Community relations is one of those marketing strategies that 
isn't talked about much, even though I venture to say practically 
everyone ends up doing it at one time or another. Basically, 
community relations is when you and your business become involved 
in your community. For instance:

* Your business donates money to nonprofit organizations. 

* You or your employees volunteer at a fundraising event.

* You or your employees volunteer for a nonprofit organization.

* You or your employees join a service club.

* You or your employees network and/or volunteer at industry 
  association meetings or business functions (such as Chamber of 
  Commerce events). Some people might consider this networking 
  and not community relations, but I would argue networking 
  falls under community relations. Regardless, you get the idea.


I'm going to go through the pros and cons of community relations 
in a moment, but first I want to encourage all of you to think 
about ways to not only add community relations to your marketing 
strategy but also to get better at leveraging those opportunities 
to grow your business. But first, let's go through the pros and 
cons.

Pros:

* Builds credibility for you and your business.

* Builds personal relationships with customers.

* Works well with advertising - similar to public relations, 
  community relations is a "soft" sell approach that can make 
  your customers more receptive to your advertising.

* Can be a stepping stone for PR.

* Creates goodwill (and good karma).


Cons:

* Time - community relations can consume a ton of it. All that 
  volunteering can suck up a lot of working and/or leisure hours.

* Long wait to realize results - like public relations, you 
  implement a community relations plan for the long haul. And 
  I do mean the long haul (even longer than PR). 

* Difficult to track - I'm talking mainly about the non-business 
  networking activities here. You may never be able to trace 
  sales to community relations. Actually, chances are you 
  probably won't. You need to trust it's working on some 
  cosmic level and let it go.

* No payoff at all - this can happen if you find yourself 
  donating time and/or money to charities that are wonderful 
  causes but offer little advertising and/or promotional 
  opportunities. Now, that doesn't mean I'm advocating only 
  supporting high-visibility causes. On the contrary, there are 
  many good reasons to have a community relations program in 
  place. For one, the good feeling you get knowing you're 
  supporting a worthy cause (not to mention all the good karma 
  you build).


Basically, you can sum up the cons to this: spend lots of time or 
money for little/no return.

Not a good marketing strategy.

But, it doesn't have to be that way. You can and should find ways 
to increase your ROI (return on investment) for all the community 
relations activities you take part in. And one good way to do 
that is to leverage them into marketing strategies. 

Creativity Exercise -- How to get a return on investment with 
community relations

Grab some sheets of paper and a pen (I like the fun gel pens 
myself) and get ready for some brainstorming.

First, list all the activities you're doing that are considered 
community relations. Write them all down.

Next, analyze those activities. What ROI are you currently 
getting from them? Do your customers know you donate time and/or 
money to those activities? Do you get sales because of your 
involvement? Are you building your brand and/or awareness of your 
business because of your donations?

Don't know? Well, then you probably aren't getting much return.

Next, I want you to brainstorm ways you can start leveraging 
those activities. Can you devote a section on your Web site to 
telling people about your involvement? Can you use your Web site 
to help raise money and/or volunteers for the causes you support? 
If there's an event involved, can you more aggressively market 
your services during it? (Set out flyers or brochures or have a 
really good elevator speech if you're able to introduce 
yourself.) Can you send out press releases? Can you have your 
logo added to the organization's marketing materials? Or have the 
organization link to your Web site?

Try and brainstorm 20 ways you can increase your ROI. Some will 
be silly, some will be completely impractical -- but that's okay. 
All you need are one or two gold nuggets to really jumpstart your 
marketing and make that investment in time and money really start 
to pay off. 

Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of "Got Ideas? Unleash Your 
Creativity and Make More Money." She offers two free e-zines 
that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting 
marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful 
at attracting new clients, selling products and services and 
boosting business. She can be reached at: 
http://www.TheArtistSoul.com. Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek