Maximizing the Impact of Your Marketing Materials

Maximizing the Impact of Your Marketing Materials

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 51 of the business development podcast. And today we're talking promotional materials. What's relevant. What's not. Do we even need brochures anymore? We're going to answer that for you. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps, you'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by Capital Business Development, capitalbd.ca let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode. 51 of the business development podcast. Just want to say before we get in today's show a gigantic Thank you to everyone who has been with us for the first 50 episodes kind of blows my mind we celebrated our 50th episode here on Sunday and Yeah, just it seems just wild that we've come as far as we have in such a short period of time.

We are We are celebrating our six month anniversary this week. So on on August 6th, it will be six months in operation since we aired our very first episode of the business development podcast. And we've had some amazing success. Let me just. Let me just kind of start by saying thank you to each and every one of our listeners, everyone who's kind of spread the word about the business development podcast or taking the time to shoot us, you know, a big thank you for the work we do.

I appreciate it immensely. I'm thankful that our show is helping you and helping entrepreneurs take that next step and grow your business and. Find better systems that work better for you. Always looking to improve as much as possible. And I'm always looking to improve as well. So I don't, you know, even though I'm an expert in business development, I definitely keep my ear to the ground.

I'm always looking for the new technologies or the things that will help me because what helps me helps you helps our customers helps the world go around. So always, always keeping my eye open for the next big thing, but. Really appreciate all the support that you guys have given me as the business development podcast family.

Couldn't do it without you and just wanted to say thank you for your support up to this point. I look forward to many, many, many more episodes with you. All right. So before we kick into today's topic, I want to give a gigantic thank you to Catherine Warren, Catherine Warren of Edmonton Unlimited.

Here in Edmonton, it was absolutely amazing having her on. She is such an inspiration and frankly, just an amazing executive here in Edmonton, doing great things for the city, doing great things for startups and entrepreneurs and businesses everywhere. And it was really cool to have her as, as our showcase for our 50th episode.

So Catherine, if you're listening, thank you so much. I really appreciated that. And I hope that we drove a little more interest in what Edmonton Unlimited is doing in Edmonton. All right, so, let's get into it. Episode 51, I kinda wanna take us back a little bit, cause I feel like I've talked to a lot of businesses, and...

They're not really talking about promotional materials. I would say that one of the challenges that I face at almost every new meeting that I have, where I go in for, you know, an introductory meeting for Capital, and we're talking about how Capital is going to help their company, right? One of the very first things, and the thing that, frankly, I need the most, is decent marketing material to work from, okay?

And this seems to be an area that I don't know. I don't know if it's just like modern business or what you don't mean. I'm not old. I'm, I'm 34 years old. It isn't modern, right? But the reality is, is that. Most companies have utterly neglected their marketing material, and I mean this in the best way.

But it's like we've completely forgotten how to showcase our companies, how to advertise our products and services. And I'm, I'm meaning this in the best way. If you're a company that doesn't have advertising material yet, I'm not knocking you. I'm just saying, it seems to be something that has been neglected in, in modern business.

And I can't tell you how critical it is. That you have good marketing material. And this means like a good website, good brochure, good social media presence. There's things that we have to have in 2023 that, yeah, maybe we didn't need to have as great of in 2011, but things are completely different now.

They're the same, but different. And one of the things that we absolutely need to have as great companies in 2023 is we have to have, you know, I want to say four, potentially five promotional materials. So today I wanted to do a great episode kicking us back. I've done an episode on promotional promotional materials before, but I want to talk about it again because it is absolutely critical.

It's literally the first thing that we review. At any of our Capital BD introduction meetings, and it's one of those things that if you overlook it, it has high costs. It really does. It has high costs for the marketability of your business. And so, you know, if you're a business development manager today, who's responsible for marketing materials, or you're part of the marketing team, and you're responsible for marketing materials for your business or managing that structure, maybe you're the owner and you're wondering, okay, like, you know, what do I have?

