By Bruce Harpham is a marketing consultant based in Toronto, Canada

To get more leads, you need to spend more money on advertising and marketing. That’s the conventional wisdom you hear from experts. Indeed, spending more on media can help. However, there are other options to boost your marketing results. If you have already maximized your existing advertising budget, then you should turn to networking.

Networking For Marketing Results: A Definition

I don’t know about you, but I first came discovered networking as a way to get job offers. Our focus is not on job hunting today. Instead, we are aiming to increase our marketing results.

Networking for marketing results means thoughtfully engaging people you already know to achieve a marketing goal.

Your marketing goal might be to enhance your brand reputation. Or you might be on the hunt for leads to keep the sales team busy. Alternatively, you may be aiming to get signups for a webinar or a virtual event.

Before You Ask Your Network For Favors, Reflect On Your Current State

Before you run out and start asking for help, you need to take a step back and consider your current situation. Use these self-assessment questions to evaluate the quality of your personal network

1) Have you thanked someone in your network recently for the support they have given to you in the past?

If the answer is no, then go and write a short thank you message right now!

2) How often do you respond positively to questions and requests from people in your network?

Last year, I met with a friend to share perspective on a potential employer she was considering over coffee. Your responsiveness doesn’t have to be a one-hour coffee meeting. It could be writing 1-2 comments on LinkedIn posts or only staying on top of your email.

Put this concept into practice by developing a networking habit. Each business day, spend 10 minutes responding to other people to offer insight, encouragement, or introductions. By the way, feel free to include phone calls and text messages as well!

3) How do you feel about asking for help?

Some people have mixed feelings about asking for help. Please reconsider that view. To boost marketing results with your network, you will need to ask for help. If you are unsure where to start, I recommend starting with the Small Asks First framework advocated by Kai Davis.

Increase Marketing Results Through Your Network Step By Step

1) Give to your network first

As indicated above, it is best to start by giving to your network first. If there are unanswered questions or messages in your email or social media inboxes, take a few minutes to respond to those messages. If a friend has a new project – like a Kickstarter project, a new launch on Product Hunt or a new book on Amazon – take a minute to like them or even buy what your friends and colleagues have on offer!

2) Identify one Tiny Ask per month

Review the marketing objectives you are pursuing this month and look for a tiny ask you can make. Consider the following examples:

Objective: You are offering a free webinar with a thought leader in the software industry. You have already used your other SaaS marketing channels but have not acquired enough signups yet.

Tiny Ask:

Ask two friends to like and comment on your LinkedIn post announcing the event to increase the post visibility. If this ask goes well, ask a few more friends to post about the event.

Bonus Round:

After the event, send a short note to the people who posted about your event to let them know how it went. It’s quite frustrating for your contacts to put energy into supporting something and then never back about how it went.

Objective: You are working to attract more leads for the sales team.

Tiny Ask:

Think carefully about who you or your sales team are looking to meet. We are going to make a handful of requests, so precision matters. For example, you might say that you are looking to meet “startup founders.” That’s a start.

However, there are thousands of startups around the world! You can refine that idea by making it more precise: “startup founders, based in New York, serving the business to business market.” That is a lot better!

Now that you have a clear picture of your target market profile, you can start your networking referral marketing effort. If you already have customers who meet this profile, contact them first because they will be able to reference how your company delivered value. The next best option is to reach out to other people you know in groups, associations, social media, and other places. Write a 2-4 sentence email and ask if they can introduce you to one person who meets your profile.

3) Start asking for help for 2-4 weeks

Unlike pay per click advertising, networking for marketing is a relatively slow strategy. You will need to use these techniques for weeks before you start to see results. If you see limited results after a few weeks, there are two levers you can pull to increase your results.

Optimize Your Copy

In advertising, the words you see in advertising are known as copy. The requests you send to people in your network can be seen as a type of advertisement since you are seeking to persuade people to take action. Therefore, experiment with different ways to improve your results. In my experience, spending additional time on personalization and refining your subject line tends to improve results.

Resource: For an introduction to the fundamental principles of influence, read Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini.

Improve Your Targeting

What if you asked your massage therapist to sign up for your startup’s webinar on marketing automation tools? Your request is unlikely to convert to a sign up because it is not relevant. Since you pick and choose each person you reach with networking, there is always room to improve in terms of targeting.

4) Evaluate your results

This is an essential success step that few people apply to networking for marketing, so pay close attention. To improve your marketing results, you need to measure your results. To keep this process simple, track positive conversions. For example, you contacted 80 people in the past month to request referrals, and you gained eight referrals. That’s a 10% conversion rate, which is an excellent result.

5) Follow up with your network

Remember how we started this article with ways to give back to your network? Well, it is time to give back gratitude! Thank everyone who supported you with links, referrals, insights, or a few minutes to respond to your requests.

Keep Improving Your Marketing Results With A Networking Habit

If you use these strategies once, you will achieve some results. However, the real magic comes from putting this networking for marketing concept into regular practice. Set up a habit using Streaks or another habit tracker – “Do 15 min of networking” – and you will gradually improve your results over time.