As a small business we can’t afford to take out full page ads in the Herald or 30-second TV commercials. Their days are numbered anyway.
Like most enterprises we need to make every dollar really work.
‘Marketing’ is not rocket science (which is just as well for me). Instead a lot of it is actually ‘doing’ something as opposed to ‘thinking about doing something’. Doing something, even at 50%, achieves more than not doing something at 100%
Here is an example of how I recently turned a $35 bottle of Ascension wine into what will end up being worth over $300,000 to us, plus even more for our local economy. That is $9,000 for $1 invested!
You may have noticed we love entertainment here at Ascension. For me personally there is not a bigger buzz than seeing thousands of people having a great time at a gig in my backyard so to speak.
We wanted to do more of these outdoor concerts, especially with the new vineyard amphitheatre, but I didn’t really have the contacts.
So, I looked up about a dozen ‘promoters’ in NZ and Australia and I hand wrote a short letter introducing ourselves and explaining how we might be able to work together some time in the future. I also sent a bottle of ‘The Benediction’.
I had a ‘thank you’ from three of them, not bad.
A week later though it turned into the jackpot when I had a call from Gray Bartlett and subsequently Ian Magan, two well known entertainment figures in NZ. “Would you like to have The Hollies at Ascension this summer?” Does a one-legged duck swim in circles? Of course we would!
And so The Hollies, one of the biggest UK bands of all time, will be here on January 31st 2011 and it definitely would not have come about but for a handwritten note and a bottle of wine… and some action.
If you own or manage a business, or are proactive about contributing ideas to your workplace, what’s your ‘bottle of wine’. At a 9,000% return on investment someone should be looking for it!
That deserves a CHEERS