I have a website, do I have brochures? And you're wondering kind of like, what is it? What is it that I need? This episode is for you. I'm going to break down all the promotional promotional materials that your business needs and why. And I'm also going to let you know what, what kind of differentiates a good one from a bad one.

And hopefully we will be able to set you up for success. Okay. So let's start with it. The very first thing, the most important thing, it really is the most important because it just, it happens to be our face in the 21st century. It is our skyscraper, right? In the eighties, we had gigantic skyscrapers. In 2023, we have great website sets you apart from all other companies, and you can be the biggest, best company in the world.

If your website sucks, you are going to be perceived as incompetent, like you don't know what you're doing. And that is, and like the flip is also true. You can be this itty bitty company, but if your website is top notch, you are going to be perceived. With trustability, you know, what this company can do it, you know, you're going to be perceived as considerably bigger than you are, which is also a benefit.

So in 2023, the playing field is pretty level as long as your marketing materials are on point. So my suggestion always is that we want to have a top notch website. We want to have an absolutely rockstar website as the very first thing that we do in our business. And you know, if you haven't revamped your website in a while, this is, I'm talking to my current business owners that, you know, maybe you've been around five, six, seven, eight, ten years.

And you know, your website has been around maybe that same amount of time without a whole lot of revamps. Okay, it's probably time to start first off, you know, if you're just wondering kind of where you sit, why don't you look at some of your competitors websites? That's always a good place to start, right?

Take a peek, look at what some of the competitors in the space are doing, look at what their websites look like, and then measure up. If your website is looking pretty lackluster compared to your competitors, it is probably time to up your game because the reality is it's all perception, right? Perception is absolutely critical.

Customer perception of a business, you know, is, is going to differentiate between a buy and a pass. And If you can be perceived as high quality by having a high quality website as your competitors or higher because you have a better website, it's only going to, it's only going to work better for you.

It's going to allow your customers to have trust before they even enter into that conversation with you in the beginning, and that's absolutely critical to closing a good sale. It's critical to continuing operations, and it definitely needs, it's, it's why your website has to be the number one focus with regards to your outside image of your business.

Okay. So what do we need in a modern website? Okay. So a modern website. It has to be like, it has to be graphically and as aesthetically pleasing, it has to be, you know, it has to look good to the eyes like that's really, that's really measure number one, when you go to your website, you look at and you're like, Oh, this is really beautiful.

This is a really nice website. You look at this thing. You're like, yeah, there's a lot of technical data on here. And it looks You know, rough around the edges, right? We don't want technical data and rough around the edges. I get it. You know, I get it. It's probably made by some engineers and you're really smart and you really are all my engineering friends.

You guys are brilliant. You got to remember not all your customers are engineers and not all of them need to know every technical spec of your product or service. Okay. What they need to know is why they need your product or service, what problem it solves and why they want to buy it from you. Those are the things if you can, if you can demonstrate those things, they are going to want to buy that product or service from you.

So I know it sounds kind of stupid, but what I'm suggesting is you may want to dumb down your website just a little bit. And I mean this in like the kindest way, but you really do want to word it in a way like you want to word it in as simple a terms as possible so that product or services, why they want it.

It's got big, beautiful pictures. You got some video, maybe. It's pleasing to the eyes. These are things that are absolutely critical in 2023 with regards to your website, okay? You know, in the reality is we're marketing to millennials, okay? Like, that is, that is the buying generation now. You know, millennials are, are the project managers, they're the executives, you know, they're the people buying your product or service.

And we are a very visual, visual generation, okay? Like, We have short attention spans, and we need something that is aesthetically and visually pleasing to want to stay engaged with that material. And so, if you're still building websites like you did in 2011, where you throw up, you know, you got a few bars, you got like, oh, a company, you got, you know, quick, like, data points, here's our services, here's our, you know, why us, about us, like, absolutely, we still have to have those things.

