Ideal Marketing Company Blog

Marketing Seminar sponsored by Barclays Bank

Free marketing seminar for Leicestershire businesses organised by Barclays Bank

Local businesses are invited to a free marketing seminar to be held in Leicester city centre next month (March). The event will feature a talk by Leicestershire based marketing consultant Alastair Campbell of The Ideal Marketing Company and is sponsored by Barclays Bank which has 13 branches in the Leicester area.

The event is being held on Wednesday March 24th from12.00 pm to 2.00 pm at Mem-Saab Indian restaurant and champagne bar in Highcross Street in the city centre. Alastair will be giving a talk which focuses on the 4 critical marketing activities to grow a business and increase profits.

Monica Mendez, Area Manager for Barclays Business Banking Team in Leicestershire feels that the event is one not to be missed. “Marketing is one of the areas that many business owners forget as often they are so involved in the actual day to day ‘running’ of the business,” she comments. “Alastair will be discussing some simple strategies that businesses can apply, that might just help drive more customers through the door. This event will also provide an opportunity for networking – another invaluable and cost effective way of introducing new business.”

Alastair Campbell is Managing Director of The Ideal Marketing Company and gives talks on low cost marketing solutions for SMEs across the UK. He also runs the Marketing Mentor Programme, a fully funded 18 month support and training course designed for small businesses.

Businesses from across Leicestershire and the surrounding area that are interested in attending should call Pragnesh Sadadiwala from Barclays Bank on 0116 206 2184 or email pragnesh.sadadiwala@barclays.com to reserve a free place for this free marketing seminar in Leicester.

Free Marketing Seminar in Lutterworth

Free Marketing Seminar at The Greyhound Hotel, Lutterworth, Leicestershire.

How to Grow & Protect Your Business in 2010

Tuesday 16th February 5.30pm – 7.30pm at the Greyhound Inn, Lutterworth

With the start of the New Year, you may be wondering about what 2010 holds in store for your business.  Would you like it to great off to a great start? You are invited to a seminar and networking event which offers practical ideas on how to grow & protect your business during the year ahead and beyond.

Part 1 - What are the best ways to grow your business?  The first part of the session covers low cost marketing ideas on the 4 key areas of business growth.  Attracting more leads, converting more prospects into customers, selling additional services to existing customers and keeping customers for longer.

Part 2 – How do you protect the business that you have grown? It’s all too easy to let the wealth and value slip away or to expose yourself to unnecessary risks.  The second part of the seminar looks at how to protect yourself financially and how to use your business to build yourself a financial fortress.

The seminar starts at 5.30pm with presentations commencing by 6pm.  The event is free of charge and you are invited to attend and bring up to 3 people with you. We are anticipating a good level of attendance so PLEASE reserve your place in advance.

To reserve you place please call 01858 44 55 43  e-mail seminar@idealmarketingcompany.com

Tough times ahead?

Who can help in a turnaround?

In a turnaround, businesses often need help from people who are familiar with this type of crisis situation and who possess the specific experience and skills needed. But there are differing types of help available so it is worth understanding who’s who in the world of CROs, IPs, IMs and other professionals you may encounter, some of whom work within your business and some of whom work simply as advisors.

A Chief Restructuring Officer or CRO, is a turnaround professional that management hire on a temporary basis to provide support and assistance.

A CRO’s job is firstly to help the business analyse its position, providing an experienced eye to look over how deep the crisis is, assess the options and make an informed judgement as to whether the business is salvageable.

CROs then move on to help to drive through the actions needed to deal with the situation, acting as a crisis manager to handle issues with the urgency, independence and sometimes ruthlessness required. CROs therefore need to be people who can cope with the challenges and difficulties that this implies in a professional way.

The CRO also brings to the business a body of specialist knowledge of relevant commercial and insolvency issues such as redundancy processes and wrongful trading, so helping to manage these risks.

A CRO brings their experience of dealing with not only a business in crisis, bit also their experience in keeping financial stakeholders such as banks on board supporting the turnaround. A CRO has the ability to talk to the bank and insolvency advisers their own language, so giving the business the best chance that it will receive funders’ support through its difficulties.

The help provided by a CRO is generally therefore extremely ‘hands on’ in nature. The contrast here is with the professional advisers such as the insolvency practitioner or the lawyer who, however close the relationship, do remain outside the business. The CRO sits on your side of the table at meetings and actively works on behalf of your business, often becoming part of your business by taking on the role and responsibilities of becoming a director to take charge and drive through change for the time needed to make the plan happen.

