Marketers can sometimes overlook the power of very simple business practices that are as old as the hills. J.D. and I were reminded of this during a recent Business Marketing Association Roundtable in San Francisco that brought together a group of senior marketers to talk about and debate email marketing and more. Oh, and we’re not talking about formal discussions fashioned after the Socratic Method.

To establish some context, it’s true that email, social, mobile and search marketing – online marketing, in short – are highly effective and proven ways to attract, engage and do business with customers and partners. This type of marketing is especially useful in an underperforming economy when budgets are limited and accountability is required. We also believe that, regardless of internal or economic pressures, marketers and business people at large should never lose sight of the intrinsic value of face-to-face conversations, learning and relationship building in social settings.

The thing to emphasize is that you should organize interactions in social settings or situations outside of the office that bring people together in enjoyable and informal environments like local restaurants, coffee shops, hotel lobbies, sport arenas, and other public and private meeting spaces. This doesn’t mean that business is not top of mind but instead the normal business distractions, routines and stress are out of sight and hopefully out of mind.

 Another important distinction is that face-to-face doesn’t require PowerPoint presentations and expensive coordination; just keep your talking points and flow handy. Again, the focus is to bring people together from a particular community or point of view to get acquainted, have meaningful conversations, enjoy the experience, and take something away to think about and share with others.

Why Take This Post Serious?

We believe social media, mobility and Web-based services – that are either free or inexpensive – will continue to drive more face-to-face conversations in local communities worldwide, along with event-related content, ideas and relationships that can scale in your favor. Activities like meetups, roundtables and now tweetups (see tips here) are becoming increasingly popular and trusted gatherings in terms of the quality of exchanges and outcomes, at little to no cost. Further, services like amiando, Eventbrite, Evite, Facebook and Socializr, to mention a few, can help you organize, promote and collect payments for events that are planned well in advance or with less than a day’s notice.

How to Sell More Face-to-Face Conversations to Your Boss

Here are some thoughts from our BMA Roundtable experience:

1) The roundtable created brand awareness for our company, products and speakers via a large member community, at very little cost.

2) We met some exceptional people with interesting ideas, recommendations and relationships which provided a platform to listen and learn from practitioners of interest.

3) Social media from others about the event, along with promotional content emailed and published by the BMA, improved search engine results for our company.

4) Forums like this help to improve public speaking skills, including how to think on your feet and work with competitors or critics participating in the discussion.

5) We exchanged business cards and made post-event connections on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

For all the reasons mentioned above and more, we recommend face-to-face conversations for marketers and business people who value learning from markets, saving money, and creating awareness and relationships that scale in more ways than one. Stay tuned for upcoming Tweetups, sponsored by Lyris, by following us at: http://www.twitter.com/Lyris.

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Related Resources:

• Subscribe to Inside Lyris HQ our monthly online-marketing newsletter.
• Download free online-marketing guides, tools and webinars in the Lyris Online-Marketing Resource Center.

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