But do it in a way that is visually pleasing. That is absolutely key. I would say that moving forward, if you're building a brand new website, you should 150% be incorporating moving pictures, video, things to keep the website refreshing and looking fresh and having that cool aesthetic. We really want our websites to pop.

And so, you know, a big takeaway for anybody listening to this episode today, I really want you to go to your website after you listen to this show and just take a peek at it and just ask yourself, look, is this visually appealing? You know, if it, do I, do I find this nice to look at, you know, because That's step one.

If it's not even nice to look at, they're never going to read about your company. They're never going to take the time to read here about us, to read the why you. And if it's technical and really, really detailed and a lot of data, now you've really shot yourself in the foot because they're really not going to read it.

And so what you really need to do is take a look at your website. See, okay, is this visually appealing? Okay, check. It's visually appealing. Is the content written in an easy to understand way for non technical people? Okay, that's the key takeaway, non technical people, because you have to remember, just because you understand computer science, your customer only understands how to use the application.

They only understand, you know, the basics, the basics. And so it's really important that you were writing any type of advertising material or any type of information about your products in a way that people can understand in layman's terms. Okay. So, you know, while, while there's always a great chat for the technical data for, for the people out there that find that interesting, that is not necessarily the information you need to really convey.

Why they need your product or service, why it's the best, why it's easy to use, right? But you need to do this in a way that is also easy to understand. So the way you lay out that data is also critical. Short and to the point, right? You know, also think about it from that standpoint. You don't want to write why something or how to use something in like eight paragraphs, okay?

Like, yeah, absolutely. I get it. Like, for the technical people that need to know everything, that's great. Give them the instruction manual when they buy the product or service, okay? For everybody else, you need to lay it out in like two to three paragraphs. Very, very short, concise, to the point, easy to understand.

Once again, you got to understand who you're marketing to. You're marketing to millennials. And we just don't have the attention spans to be able to keep up with that. If it's too detailed, too long, we, we lose focus, right? I mean that for the best of us, but you need to have it visually appealing, aesthetically appealing, short and easy to understand and written in layman's terms.

Okay. If you meet all those criterias, maybe you've got some video on your website, you're probably up to par and great to keep going, but I want you to take a look at it and really decide, is this, is this easy to understand? Is it laid out in a modern way? How does it compare to my competitors? Do I have video?

Do I have moving pictures? What do I have? Find ways to compete. To look bigger than you are, especially if you're a small company, if you're a big company, you know, you have the budget for it. Just spend the money, build a great website. You're going to need it. It really is. It's more important than your skyscraper these days because it is, it is the face of your company in 2023.

All right. Brochures. Brochures. Okay, you guys know this. We've talked about brochures before, once. Really, I didn't spend too much time on it, but I do want to say that brochures are 150% still relevant, still critical, and if your business does not have them, tomorrow. Get started on it, okay? They are not obsolete.

Brochures are not obsolete. They are just as important, if not more important than ever, and let me tell you why. Because your competitors have stopped making them and I don't know why it doesn't make any sense. It's very easy to market brochures. The very first thing that I look for when I go into a business that I'm going to be marketing is, show me your website.

Number two is show me your brochures. Because if the brochures suck, that's, that's what I have to fix. I have to fix that immediately because that is what I use to market nowadays, right? When I'm generating those initial introductions. I'm always attaching a digital brochure. I love a physical brochure too.

If I'm locally doing marketing and I know that the company is in town, I still love to go there, drop a physical brochure, introduce myself, grab a card for the person that I want to follow up with and move on because there's something to be said about a brochure. Let me tell you one of the benefits of a brochure, a physical brochure that is done incredibly well.

And I mean, visually appealing, short and concise, has all the information on the company. And then the services, I'll explain how to lay this out after, but If it is well done, they don't get thrown out, okay? This is the key. They don't. They sit on people's desks for months, weeks, months, and sometimes years.

And guess what? You don't know when they're going to need that service, right? Like the benefit of doing good business development is hopefully you're ahead of the need of your customer, right? When we're doing an active business development process, what we're doing is we're marketing our company before the need arises.