The Institute for Turnaround provides formal accreditation of UK turnaround professionals, and such they may also be a member of the US based Turnaround Management Association. They often work alone but increasingly are operating as teams, often in conjunction with or organised through the firms who are also involved in supplying in specialists on a temporary basis known as interim managers to deal with particular functional aspects of the business (such as a temporary finance or production director) as may be required to turn the business’ performance around.

But there are many other resources available that a business can need apart from CROs. As a turnaround affects all areas of the business, so the business tends to need assistance from a broad range of specialists.

Business owners should always take formal insolvency advice from either lawyers or an insolvency practitioner (or ‘IP’) if the business is in severe difficulty to see whether they are safe to continue trading the business. An IP will be able to advise on use of any of the business rescue procedures under the Insolvency Act such as a Company Voluntary Arrangement; will be able to help the directors in assessing the business’s position. They will also often have a strong working relationship with the bank and so may be able to to help gain bank support for a turnaround, as well as introducing or working with a turnaround professional.

Often there is a need to raise new or replacement finance to provide funds to deal with the initial crisis or to support the subsequent recovery and regrowth of the business. These funds will come from specialist asset financiers either directly or more usually through a broker who knows the market and is used to placing such business.

Legal advice is almost always required and the business will need a recovery specialist as a lead advisor who can call upon expertise within his or her firm across a wide range of areas such as insolvency and debt collection in the early stages; through key issues for restructuring a business such as employment and redundancy, as well as contractual disputes such as problem contracts; right through to corporate finance specialists if there is a need to raise new equity or arrange a sale of the business.

Interim Managers are often used as a flexible resource to meet the changing needs of a business during the different phases of a turnaround. A typical case might require significant assistance from an interim financial controller on tightening up management of its cash to survive an initial crisis. Then the business might need an operations specialist to address manufacturing issues, before then bringing in a marketing expert to provide a boost to regrowing sales, while the whole strategy is overseen by the CRO.

Mark Blayney has 20 years experience in business rescues, is an IfT member and is the author of Turning a Business Around  visit www.markblayney.co.uk for more ideas.

Janet Thomson

Weight loss camp Midlands.  Not my normal post but this is a quick plug for Janet Thomson who is a client of The Ideal Marketing Company.  I started working with Janet back in November 2009 and she sent me over a copy of her book ‘Weight Loss in Mind’ to get a betteridea ofwhat she does. Within 4 weeks I had lost 9lbs and have now lost just over 1 stone in weight – and bear in mind that period included Christmas!  Janet runs seminars and events of weight loss including a weekend weight loss retreat. I can highly recommend her work and have seen for myself just how powerful her ideas are from speaking to people for case studies.

visit her website for more details about Janet and her programme

The Angel Hotel

FREE BUSINESS SEMINAR – THE 7 STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL GOAL SETTING

Vanilla Recruitment is delighted to present a free goal setting seminar in conjunction with Alastair Campbell of The Ideal Marketing Company at the Angel Hotel, Market Harborough

When we run our own business or department, it is very easy to become absorbed in day-to-day tasks without taking the time to look at the ’bigger picture’.  This interactive seminar covers a simple process we can all learn to make sure that life doesn’t pass us by and how we can achieve the things that are important to us. You’ll learn how to focus on the priority areas at work - as well as having more time with friends and family.  And finally you’ll discover why the great philosopher Bruce Forsyth was trying to tell us the key to a successful life – we just weren’t paying attention.

What is the cost? The seminar is sponsored by Vanilla Recruitment and The Ideal Marketing Company and is free to attend.

When is it? January 27th from 10.00am till 12.30pm. The seminar itself starts at 10.00am with the opportunity to register and network from 9.30am and also afterwards.

Where is it? The Angel Hotel, High Street, Market Harborough, Leicestershire

Tea, coffee and soft drinks will be served upon arrival.

Vanilla Recruitment is hosting this event and would welcome you to attend for no charge and bring up to 2 guests. The event is likely to be fully booked so it is important to register your place in advance to avoid disappointment.

To reserve you place see www.vanillarecruitment.co.uk or call 01858 898 058

Marketing Seminar

Thanks to all the small business owners and marketing managers who attended my latest marketing seminar at Hothorpe Hall.  Judging from your feedbackforms and the e-mails I’ve since received you got a lot out the day.

