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Every interaction you have, with everyone from your pet sitter to your massage therapist, is an opportunity to network professionally. But how do you most effectively represent and market your company or personal brand without seeming opportunistic, inappropriate, or intrusive?

Here are some quick tips to help you make connections, expand your social network, and nurture professional relationships.

Be Interactive.

Extroverted people seem to have it so easy, making friends with everyone from their UPS delivery person to other dog owners in the park! But these interactions don’t rely on actually connecting deeply with everyone; instead, making successful connections can be as easy as noticing and remembering things about the people you see frequently. Taking the time to notice and acknowledge the people you routinely interact with can help you extend your social network slowly but significantly. For example, remembering your law office’s UPS carrier’s name and inquiring about her baby can help your brief interactions be social connections as well as routine service calls. Carrying an extra biscuit to the dog park can help you win over a friendly pup (and his owner). When your UPS carrier needs to write a will or your park friend gets a speeding ticket, you might be the first lawyer to pop into their minds. 

Be aware of what people do and what they need, and make people aware of what you do and the needs you fulfill—without trying to sell them anything. As the old axiom goes, “people like to work with people they like.” Most everyone participates in social groups outside of work, which can be fertile ground for potential professional connections. Use your social media profiles to post links to interesting articles about your profession; share amusing anecdotes about your job during long runs with your training group; or volunteer at the food bank wearing your company t-shirt. If you’re an event planner, for example, the more people in your social network who know what you do, like you, and think you are trustworthy, the more likely it is that one of them will call you when they need to plan a wedding or corporate event. Expanding your social network multiplies your chances to use your social connections for professional advancement (without being a pest).

Be Sincere.

Most people can tell when they’re being “schmoozed” or manipulated, and few respond well. If you’re not a social butterfly, but you’re at an event that calls for some social interaction, try being honest about your discomfort: “I never know what to say at these things! Small talk just isn’t my strong point—I’m more of a numbers and details kind of person. Hi, I’m Julie, by the way.” Especially in situations where you feel vulnerable or exposed—literally or figuratively—being open about your insecurity can earn you respect.

Another great way to gain and strengthen connections, especially if you’re not great at chit-chat, is to ask open-ended questions and genuinely listen to the responses. Most people like to talk about themselves, their passions, their kids, etc., so ask them, pay attention to their answers, and remember them (see tip #1). If you don’t feel comfortable chatting with your hair stylist, ask him how he got into styling, what his dream job is, what his favorite movie or pop culture hair inspiration is, etc. and just let him talk. You’ll be surprised how close this can make people feel to you without you having to share anything. 

Don’t Force It.

I was recently on a plane sitting next to a woman who was frightened to fly. We chatted a bit as the plane ascended about the safety and physics of flight and the beautiful scenery we expected to see along the way. When we reached altitude, she settled in to enjoy the view, and I whipped out my laptop to work on a blog for a custom homebuilder. When she turned back to me to point out the majesty of the Grand Canyon, she noticed my work in progress; as it turned out, she was a Realtor. After talking briefly about the advantages of retaining a content creation expert to write your business blog and the current state of the real estate market in her location, we exchanged cards and returned to our respective activities.

Nothing about this encounter felt for either of us like we were trying to “sell” the other on our product/brand; rather, exchanging professional information was an organic part of an ongoing interaction at a time that was appropriate. Learn to take advantage of openings when appropriate, but don’t force them. Afterward, make sure you follow up with a note or email. If you become friends on social media, make sure to engage further than just the initial add. Use calendar reminders to encourage you to remember to follow up, even with social contacts.

The long-term secret to networking is developing a strong social network. Today’s social media platforms make it easier than ever to connect with and keep in touch with contacts located all over the world. Engaging an experienced marketing company can help you make your website and social media platforms look professional and welcoming. Once you learn how to use them to enhance your in-person social networking efforts, you can more easily leverage your social connections into professional gains—without alienating your friends.

Learn more about networking with this free eBook about networking on LinkedIn!

When it comes to marketing, small businesses need a lot of bang for their buck.

Basedon on a recent Gartner CMO Spend Survey, marketing budgets now account for 12% of company revenue, a steady increase from 2010. For small businesses, this money is a precious chunk of change.

If it’s spent without a commensurate increase in new customers, then it could lead to ruin. This makes SMBs understandably cautious when choosing a marketing agency—and creates challenges for the agencies themselves.

Marketing agencies cannot guarantee ROI, and every marketing campaign carries with it the risk of underperformance. Over 80% of B2B marketers say that it’s a challenge to demonstrate how their work improves the bottom line—and 93% of CMOs agree.

