AMA Las Vegas April 2009 Newsletter

Our Membership Drive is on its Way!

April kicks off our membership drive that will last until the end of May. Take advantage of our special membership rates as well as look into being a sponsor of the luncheons. It's great brand awareness for your company. If you have information on membership please email Josh Kozinski at josh@skyhighmarketing.com.

Our new members from March are listed below:

Steve McCracken ~ Bank of America
Karen Sode ~ Passkey Systems Inc.
Tanya Blackburn ~ RTJ Consultants
Sara Ure ~ Margaritaville
Karen Wong ~ Brand Institute Inc.
Charles Johnson ~ Las Vegas 51's Baseball Team
Rachel Santos~ Foundation for Recovery

Membership Sub-Committee

We Need Your Help! AMA Las Vegas is looking for a few volunteers to help our Board by serving on our Membership sub-committee. This is a great way for you to get to know other AMA members! Responsibilities would include putting together a survey of our membership and also reaching out to encourage members to renew. Contact Josh Kozinski at josh@skyhighmarketing.com if you are interested in serving in this way. The time commitment for this committee would be about 2 hours per month.

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Special Thanks to our
AMA Las Vegas Volunteers

March Luncheon
Raffles:
Sara Ure - Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville
Shannon Hall - PSAV
Registration:
Alice Ronconi
Ellen Guerra - Rolf Jensen & Associates, Inc.

Some raffle prizes donated by:
Josh Kozinski from Sky High Marketing
Jennifer Mahar at Las Vegas Publication
Anne Dean from the Art Institute donated a free lunch for 2 at the Art Institute
Liquid Courage donated a bottle of tequila.
Lisa Davis from UNLV donated 4 tickets for the Super Summer Theater at UNLV.

April Luncheon
Tanya Busse, SkyHigh Marketing
Lindsay Sherman, Las Vegas Publications
Mig Pascual, Zappos

If you would like to bring a raffle prize, please email Jennifer Mahar at Jennifer@lvpublications.com and let her know ahead of time with prize and company name.

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Career Center

List Jobs, Post resumes, Search for Jobs with Indeed.com, Job Links to Area Businesses, Resume help, Interview Advice, Educational and Career Development Resources.

New job and internship opportunities have been posted!
Career Center
Job posts
Resume Posts

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What are you doing to market your business with little or no money?

We took marketing polls and compiled the findings from our social networking profiles.

"What are you doing to market your business with little or no money? What are your ideas?" - AMA Las Vegas

Our April Luncheon topic inspired us to find out what professionals are doing to market their business with little or no budget. We recently posed a question to some of our social networking groups (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace). The Question: What are you doing to market your business with little or no money? What are your ideas? We received a range of advice from Marketing and Communication Professionals. Below are some of the responses we wanted to share with you.

Customer Service

Mahesh Patwardhan - Vice President - Marketing at Quadwave Consulting Pvt. Ltd. - From LinkedIn
There are many ways that you can try and promote your business online....and the answers have pretty much covered the lot. The key thing to remember, however, is don't try direct selling or hard selling. Your brand promotion has to appeal to people who then share it with their friends. And people tend to listen to people that they trust. If you can get a minimum group of people to buy into your idea/product, then those loyalists will go out and each get that many more.

Sasha Rincon - Strategic Marketing Director at Brand, Ltd - From LinkedIn
We're getting back to the basics of being informed so that we can better educated our clients on trends, cost-saving tips and sales solutions that affect their bottom line. Extending the arm of our services to include more than just design and copy, we're taking an invested interest in learning their industry; outside of just creating a logo or a catchy tagline. We're championing and highlighting strategic alliances that expand their market share with other like minded businesses.

William Crozer - Clutch Media Group - From Facebook
Networking and creating personal relationships instead of mass messaging.

Social Media/Networks

Charles Hamilton - Owner/Web Developer, CHCS.com Internet Development- From LinkedIn
Work the social networks. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter are the best ones in my opinion.

Dave Hatter - Seasoned programmer / writer / instructor / strategist / entrepreneur at Libertas Technologies, LLC- From LinkedIn
Social Media Marketing. LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo, Twitter, Blogging.

Deborah Glassman - Integrated Marketing Producer- From LinkedIn
Using word of mouth, blogs, donating gift bags to events, etc.

BajaLori - From Twitter
I offer to publish free press releases on my site LasVegasNetDaily.com. It's great free publicity for both of us! Win-Win!

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Paul O'Brien - VP Marketing - Zvents- From LinkedIn
SEO, SEO, SEO. Write original content. Make sure your URLs are intuitive (people should be able to remember them so &, ?, = in the address is bad). And get links by working on that network you are building for Twitter, Facebook, etc. How? Great way to build links - network first, find similar peers to reach out to. Those are the links you want anyway, from trusted, relevant sites; not places to which you've sent an email and get a link in their footer, blogroll, or link page

AG KHAN - Attraction Marketing Leader- From LinkedIn
i think social media and organic SEO is the best way when you do not have to much money to promote your business.

Shoe Leather Approach - Attend Events

Dennis O'Hara - President, Associated Call Centers- From LinkedIn
First and foremost referrals are always one of your best bets, attending local networking events, what I call shoe leather networking and yes the various virtual networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Chuck Bogardus - Communications Visionary & Prophet - From LinkedIn
Business cards and shoe leather are cheap. If I'm not working, then I'm working on getting work.

1bluecube - From Twitter
Get out of your box and get involved in the community. People want to work with people that share their passions and purpose.

Combination is Best

Gianluigi Cuccureddu - Web Marketing Strategist ? Consultant @ Traffic4u - From LinkedIn
Top three actions to undertake are:

*Word of Mouth - This also counts for businesses with lots of money, you need to create something that will get attention amongst customers, something to talk about, something special.
People want to share, you need to give the target audience something. It might be something tiny, but it must be memorable.

*SEO - SEO is fundamental to be found, to own your spot in the SERP landscape. SEO though is a long-term investment, don't expect results in days.

*Social Media - Social Media is a long-term time investment, it doesn't cost you cash, it does cost you attention and efforts in finding your target audience in the Social Media landscape and when you found them, taking the time to engage and interact with them.
When doing this correct, you'll create a strong base of trust and honesty, and thus loyalty and some great true brand-ambassadors!
If you haven't started yet to listen and learn, start today.

Word of Mouth = product/service/website/marketing related
SEO = visibility related
Social Media = interaction/participation related

More information, links, and articles:
AMA LV Marketing Resources

AMA LV Members Only

Friends of AMA LV