Business Lending Idea Worth Stealing
By Theresa Witham
A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about American Express’s program to connect small business card holders to other AE business card holders in the marketing field for a branding overhaul. I thought CUs should steal the idea and do something similar to promote their business services.
Here’s another idea worth stealing.
Earlier this year, Chase and LivingSocial sponsored Mission: Small Business, a campaign where small businesses competed for 12, $250,000 grants. There was a public voting period, where business needed to get a minimum number of votes to continue to the next stage. They got nearly 70,000 small business applications before a panel reviewed and selected the 12 grant recipients.
The site links to Chase’s small business services and products and I would be very surprised if Chase is not communicating with the thousands of businesses that entered.
I found out about the contest from several knitting-related small businesses. They were super excited about the program. They all shared the link with their customers and fans on social media. To vote, you had to enter, at the very least, an email address and possibly more information. So now Chase also has all that contact info.
