When people ask me how many different marketing tools they should be using, my answer is usually ?Somewhere between 5 and 10.? Why? Because it can take a number of ?hits? before someone is ready to buy from you and often they need to experience you in a number of ways. If you provide a service ? such as consultancy, coaching or training ? then one of those marketing tools has to be networking.

Let me give you an example of why you need to network and how it can pull all your other tactics together. I met Jon at a peer to peer business meeting and we agreed to meet up, to talk about how we could work together. He had just been to a networking breakfast and invited me to give a talk at a future meeting. He passed my details to Kevin, who runs the networking meeting. Kevin went to look at my website, LinkedIn with me and followed me on Twitter. He saw a tweet about the new edition of my book, so went back to my website and ordered a copy. When his order came through PayPal, I emailed to ask him how he had heard of my book, as I didn?t recognise his name. He told me the connection and when I sent him a copy of my book, I included a flier about a workshop I was running on 29 May 2012. Before he started reading my book, he booked a place on the workshop. Finally, I got to meet Kevin at the networking meeting! The marketing came full circle, from Jon?s invitation to speak, to meeting Kevin at the meeting. Yet by the time we met, he was already a client.

And then it went a stage further, because Kevin listened to my presentation at the networking meeting, then told the other people there that he?d found my book really useful and was looking forward to the workshop. He said such nice things that Ebba, who was at the meeting, signed up to the workshop!

Finally, Kevin and Ebba came to the workshop and Kevin joined our mentoring programme that?s designed for small businesses to grow and increase their cash flow.

When you provide a service, people buy you and your experience. Networking is one of the best ways in which you can show off that experience and, when used with a number of marketing tactics, is extremely powerful. How are you using networking to grow your business?