So that when the need arises, they already know who you are. They know who you are, why they need you, why they want to buy from you. And guess what? If you did it through me, you probably have a brochure sitting on their desk or in their email. And they're going to remember that and they're going to remember you.

And so if you right now are doing a marketing system and you're not utilizing brochures, fix this, fix this. They are not obsolete. They're actually more important than ever because. Guess what? A lot of your competitors have decided that they're obsolete, but they're absolutely wrong. And so if you're doing it, you're standing up from the crowd.

Just like nowadays, if you're making cold calls and you're doing that, you're doing cold contact, you're making introductions, you're booking face to face meetings. You are standing out above the crowd because your competitors have decided that they don't need to do that anymore. And good, don't do it because that's going to give you the leg up that you need.

And so if right now your company is not doing. brochures, you know, cold calls, stuff like that. Turn that stuff around, turn it around tomorrow and watch your sales increase because the reality is it's just as important as ever. It's actually more in demand than it ever has been because less people are doing it.

And if you're looking for the way to stand out from the crowd and book more meetings than you've ever booked in your life, start sending digital brochures, start following up with cold calls and start asking for meetings. You do those three things. My gosh, your business development, your business is going to turn around.

If you're struggling with sales right now, Those three things are going to turn your business around. So we absolutely need brochures. Okay. Let me talk about the layout of a brochure, a good brochure. Okay. The front cover, just like I said before, just like your website needs to be visually appealing. You need a beautiful image.

However, you don't want it to be crazy busy. Okay. The front of any brochure should really have the company name, logo. A sweet picture that really draws people in and maybe like a one liner, you know, like this is why you want us or the best of the best or something like that. Just, you know, I mean, it's cheesy as heck, but the point is, is just something, but very, very minor.

You don't want that front cover to be busy. You just want them to be able to look at it and know, okay, yeah, this is the company. This is what they do. And that is a flipping amazing cover. That is what you essentially want them to think because if they think the cover is beautiful. They love it. They think it looks really, really visually appealing.

They're not going to throw it away. Not only that, they're probably going to open it, which is what you really need them to do, okay? So, let's say we've gotten that far. They love your brochure. You've dropped it off. It's got a sweet cover. And they're in. They're visually appealed in, right? Once they open it, what should they see?

So on our first initial page, we really just want to about us. We want to, you know, who are you, who are you as a company? You know, why does your, like, you can talk about like the founding of your company, what sets you apart, whatever. Just have a quick about us on that very first page. Okay. Then you want a why us.

You want a why. What is it that sets you apart from your competitors, okay? Why, why would you want to go with this company? Remember, we always want these to written in ways that people can understand. You want this in layman's terms. Don't give all the technical crap. The technical, I know, I'm... I know, I'm talking to my, like, my engineers and my business owners who...

Who founded the company and understand every technical aspect. I know that you understand this. Your customers don't need to understand this. What they need to understand is why, why does that set you apart from your competitors? Why does that, what is it that your product or service does this different?

They just need to know that in an easy to understand way. You can explain all the technical details later if you so desire, but trust me, when you're trying to wrap interest, you need to write it in the easiest to understand terms as possible. So about us, then a why us then. We need our services. Okay.

This is the secret. This is where I see a lot of companies fall flat on their face. Okay. And I mean this, and I mean this in the best possible way, when I say build a brochure, most companies are saying, okay, yeah, I'll build a brochure. However, what they're not thinking about is they're going to build one brochure, right?

They're going to build one. The mistake that I see 99. 999% of the time is they build one brochure with no ways to expand this brochure, and then they start marketing to five industries. Okay. Okay. So hear me out on this, right? Let's say, let's say that you build, you're a tire company and you build tires and your tires right now.

Your brochure is only geared towards like, I don't know, let's say personal vehicles, okay? Like, let's say all you make is car tires, okay? And your brochure is like, is showing that all you make is car tires, but the reality is, is that you can make tires for mining, you can make tires for off road, you can make tires for racing, you can make tires for motorbikes.

