The 14 Real Benefits of social, event and email marketing (and your meetings, too!)

I was just reading an article about corporate meetings; specifically, about how meetings can be a big waste of time unless you understand their purpose and use the meeting to accomplish specific goals.  Some people really hate sitting in meetings, because they don’t feel like they are “productive.”  (Because they confuse productivity with actual ‘work.’)   I actually really enjoy meetings.  It struck me that people don’t understand the ‘real purpose’ and the soft benefits of meetings, so I started making a list of those benefits.  They can be very productive, but just maybe not in the way that you usually think. 

As I was list-making, I started to think how the benefits that accompany social media marketing, email marketing – building a virtual ‘community – are very similar.  It might be helpful for all of us to think about our social media marketing and email and event marketing along the same lines.  Knowing and appreciating the very real benefits that meetings (corporate or virtual) can give you will help you to shape how you use them in order to get the most bang for your buck – and your time.  

Here are 14 “soft benefits” of both corporate meetings and social marketing that bring real, lasting, significant positive impacts to your business, including more sales: 

• Educating your customers (internal – meetings / external – social, event and email marketing) about who you are
• Building brand awareness and clarifying your brand to internal and external customers, and reinforcing your vision, mission and values
• Spreading the word about what your company has to offer, building buzz around ideas and initiatives
• Getting buy in
• Garnering loyalty
• Building camaraderie and personal connection – developing an “us” mentality
• Socializing and meeting social needs
• Helping each individual to understand “where they fit” within the greater organization
• Educating internal customers about what other departments are doing, how they work, and what they have to offer, educating external customers about other products and services your company offers that they have not yet tried
• Integrating new customers into your programs, assimilating new employees into your operations
• Engaging customers to deeper levels of interactivity
• Generating enthusaism around current campaigns
• Introducing new products and services
• Building anticipation for campaigns that are coming down the road