Is Networking Important for Small Business Owners?

As a small business owner, you’re a busy person. With customers and clients to care for and employees to manage, there are a limited number of hours you can dedicate to networking. Which may make you wonder–what’s the point?

Networking is actually just as important for small business owners as it is for any other business professional. This page details why that is–and by the time you’re done reading, you may have changed your tune on how important networking is for you.

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The Obvious: New Leads, Customers and Clients

If you run a successful small business, you probably have a few different marketing channels that are functioning well enough to keep you profitable and in business.

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Which is great.

But it’s important to remember the age-old adage: A business that isn’t growing is dying.

When it comes to small businesses, the rug can be pulled out from under you at any time.

What if your marketing efforts suddenly become ineffective? For example, if pay-per-click ad costs spike.
What if a competitor opens up next door? Even if it’s not savvy from a business perspective for them.
What if the economy crashes and suddenly not as many people can afford your products or services as before? It’s happened before and it may happen again.

Networking is a free way to get more leads, customers, and clients, no matter what is going on in the world or what your competition is up to. Not networking is sacrificing free business–period.

When you think of networking, you may think of formal exchanges using paper business cards, which isn’t always appropriate for all small businesses. But with the power of Mobilo smart business cards, you allow yourself to expand your networking practices and extract marketing potential from a variety of different situations.

Mobilo cards come with four unique modes:

Business Card is a replacement for your paper business card. Tap your Mobilo card on any smartphone and your information will automatically populate into a contract entry on the other person’s phone.
Lead Generation allows you to create a custom lead generation form. When someone else fills it out, you receive a text message with their information and they receive one with yours.
Personal Landing Page lets you link to all of your small business social media profiles. When Social Profile Hub is enabled, you can tap your Mobilo card on any smartphone and a page with all of your social media handles will appear.
Link to Any URL lets you tap your card on any smartphone and a URL of your choosing will load up on the other phone.

The Business Card and Lead Generation modes are self-explanatory and can be used to network efficiently in situations where it might not be always appropriate to exchange paper business cards. For example, if someone expresses mild interest in your company, you can give them your contact information via the Digital Business Card mode–just in case. The entire smart business card experience will be novel to them, and when they need your products and services in the future, it’s likely they’ll remember you. They’ll also see you in their phone contacts whenever they scroll through. A paper business card, on the other hand, will likely be forgotten about or thrown into the trash.

Next, let’s say you’re in a situation that isn’t particularly conducive to networking–like at a family gathering where all 14 of your nieces and nephews are present. You might switch to Social Profile Hub and tap your card on all of their phones. You get new followers, and these new followers are highly likely to engage with your posts, which increases your levels of follower interaction, which makes it more likely your posts are shown to people who will actually buy your products or use your services.

See? It doesn’t always have to be completely direct–with a Mobilo card, you can harness many free avenues of marketing that simply aren’t available to you with traditional networking via paper business cards.

Turn Small Business Into Big Business

Is it really worth your time to network with someone who may make up a tiny fraction of your yearly revenue?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes, especially if you run a local small business. Local individuals have a pulse on what’s happening in the area. This type of information is key to capitalize on local marketing opportunities.

Perhaps you connect with a customer who occasionally uses your services on a personal basis. Later on, that person’s company needs enterprise services–and the individual you have connected with recommends you. You end up landing a huge contract thanks to a little bit of back-and-forth in your spare time.

The key thing to note here is that you would have never known about the enterprise opportunity if you weren’t networking. Therefore, it’s highly possible that you are leaving plenty of business on the table by failing to network properly–and you simply don't know what you’re missing out on.

Better Business Practices

Connecting with other small business owners in similar and intersecting industries as your own is crucial to establishing better business practices.

Say you own a small accounting firm. You join a few Facebook groups with accountants and connect with a few individually. One of them happens to mention a product they use in passing. You don’t use this product. You look into the product and it’s similar to another product you use, but this new one is half the cost. You make the switch and end up saving $800 per year.

Without networking, you would have never come across that new product. Along with generating new business, networking helps you optimize existing processes.

Even if another small business owner isn’t in your industry, you might learn something about general business–such as employee management, etc. Opportunities are everywhere, so long as you look for them.

Overall, networking with other small business owners in similar industries can help you optimize your backend processes and generate more revenue, especially if you’re a new small business owner and you manage to link up with individuals who have been successful in the industry for years or decades.

Confidence, Comfort and Charisma

7 in 10 consumers will buy more from brands they trust over those they don’t. Consumers are also much more likely to abandon brands they don’t trust.

Read the above two sentences over, and over, and over again. Then, think about who you trust.

Chances are, you trust individuals you actually interact with far more than random faces on the street.

In other words, interaction via networking makes you more trustable. When you become more trustable, it’s far more likely that individuals will frequent your small business.

Not everyone is a social butterfly, but making even a small effort to get social can have a big impact on your bottom line.

Takeaway

Not all small businesses have the obvious need to network, especially if things are going well without putting too much time and effort into networking.

But that mindset doesn’t mean that networking isn’t effective. In fact, it’s likely that you’re missing out on many benefits by not networking as much as you could.

With a Mobilo smart business card in your pocket, you can do more networking as a small business owner to reap the benefits of networking described above.