Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to go on the very first Ships and Dip Cruise put on by the Barenaked Ladies. I’ve known the guys in the band for years and when I found out that the were planning a Fan Cruise I got myself invited aboard as one of the acts. Got to do it the following year as well and had a blast not only with my own shows, but also checking out all of the great acts that were a part of the event. It was like a fantastic floating music festival!
While on-board I also hit it off with Photographer, David Bergman, who was shooting the event and we got to talking about various marketing techniques. He introduced me to a technique that I completely understood and agreed with that he called “Poke Marketing.”
Basically it amounts to making a little extra effort with the clients that you really want to impress. Send an email occasionally, in David’s case as he’s a photographer, he’d sometimes send an enlargement of one of the images that he had taken to the key person in the shot who would enjoy the memory and might be able to offer him more work in the future.
There’s a fine line between pestering someone and sending a gentle reminder or ‘poke’ to say – “Hey, I really enjoyed working with you and I’d love to do it again.”
The concept of ‘poking’ someone on Facebook has much the same effect. It’s just a little reminder that you’re thinking of someone which is fairly unobtrusive, yet might just put a smile on the face of the recipient.
If you find out that a particular client collects elephants for example and you happen to find interesting elephants that you can send them to add to their collection it’ll have the effect of having that person remember you in a positive light. You don’t need to do this on schedule – ‘Every Two Weeks I will Poke Client X’ it should rather be done somewhat randomly but often enough so that you remain in their thoughts and you become their go-to person when every they need your services.
Happy Poking!