Well, guess what? You've just eliminated all of those. Because your brochure, as far as anyone is concerned, shows you only make tires for, you know, for personal vehicles or for like cars and trucks, whatever. And so that happens a lot. And I've seen this happen in like in industrial applications and oil and gas companies, right?

In manufacturing, where they've essentially eliminated three quarters of the industries they can serve by making one brochure and not having it expandable and marketing that same brochure. And so what happens is this. They market that brochure. Okay, so let's say we're, let's go back to the car analogy.

They market that brochure that they've made for personal vehicles, cars, and trucks. And then they go and turn around and they try to market that to, let's just say like, I don't know, let's say industrial vehicles like mining. Okay. And the mining company looks at this brochure and the introduction, even if the introduction says, yeah, we make mining tires.

They're going to look at the brochure and say, yeah, but like your brochure is 100% geared towards car tires or like personal truck, like these aren't even in the same ballpark and they just eliminate you right then and there, right then and there you've been disqualified. And it is genuinely because you did not market your brochure to the application.

You did not build the brochure to the application you were marketing to. Okay. And so I always suggest when you're building a brochure, build it in a portfolio style. So what do I mean by this? Okay, so, same thing, we have a, we have a, we have a brochure that opens, okay? Front page, really compelling, visual, or visually appealing, right?

Makes them want to open it, isn't very busy. Inside, first page has the about us, and then the why us, maybe the industries you serve. Then, there's a little pocket in the right hand side of the page once you open it up. And that pocket allows you to put one page inserts. This is the secret, okay? This is the secret.

So what you do is you build your general portfolio brochure to be fairly generic to what you do, right? And then inside those pockets is where you put the specific industries we serve and then a one pager as to how your company services those industries. So in the case of our example where I'm talking about, you know a tire company, right?

So you would have your tire company. You'd explain, you know, why, you know, when you were founded. Why, why you're the best tire company in the world and then industries you serve, you would have an insert for personal vehicles, for mining vehicles, for motorcycles, you'd have four or five different inserts and that way you can market very specifically when you drop off at a specific company and that's what they do, mining or motorcycles or whatever, you can give them your brochure with the proper insert and now it looks tailored to their company They're going to look at it and be like, wow, this looks amazing.

Oh, and they serve motorcycles. Oh, and here's why they would want to, we would want to hire them to, to, to build tires for our motorcycles. Okay, great. Yeah. Let's have a conversation. You have something that genuinely generates interest by being industry specific. So yeah, once again, if you take a look at your marketing material, if you look at your marketing material right now, and you look at, you know, the industries you're serving, make sure they line up, right.

If right now you're not using that insert system and you're trying to market the same brochure to like five different industries, it's probably time to revamp that. It's probably time to create a new, a new brochure, make sure that you get some inserts that are very specific to the industry. Why us? Why you'd be best for that industry?

What type of products you can make for it? Make sure you're really specific on it, but trust me, you're going to, once again, you're going to see things change because you need to be specific to the application. If you're not meeting the application with the right marketing material. You're gonna get pre disqualified before you even get started, you know, it's hard enough to make to make sales sometimes than to shoot yourself in the foot by having incorrect marketing materials.

So brochures 100% need to be done. Well they 100% need to be beautiful and engaging. Very critical, right? Like I've seen way too many brochures that are boring. Technical, not engaging, don't, don't make, you know, they don't, they don't inspire anything inside of me. There's no emotion other than this brochure sucks.

Okay. And that is not the emotion that you want your customers to get. You don't want your customers to look at your brochure and be like, yep, this is immediately, you know, garbage or fire material. Right? You pay a lot for those brochures. So it's really critical that you are aligning your brochures.

You're setting yourself up for up for success with your brochures. Okay. And we do that by having. Once again, visual appeal by creating compelling material, by having it easy to understand great images, great contrast. Trust me, you do this, you make it industry specific, you are going to have great success.

