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2008 eROI Online Marketing Prediction #1: Support Local
January 6, 2008
Businesses Must Support Their Local Community or they will suffer (PR backlash, customer and vendor pressure). Local is the new Organic, but for businesses, not just consumers. There is such truth to the expression - the more you give, the more you get. It applies to giving of your time and money to charity causes and even non-profit professional associations. On the surface, it appears to be a major expense and unproductive distraction to give a significant amount of executive time, employee resources, and company money to local charities like Friends of the Children, Start Making a Reader Today, Zenger Farm, or the Boys and Girls Club. The same logic applies to professional organizations like Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, Starve Ups, Portland Advertising Federation, Software Association of Oregon, American Marketing Association, and a handful of others. Examples of companies who focus on giving back to their communities (click on each company name to go directly to their community involvement webpage) include Kettle Foods, Jive Software, and eROI.
However, it is flawed logic to look at giving back to the community as an expense. Here's why:
- Gain awareness to large groups of prospective clients. Customer acquisition costs are much lower when a business and its customer have a shared connection and shared values.
- Community involvement creates a halo effect of positive association to an altruistic organization with shared values.
- Employee involvement in non-profit organizations deepens the emotional connection and loyalty between the employee and the company.
- Employee recruiting is a whole lot easier with greater local awareness and the positive association with your business doing the right thing (especially in the younger generation of recent college grads).
- Serving on non-profit committees and Board of Directors gives you access to some of the smartest local business execs that can give valuable entrepreneurial business advice you can't get anywhere else.
- Public relations and marketing is a lot easier locally when people are genuinely routing for you.
- Finally, doing the right thing for your community is the whole point of being in business in the first place.
If you don't run a company built on a socially-conscious business model, the least you can do is get involved in your community and I guarantee you will have a huge return on investment for that effort.
Posted by ryan at January 6, 2008 7:19 AM
Comments
hi there... you are right. if you have a business if course, you should be a part of a crowd. i mean, you should do it with the community. the business is useless without the community behind it. good idea on your article. have a nice day!!
Posted by: online marketing support at May 8, 2008 5:45 PM
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