. Great. Well thank you, Ivan. That’s a lot to know, It’s hard to know what the organization is doing as a whole. If you are just in your little chapter, you really have no idea. I am glad you cleared that up for us.

Ivan:
You’re absolutely right. I think many members don’t know and hopefully, podcasts like this give a sense or bigger picture of the kinds of things that the organization is doing. I will give you a real quick example. I have three full time people who do nothing but my communications and social networking here at BNI. Three full timers.

Priscilla:
That’s fantastic.

Ivan:
To do all of our Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, our website work. Our press releases. Our communications. Branding materials. Three full time people at BNI HQ right now who are just devoted to that. So right now, there is a lot of work being done in what I call our multi touch- multiple ways of addressing our marketing program in BNI.

Priscilla:
Cool. Well, I wish I had those three myself. Okay, Dr. Misner. Thank you so much. I think that’s it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.