And trust me, you do need one. If you do not have brochures right now, you 150% need them. They're great to have at your lunch meetings. They're great to have anytime that you're giving something. I always like to say, if you're going to ask somebody for something, you should have something to give them. No, I don't care whether that's a business card, whether that's a brochure, but you should always have something to give somebody at a meeting.

And I love to give brochures at meetings. I love, you know, I mean, I show up to lunch meetings, I have business cards, I have brochures, I have everything. Why? Because it's just professional. It just looks great. And especially if they're well done and something you're proud of, my gosh, it makes you stand out above the crowd.

And people keep these brochures, they sit on people's desks. I've had some amazing success stories from people who say, yep, Kelly, I've had this brochure on my desk for years. And today's the day. Now I need this product or service. Let's do it. And you would be surprised how often that happens. Guess what?

That's never happening if you don't have them. It's never happening. And so, you know, you can't really afford to not have them. That is truly my opinion. You really can't afford it. So you should get started right now building some great brochure material. Once again, hire an expert, hire an expert. They are up to date on what is, what is going great.

Like what is being well received. They know what the trends are. This is the same for websites, right? Websites, hire an expert, do not build your own websites, hire an expert for websites, hire an expert for your brochures, get amazing, high quality websites and brochures created, trust me, it's worth the penny, I know it can be, I know it can seem like, you know, you don't want to spend the money on that, but believe me, that is money well spent, and I'm not even, I don't even do those things, and I hire for it, and I, I ask all my clients, I recommend them to various places in the city that I know do great work, so, point is, Trust me on this.

Get, get, get your website up to par, get your brochures up to par, and hire an expert to do it. And you're going to see things turn around for you. All right. What are some other things that we got to talk about? Okay. 2023. What is critical now? What's new LinkedIn. Okay. I've done a whole episode on LinkedIn.

I'm not going to delve into that into personal LinkedIn today, but you guys know where I stand on it. LinkedIn is critical. You have to have it. It is, it is your personal skyscraper in 2023. It really is. And it is critical and it is marketing and yes. So let's just get on that. I have an episode back on.

If you're just hearing, this is the first episode you're hearing go back. I have an entire episode. I have an entire episode on LinkedIn and you are 100% going to want to go back and listen to it because I give some really great, great ideas on how to use LinkedIn, what it needs to look like. However, we're talking on a different aspect today.

We're talking on marketing material. You need a company page on LinkedIn. Okay. And you need to use it. So we talked about it before personal pages, but now we're talking about company pages, but it's all the same, right? You want it to be, you want your logo on there, right? You want. So you want all accurate material on like who your company is, why people would want to look at it, right?

You definitely want all that stuff, but at the same time, you need to make sure that you are actively utilizing it. That is the secret to LinkedIn or any social platform is you have to utilize it. So, you know, hop on your company page, add a whole bunch of people from your personal page, right? The cool thing about when you add it, when you start a company page on LinkedIn, is you can add your contacts from your personal LinkedIn page, right?

Make sure that you're sending it. You can send up to 250 invites a month, and you need to be using every last one of them because you've got to build that company page, right? You got to spread the word about who you are, what you do, but you should have all corporate updates, right? If there's, if you guys are hosting barbecues, if you guys are having fun events, if you're giving away awards, put that on your corporate page, get to a point where you're posting at least once a week on that corporate page.

You really want to have it active. You want to have some engaging posts. Remember don't post boring things. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about the boring things you're doing, right? People want to know about the barbecue. They want to know about the award, the safety award. You just gave one of your employees.

They want to know about the big wins. Your company just had post engaging, entertaining things, you know, teach them something, every one of you companies out there, you know, you're experts in what you do teach the world, give back, right? You know, it doesn't always have to be about your. Escapades is a company.

It can be about, you know, Hey, have you guys ever thought of this? You know, you can give advice. Advice is amazing. And you know, I always appreciate it when companies that are experts give me advice on how to do better at what I'm doing. I appreciate it immensely and they will too. So. Think about it. Get creative, but get to a point where you have a corporate page and you're posting about once a week.