Instead of guaranteeing ROI, marketing agencies need to communicate how they can minimize risk for SMBs, while providing data-driven insights that illustrate the effectiveness of their approach.

Start with Small Budgets

Although marketing agencies don’t have a crystal ball to forecast ROI with, they still have common sense. More than likely, the small business is starting their marketing department from scratch – or its still incredibly new/small. In this scenario, marketing agencies can become valuable by finding what works and iterating it to the SMB’s founding team.

How does this work in practice? Let’s say that a client is running a business, but there’s no pre-existing marketing strategy in place. The business is moving product, however, and there’s a reliable record of who’s buying—age, gender, location, income level, and so on. Although it’s hard to know the best way to market this product, there are tried and proven ways to market to these demographics.

Agencies can also come at this problem another way—by starting small and iterating. One of the best ways to work with a SMB is to determine the smallest amount of money required to obtain a new lead.

Once that amount has been determined, it’s relatively easy/simple to come out with a plan that helps the client sacrifice the smallest amount of budget dollars in exchange for the largest number of manageable leads per month. This strategy dovetails with another good, commonsense tactic.

Determine the Right Metrics for Success 

Returning to the Gartner survey, the role of marketing has changed dramatically over the course of a few short years. Nearly half of all marketing organizations have some aspect of sales hooked in, for example. IT and CX organizations are also being incorporated into the marketing machine.

Marketing agencies may not be asked to shoulder these responsibilities in the same way a CMO might, but their clients are almost certainly changing their expectations of what an agency might deliver. Therefore, it’s truly important for agencies to discuss with their clients what constitutes a barometer of success. If an agency works with sales, then the agency needs to determine what that looks like for the sales team. Is it lead generation, closed opportunities, or something else?

If there’s a CX partnership, how do they measure their customer retention statistics, and how does the agency prove its worth?

Once again, the prevailing challenge in marketing is that most marketers have difficulty identifying the ways that their work affects the business.

By setting benchmarks at the beginning of a customer relationship, marketing agencies can identify the targets that they’ll hit, and SMBs will know what they’re aiming for. With that in mind, here’s one concrete approach that marketers can take towards justifying their work.

Create a Revenue Attribution Model

Revenue attribution is the meat and potatoes of the approach outlined above. Marketing agencies have limited means to predict the ROI of various projects, but there are a variety of methods that can track the success of a particular approach.

For example, one might attempt a “first touch” methodology. Say that a lead views a blog, performs some other actions involving content, and then closes a deal—the entirety of that deal might then be attributed to that touch-point.

Alternatively, agencies can use a linear attribution model.

Let’s say that after viewing a blog post, the lead then downloads a white paper, and then closes a deal. The agency can take the final value of that deal, divide it by the number of touch-points, and then attribute an equal number to each piece of content.

These are extremely simple models, and they’re not perfect—but without them, there’s really no way for an agency to identify which pieces of content lead to revenue generation. More to the point, research from the Aberdeen Group suggests that over one-third of marketers don’t perform revenue attribution of any kind, and nearly 20% don’t know if they have an attribution model or not.

It’s also worth noting that “best-in-class” marketers are much more likely to use complex weighted attribution models that place different emphasis on different pieces of content. From related research, this practice translates to a substantial likelihood that a company will see strong positive correlations between their marketing efforts and sales growth.

Encourage Some Risk

While we mentioned earlier that it is beneficial for a marketing agency to start the SMB off small, it is equally important that the agency also challenges the SMB’s marketing team to push themselves into new and uncharted marketing territory. Again, going back to the Gartner report, there’s a clear connection between the marketing teams demonstrating accountability and assuming risk to the marketing teams that then go on to earn a bigger marketing budget.

While it’s important that the agency works with the SMB to figure out the minimum amount of risk and money needed in order to acquire a new lead, it’s also the agency’s job to bring new ideas (perhaps a few far-fetched ones) to the SMB that will challenge their current marketing plan and urge them to dream a bit bigger.

Create a Great Friendship Between Your Agency and SMB

Being a successful marketing agency doesn’t just mean serving your clients with slick, well-produced campaigns—it means doing so in an accountable and reproducible manner that complies with the changing priorities of the customer. This is a challenge that a lot of agencies still struggle with, but the techniques above provide a roadmap for customer trust.

By creating this trust with the customer, and putting forth just as much effort into their overall marketing goals as their own internal team, you’ll be creating a long-lasting relationship with the client which leads to very positive word-of-mouth. In other words, when customers grow, agencies grow too.