Over the last year and a half, the company has switched to two much more successful tactics. First, Anderson joined a couple of very high-profile peer-to-peer networking groups. The members, all of which provide services to large B-to-B companies such as accountants and attorneys and marketers, get together to try to fulfill each other’s business needs.
“It creates exponential lead generation,” he says. “When you get a lead, it’s on a silver platter with an endorsement. They know the company and they know you are an expert in that field, so they will meet with you even if they don’t know you [personally].”
Next Level Café’s second approach has been to join more generic, entry-level business networking groups. These groups have attendance policies and track all the business that is exchanged within them. Anderson says that for 2007, he can attribute almost all of his company’s 40 percent growth to the word of mouth from these two types of groups.
"About three years ago, we did a lot of cold calling, door knocking, and trade shows. We tried different media advertisements. It's a brutal world doing that all day."
Next Level Café manages technology for its clients. So it’s maybe a little surprising that it has put its own Web presence on the back burner. “It’s kind of the cobbler’s kids with no shoes,” Anderson jokes. “We put it up and we maintain it, but we don’t put a diligent effort forward. I do not count on revenue coming from my Web site. To me it’s kind of like a résumé during an interview: Its absence will get you excluded from a lot of jobs, but its presence will never get you a job.”
Salo has also downplayed the importance of its Web marketing effort. Langer says they’ve tried to create the relationships and the brand first, then build a marketing presence to support those things, rather than the other way around.
“A good friend of ours in another market started a staffing firm about a year before we did,” Folkestad says. “For the first three to four months of his operation, he worked on his bro-chures and his Web site. But in month six, nine, and 12, he was still trying to get business. Meanwhile, when we launched, we just had business cards. No brochures, no Web presence. We didn’t even launch a simple one-page Web site until nine to 12 months in. I can’t remember how many months it took to catch our friend and pass him. Not many.”