And actually, this is about the same, whether or not you're doing Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever you're doing. If you have a corporate page, make sure that you're doing something at least once a week, get some information out there, you know, make the world a better place and drive interest in your business.

Okay. It's not that hard to do. There's a lot of programs now that you can utilize that help you with social posting that you help you. Create social posts and then you can post them later. Predis. ai is one that's pretty great. You know, Canva is pretty great. There's lots of great ones out there. But pick your own, but get to a point where you're posting on your corporate page at least once a week.

And if you don't have a corporate page, set one up. All right. Okay, let's get into Branded gifts. Okay, branded gifts. That's another really critical one. You know, if you're a company right now, and you are not giving away branded gifts, and I'm not saying all the time, but I am saying You know, Christmas, whatever the holiday season is in your culture or in your country, are you giving back?

Are you giving back to your clients? Because if you're not, you need to be. You need to give back to your clients. And like, at Capital, at any business I've ever worked at, you know, I'm in Canada, so Christmas is the big holiday here. Yeah, we give away all sorts of goodies, you know? Like, Companies I worked with in the past couple years gave backpacks, safety kits, you know, bottles of liquor.

I'm not necessarily advocating for that. 'cause I know that that's kind of a, a weird one and, and not everybody drinks. So, but yeah, like pick it, you know, understand your customer, figure out what they might like and, and get them a branded gift. Get them, you know you know, in my case, a capital business development backpack with, you know, maybe, maybe filled up with some goodies, maybe filled up with like a thank you bag and some treats and stuff, or you know You know, whatever you want to give them.

But the point is, is that you should be giving back. You should be giving back. And it's a great time to give out branded gifts. And people always appreciate a hoodie. People always appreciate t shirts. People always appreciate backpacks. Just do it. It's one of those things that, you know, it might only cost you a thousand bucks a year to to give each one of your clients a nice specialized gift, but you should you 100% should because they have given you, you know, the ability to work.

They have given you, you know, the success of your business. And even though yeah, it's a service, it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt to show them you really appreciate them. And trust me, what better way to stand out from the crowd. Then to give them something on Christmas and think, you know, if you're not doing it right now, your competitors probably are.

And so once again, do you want, do you want to stand out or not? The way that I see it, giving branded gifts at Christmas is just a mandatory cost of doing business and you 100% should be doing it. So what I would suggest is find a local branded gift shop that that you like or that you can get behind.

Figure out, start pricing it out. Now start planning in September for December and get ahead of it. But if you get ahead of it, you can spread that cost out over a longer period of time and it doesn't hurt so bad. It starts to just feel like a little tiny speed bump as opposed to something that's hard to swallow.

So you know what, if you're not giving corporate gifts, you should definitely get on it. Branded gifts are amazing. There's lots of options out there. There's lots of places out there. There's probably lots of local businesses. I would 100% say make connections at one of them, start shopping, get ahead of it, have them all ready by the end of September, and that way when Christmas comes around, you're ready, you're prepared, you can do those gift drops, and and really set yourself up for success in the new year.

Okay. And the last one that I wanted to talk about today is something fairly new. It is something that you are listening to right now. It's an option that you can do, and that is a Podcast or YouTube channel, right? You know, we're in 2023. People want to know The presidents and CEOs of companies, people want to know the founders.

They want to understand why they should buy from you. They want to understand what do you, what are you all about? What do you stand for? You know, does he actually give back? Does she give back? Does she share information with the world, right? Like a podcast is such an awesome thing. And I'm so fortunate to be here and to be able to host this show for you, because it really does give me the ability to share some of my knowledge with the world.

And I know that not all of this is relevant. Not every show is going to be relevant to every person. But I like to think that the right person will get the right show at the right time. And when they do, and those things line up, we can really, really spread the word. We can really give information that frankly builds, builds bank accounts, builds businesses, builds, builds personal confidence and.

