Business networking for the future?

Today I attended one of Bangalore's BNI chapters, BNI Royale on the invitation of Sundeep Kamath, a business owner in Koramangala (an area in south Bangalore).  To my surprise I found the whole concept very interesting.  Unlike many business networking organisation this one was truly efficient in that it promotes sustainable business relations with each of its members.

The concept is rather straight forward, each BNI chapter has a select number of business owners, each representing one aspect of local business within its area of operation.  No chapters accepts new members if that line of business is already represented within itself, so that there is no competition, only collaboration.  Members meet every Fridays and pass on business referrals to one anther based on their own network of clients.  Each business lead that converts into a sale is recognised with a thank you note, no commissions.  The whole process becomes alive when the members play along to the rules of the game.  Members are allowed to bring visitors to these meetings in order to introduce new businesses to the group.

The beauty of this system is that it encourages a network of businesses to look after one another, promoting each other and thus ensuring sustainable growth.  Active and sincere members stick around and see their business grow in parallel to their peers and chances are these same people will still be promoting one another  throughout their career.  Now that is what I call sustainability.  I find it a robust system that promotes local networks and encourages people to look out for one another.

Sustainable marketing?

Carton image link from  www.cartoonstock.com

I came across this article through a tweet, it reinforces other readings I have had around the net about the new forms of marketing that are being adopted.  Mainly, these are:

1. Build a web-site:  this is important to show case your ware, services and other offers you have.
2. Get your web-site to link to relevant page within itself, ie lots of cross linking to connect the site, this is useful for search engine rank.
3. Get other site to link to your site: this is very important in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and for certain key word searches your site should come up more prominently.
4. Start a blog to promote your knowledge:  this is not to market your services, it is to market your knowledge.  Blog about any important information that is relevant to what you sell or do, and this blog reflects your expertise in that domain, as well as being a repository to all things connected to what you do, like a single place to look for that information.
5. Be social: connect on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and various other social sites that may be of use to make contacts, promote your blog and knowledge.

However, there is one added piece of interesting information this article adds which is the reason for this post, and that is that it reports on the a recent survey in the US that 78% of internet users conduct online product research before making a purchase, stressing the the shift towards active participation of the consumer.  That is a very interesting results because it highlights the shift in awareness of consumers and the application of mind to the process of purchase.

Therefore there is one more point I think should be added to the above list:

       6. Be truthful and sincere:  there is no room for marketing gimmicks, the old school of marketing by insinuating half-truths in order to leverage consumer trends and aspirations is loosing grounds and one cannot hide behind false pretence.  We can still see so many product advertisement jumping on the sustainable and green bandwagon when clearly a little research online demonstrates the fallacy of these marketing campaigns.