Hear what one of the delegates had to say about yesterday’s event by clicking on these links:

Marketing Mentor Feedback

Marketing Mentor Feedback- part 2

Who do you know?

I’m a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘The Tipping Point’  which partly talks about how people’s behaviour can lead to large surges in the popularity of a new product.

In 1967 Stanley Milgram performed an experiment called “Six degrees of separation” which showed that average number of personal contacts standing between you and any stranger is six people. Duncan repeated the same experiment in which 60,000 people across 166 countries were asked to forward an e-mail via personal contacts to one of 18 target recipients. The results were astonishing. The majority of cases required only six steps and the message chains “did not rely on a few highly connected individuals”.

This partly goes against Malcolm Gladwell’s theory which states that different types of people have different types of influence: “Mavens” – experts in the field; “Connectors” – widely networked individuals; and “Salesmen” – passionately persuasive people.

Word of Mouth advertising is one of the oldest and most effective ways of communication as borne out by the 1967 Stanley Milgram and Duncan experiment, but I believe in Gladwell’s point that some people are key to making a message travel quickly and efficiency.

What happy customers look like

CRM gives the best ROI Marketers believe. The Chartered Institute of marketing’s latest Marketing Survey revealed that CRM delivers the best ROI. The marketers believe that ROI with advertising is the worst.

Financial services and service firms(31%) give the best ROI , second being technology and telecom sectors (30%) and public relations with half the number of mentions(12%) as listed in a survey conducted for The Institute by Ipsos MORI in the Spring .

About 38% of the marketers rate the ROI for technology and telecom companies as worst, 23% rate advertising excluding online as worst. While 11% consider that sponsorship deliver poor ROI.

Commenting on the findings, David Thorp, director of research and professional development at The Chartered Institute of Marketing said; “As belts tighten it is clear that marketing spend on advertising is under pressure but it’s refreshing to see that investment in ‘knowing your customer’, through CRM systems, marketers are able to wisely concentrate their spend in the most effective activities and, as we move into 2010, I’m convinced this more professional approach will stand them in good stead when the economy recovers.”

CRM gives a much higher ROI than advertising. This is a good reason for companies to focus on their existing customer base.

penny wise - pound foolish?

Marketing ways out of recession

I read a YouGov survey recently which showed that small businesses plan to increase their marketing budgets over the next 12 months inspite of the current economic climate.

Marketing is important for SMEs in UK as in a survey of nearly 1,000 small business owners found that 38% plan to invest more in marketing.

SME’s can be shielded from recession by reducing external costs and consolidating suppliers. Further protection can be given by bringing in-house traditionally outsourced speciality tasks, such as production of marketing materials.

The survey by YouGov reveals that only 40% respondents will bring professional quality marketing material production in-house and only a quarter said they’d be unlikely to do so.

“The survey results highlight how businesses are looking to reduce external costs through bringing printing requirements in-house, with the ability to produce professional quality print material themselves, rather than through an external supplier,” said Officejet Brand Manager, HP UK, Beth de Avila.

The survey also reveals that 79% of those businesses that advertise rely on printed and online advertising as their primary means.

Added to the information given by the same survey 40% used print as their primary form of advertising and 7% were with event based advertising.

“These results highlight how UK business owners are not panicking in their attitudes to marketing during the current economic downturn, and are budgeting for the long term as well as the short,” added de Avila.
“Previous recessions have shown that those businesses that market themselves well during fallow periods are significantly better positioned when the good times return.”

It also showed that 13% respondents spend more than 80% of the company’s marketing budget on print advertising and 27% spent more than half.

The research was conducted by YouGov and surveyed 943 micro, small and medium sized business owners from 10th – 12th June 2009.

The end is nigh?

Is the recession almost over?  A Quarterly survey says so…

The the recession is about to end and UK‘s business confidence has risen to its highest level for a long time.
The reports from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) reveal that the economic outlook is improving.
Business Confidence Monitor shows that third-quarter GDP will rise 0.5%, breaking five quarters of declining output.

In a BCM survey of 1,000 senior businessmen on their economic confidence over the next 12 months 41% of them show more economic confidence about their prospects than the last year. BCM has seen its biggest quarterly rise since the third quarter of 2007. The most benefitted sectors include IT, banking, finance and insurance and property.
This suggests that the UK recession is at an end.  I have certainly noticed a marked upturn of both enquiries and results from existing clients. With economic outlook improving and BCM showing a rise in GDP, recession is likely to come to an end soon.