Don’t miss out on NEW MarketWise Promotional Toolbox Holiday Templates. Make chamberin’ easy this holiday season with designs for recruitment, retention and events & networking. Get them NOW!

marketing, marketwise, tools

As promised, our talented team of designers have just released ten new MarketWise Promotional Toolbox design templates for the month of April. Check them out now!

We can’t wait to see how chambers use them and what our designers rock out next month! http://cmlnk.com/mwtoolbox

chamber, marketing, marketwise, tools

There’s no getting around it – the national economy is facing tough times right now. In such times, our instincts often advise us to hunker down and cut back, whether we’re budgeting for our families or for our businesses. And business owners may quickly decide that the best way to save is by cutting back on advertising – after all, nobody’s buying right now anyway, right?

Actually, according to market data and economic experts, cutting back on advertising may be one case in which instincts can steer business owners wrong.

McGraw-Hill Research analyzed sales figures from 600 companies over a five-year period that included a two-year recession. Their findings showed that, during the recession, businesses that maintained or increased their advertising spending (dubbed “Aggressive Recession Advertisers” by the study authors) showed significantly higher sales growth than those businesses that cut their advertising expenditure. Indeed, Aggressive Recession Advertisers not only enjoyed higher sales growth during the recession, but also for the following three years. By the final year of the study, sales of Aggressive Recession Advertisers had risen more than 250 percent over those businesses that didn’t keep up their advertising.

Why did this happen? Economic experts say that consumers don’t stop spending during a recession; they just become more selective. Studies have shown that over the course of an economic downturn, the level of total customer spending usually only drops a few percentage points. The key is to make sure that the dollars that are being spent are being spent at your business.

Need more convincing? Experts cite several recession advertising incentives:

- Since many other businesses will cut back on their advertising, your message suddenly becomes much more visible. With fewer voices speaking, you’re a lot more likely to be heard.

- You can steal market share from competitors who have cut back.

- You’ll maintain your identity and the confidence of your current customers. Rebuilding your image is more costly and difficult than maintaining it. “Advertising has a cumulative effect,” one expert remarked. “Cutting back at any time means losing ground gained.”

- In a survey conducted by Yankelovich Partners and Harris Interactive, a majority of business executives agreed that seeing a company advertise during economic downturns made them feel more positive about that company’s commitment to its products and services.

Since 1854, the U.S. economy has experienced a recession approximately once every four to five years. The question is not whether recessions will come; but who will still be standing when the recession ends. Keeping your message in front of your customers’ eyes gives your business a better chance to not only survive, but thrive.

In an upcoming blog, we’ll explore marketing experts’ suggestions on the best venues and strategies for advertising during an economic downturn.

advertising, marketing, recession

During the last few months, our company has actively promoted a set of customizable, pre-designed marketing tools designed to assist with membership recruitment, retention and encouragement of greater member-to-member networking and interaction. The program, called MarketWise, has been a huge hit with hundreds of chamber of commerce leaders in organizations with as few as 53 members and as many as 6,400.

But some folks are still confused. They want to know, “What’s the catch?”

So I am writing today to clear up the mystery as to why we’re doing all of this for free. It’s actually very simple, and I’m sure you’ll recognize the logic in it when you read it.

We are tied to your industry. We want it to succeed. Our organizations – yours and mine — have a common interest in convincing business people to join the chamber, to maintain their membership, and to get involved in the important work local chambers do. And we know that during the rough economic patch, business people are occasionally making the choice to save the money they would spend on membership and go it alone. We don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s not good for them, it’s not good for you, it’s not good for their community, and it’s not good for us.

Whether we ever do business with your chamber or not, we want you to win the battle for the hearts, minds, and monetary consideration of the business people in your community, because what you do is valuable. But we also want you to think of us first when it comes to generating non-dues revenue; forging your marketing message through online, print and other media; or when you’re looking for Member Management tools.

So – pull back the curtain – our ulterior motive in giving away a costly and valuable product, is to place our company right where we want it; on the top of your mind!

With that, I invite you to explore MarketWise, with no obligation, commitment, guilt or expectation of an invoice. Just reap the benefits and keep us in mind: CommunityLink.

chamber, free, marketing, marketwise, networking, recruitment, retention

There’s a new Kid in town, he’s called MarketWise and chambers are going wild about him. This — ahem, he’s, a new product that we offer the industry free of charge. That’s right, there really is NO catch. In the interest of helping our chamber friends do their chamberin’ thing the team here at CommunityLink did a little brainstorming with our friends over at ACCE. We discovered a new way to help chambers promote themselves, it’s the MarketWise Promotional Toolbox — and it’s easy, fun, and that’s right, FREE.
The MarketWise Promotional Toolbox consists of a growing library of professionally designed marketing messages, tuned to get chambers noticed amidst the media noise and help them grow their organization, retain members, and service existing membership.
Each message is customizable — free of charge – and is made available in a variety of electronic formats that may be effectively used in all types of media, from email and fillable PDFs to full- color copies and offset printed postcards.
CommunityLink’s MarketWise system makes it easy. But here’s best part is — it’s FREE!
Users begin by choosing a target category of promotion, such as Recruitment, Retention, or Events & Networking. From there, a campaign style is chosen and customized with a chamber message and submitted. It’s that easy.
In a few days the award-winning graphic design folks will create the requested custom message and send a downloadable link to the chamber. Among our intiative regarding MarketWise, we want to provide a tips & tricks marketing cheatsheet to help chamber’s make the most of their Toolbox and marketing efforts in general.

marketing, marketwise, products, toolbox, tools