That's what I get to do with this show. That's what I get to do with this show. I get to take, I get to take knowledge that I have, share it with you, the listener, and help you build your business, help you build your confidence, help you take the next steps. And if I do that, I've succeeded. I've done what I want to do with this show.

I want to help people build business. I want to learn. I want to know how experts did it, which is why I interview experts. And I love to hear these CEO and professional stories. I'm just as like riveted as you guys are, because for me, it's just as exciting. It's just as cool. It's just as like awe inspiring.

You know, when you talk to a Jim Gale or you talk to a Catherine Warren, you really get to just talk to people that are incredibly successful and hear their story and how they got there. And they give you get a little bit of tips and tricks along the way. And you know what? I hope one day. It all adds up to a great success for each and every one of you.

But it's a way for you to give back. And if you're an expert, I would highly encourage you to start a small show. You know, you don't have to commit like I do. You don't have to commit two days a week. You could commit, you know, two episodes a month. You could commit one episode a month, whatever you want, but.

You would be surprised at who you can help with a show like this. And I would highly encourage you that if you were on the fence right now and you've been thinking about it and you're like, Oh, maybe I could do a YouTube channel or maybe I should do a podcast. Do it, do it. I never thought I'd be up here behind a mic.

I never planned it. It really fell out of left field, but. It's been amazing. It's been incredibly rewarding. It's been so cool to see the growth of the show along the way. And I think you'll find it just as amazing as I do. I think you'll find it just as cool. And I really do encourage you. You don't have to be...

You don't have to be the best speaker in the world. You don't have to be the best podcaster or the best, the, the prettiest person in the room or whatever, right? I'm a 34 year old bald guy, but I love business. I know what I'm doing and I love to just talk. And so it doesn't matter. Like there's a lot of information that gets to be shared here.

And I just, I love to do it. I love to do this show with you. And I really do hope that I'm, I'm providing a wealth of knowledge for each and every one of you. I help, I hope that I'm helping you all grow businesses. I hope that I'm inspiring you to take the next step in your careers, but this is something that you can all do too.

And I do think that as things move forward. You you can definitely utilize these podcasts to not only help people, but increase increase your company's exposure. You can stand out from the crowd and you might even get to have a little bit of fun along the way. Okay. That brings us to the end. Of this episode of episode 51 of the business development podcast still blows my mind, blows my mind.

We're at 51 and I'm really excited for the next 49. I can't wait for episode 100. I think that'll be so rad. And heck, if we're lucky, we might even get to see it before the end of the year, which would be pretty freaking cool. So we'll we'll try to keep on pace. We will, we'll try to keep on pace. And I hope that you continue to stay on the show with me.

For that if you are enjoying the show, please do like, follow, subscribe on your platform of choice. It really does help us to grow the show, grow the audience, understand how many listeners we have, and kind of take the next steps. Also, we do host a segment now on the show called Community Questions. I would like to do at least one a month to start, and then hopefully we can move them up to two a month.

And that will be where we are addressing community questions. So any type of business, business development questions you guys might have they can be related to your business, your country, whatever you're doing. If I can help you, I will. If I can get an expert who can answer them and better than I can, I will.

And we will try to really provide great answers to your questions over time. And you can send those to podcast@capitalbd.ca That is podcast@capitalbd.ca. Shout outs this week. Tegan MacEachern, Ashley Mckarney, Mindy Kay Mcrae Broadbent, Rico-Karole Klemmer, and Roni Patkai. Thank you so much for all the kind words.

I received amazing messages from each and every one of them just letting us know how this show is helping them and super rewarding, everybody. I appreciate it immensely. I really, really do. And Yeah, don't don't think that I that I get those and I scoff at them at all, or I think they're nothing.

They mean the world to me. So thank you. Thank you for taking the time to write me. And yeah, you guys all know I take the time to write right back. So really appreciate it. Until next time. This has been Episode 51 of the Business Development Podcast. We'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.