CREDIT: Online Optimism
When trying to do business in the Big Easy, have you joined a Mardi Gras krewe just to schmooze and make contacts; do you frequent the city’s varied coffee shops and restaurants for business meetings or to catch up with clients outside of work; and is it your practice to always respond within one business day, even in a town where tomorrow always seems more convenient?
According to full-service digital marketing agency Online Optimism’s free marketing resource guide “Tips For Doing Business In New Orleans,” these business strategies and more about communication, formality, networking, personal relationships and timeliness are critical to successful commerce in the Crescent City.
“Two of Online Optimism’s values are ‘be exceptionally helpful,’ and ‘better our community,’” said Online Optimism CEO Flynn Zaiger. “Our Freebies project allows us to deliver resources that helps us accomplish both of these goals.”
On Online Optimism’s Freebie webpage, you’ll find a “curated collection” of marketing manifestos to help grow your business and your online presence.
The free 2019 Networking Calendar offers a daily schedule of networking events happening all over the city hosted by groups including 504ward, the Hispanic Young Professionals of Louisiana, the Jefferson Chamber Young Professionals, the Kenner Business Association, the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors’ Young Professionals Network, the Society for Human Resource Management, the Urban League of Louisiana Young Professionals – GNO, the Women’s Business Alliance, the Young Leadership Council, Young Leaders United and more.
And the free Summer Marketing Guide gives sunny ideas on how to attract customers during the sultry summer months with hot icons and graphics, sizzling social media themes and hashtags, dog-day promotions and simmering SEO and digital ad ideas.
“When we started, we catered to a lot of mom and pop shops and small businesses without much of a marketing budget,” said Zaiger. “As we’ve grown as an agency, though, we unfortunately have had to raise our minimum agreement prices and aren’t able to directly work with many of these smaller entrepreneurs. We found it a bit internally frustrating that we don’t get the opportunity to work with smaller organizations that can’t quite afford our feeds anymore, but we still want to be helpful to them. Rather than just sending these leads on their way with a few links to Google search, we aimed to create something more unique to New Orleans. We brainstormed about what many of these smaller businesses need, like free stock photos, or business checklists or guides to aesthetics for the city, and set out to generate them and distribute them for free.”
Zaiger believes business is relationship-driven and he said Online Optimism’s free New Orleans Aesthetic Guide, Anatomy Of A Social Media Post: Specifications And Best Practices and the Instagram Quiz aren’t all given away without a cyber-kickback. The company’s internal lead tracking system discovers who downloads the Freebies and enables Online Optimism to reach out to start a relationship of their own.
“For most folks, we send a simple thank you and a request to let us know if they have a specific need in mind that we can create a Freebie around,” said Zaiger. “After all, these business owners know what they need better than we do.”
Whether you download the free “Start Your Business” Checklist, or the Marketing Values For Post-Millennials Whitepaper, you’ll probably end up downloading a few of Online Optimism’s resource guides at a time. Zaiger said hundreds of people have downloaded multiple Freebies over the past year.
“To be honest, we haven’t heard much feedback except for people that thank us for them,” he said. “But, I’m optimistic that our most recently launched Freebie, New Orleans Stock Photos, will mean we’ll be seeing our work around town a lot more!”
