Ideal Marketing Company Blog

The ‘City of the future’ opens its doors to the public for the first time Leicester arts festival

An experiment in future living can be viewed by the public for the first time as part of the opening weekend of Leicester’s Arena Festival of Contemporary Arts. The Geodecity Project was set up last summer by Reactor, a group of contemporary artists, to look at ways in which people could create an alternative future society based on a utopian ideal.

As part of the initiative, members of the community live in architect designed Geodesic domes which they build themselves; they then decide how the society will live. Ten of the original Geodecians are setting up an expo of the project at Scraptoft Hill Farm, Covert Lane Scraptoft which will be open for visits from the public on Saturday 1st November.

“We are really excited to have this installation as part of the programme,” comments festival co-ordinator Hamish Walker. “It will add a new and thought provoking dimension to the festival and we hope that people will be intrigued enough to see for themselves what living as a Geodecian actually involves.” Minibuses leave from outside Phoenix Arts Cinema (Newarke Street) in Leicester at 10am, 11.30am and 1pm to the Geodecity site. The final bus will leave at 2.30pm from The Rushes in Loughborough. Places are FREE but must be booked in advance by calling 07989 427 425.

The Arena Festival, which launches at The Ale Wagon in Rutland Street this Saturday (1st November) has been organised by DOT, a Leicester based artist-led group established in 2004. The event runs until 16th November and has attracted artists and performers from across the UK and beyond.

For full details of the line up and when individual events are taking place visit www.arena-festival.co.uk. For more information on the Geodecian Project visit www.reactorweb.com.

On Tuesday November 18th at 6.30pm I am offering a free marketing seminar covering the 12 most practical ideas I know of to market your company during this slowdown.

There is no catch – the seminar is free and lasts for about 1 and a half hour.  The first 10 people on the night will also be offered the chance to have a free one month trial of the Marketing Mentor programme -again no catch.

The seminar takes place in Leicesteshire and at the moment we have people traveling from London, Watford, Derby, Birmingham, Leicester, Nottinghjam and Northampton to see this new marketing seminar. If you want to claim one of the few remaining places, please have a look at the seminar page of this site for details and then e-mail how many places (up to 3) that you would like to claim.

This marketing seminar on how to market during the difficult times we are facing will give you plenty of practical ideas to take away and use straight away.

During a useful marketing mentoring session this morning we discussed theimportance of using testimonials. These really are one of the most effective low cost ways to cement your reputation.  Hayn from Gaia sent in some examples for discussion and although we talked about how they could be fine tuned, they are both goodexamplesofwhy testimonials work well.

Energy Saving at Work – Automotive Industry

Alcon is one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of performance and motor sport brake and clutch systems; supplying and winning in F1, WRC, NASCAR, Indy Car, Touring Cars and GT racing, as well as engineering extreme solutions for several leading performance road car manufacturers.

Eager to control peak consumption and reduce their environmental impact with ISO14001, Alcon use the Gaia monitoring system to keep track on electricity usage. With 48 consumption reads taken per day, the data available at www.savegaia.net and alerts set up should consumption hit a set limit, Alcon have their energy under control.

Operations Manager David Fuller said ‘We at Alcon are keen to show our commitment to good environmental best practice. Using Gaia we can visibly see our energy consumption enabling us to drive down usage and save money at the same time.’

www.alcon.co.uk

Energy Saving at Work – Power Resistor Manufacturer

Cressall Resistors is the world’s foremost resistor manufacturer based on Evington Valley Road, in Leicester.Cressall Resistors has 100 years experience in producing power resistors for use in the electro-technical market. With design and manufacturing facilities within the UK, Cressall supply both standard and custom designed resistors for any application from a few watts up to several megawatts and for operation at any voltage. Cressall are committed to total quality and have a Quality Management System approved to ISO 9001:2000.

In June 2008 Cressall, subscribed to the Gaia system to monitor and control their energy consumption. By identifying higher out of hours consumption during night shift operations they identified savings of 280 KWH units per night (£500 a month). Bill Urwin Quality Manager said ‘Using Gaia we have generated a positive financial payback in weeks which can be secured for the long term through the continual monitoring and alarm settings provided by the Gaia system’

Do you have a testimonial gathering programme in place?  if not set one up orspeak to your marketing company andget them to start work on it straight away! Hope you fould that marketing mentoring session of help. Thanks again to Haydn for his input.

Leicester gears up for brand new contemporary arts festival

 With the launch date of 1st November just a couple of weeks away, the first ever Arena Festival of Contemporary Arts has finalised a bold line up of artists and performers from across the UK. The two week festival, which launches at The Ale Wagon in Rutland Street, on Saturday 1st November and runs until 16th November, aims to showcase many prominent local and internationally known artists. The event also hopes to raise the city’s national profile in the art world.

Organised by DOT, a Leicester based artist-led group established in 2004, the festival has attracted funding from the Arts Council East Midlands, Leicester City Council and Leicestershire County Council and is the culmination of months of planning. It will take place at various locations across the city centre as well as at locations around the area including Wigston, Scraptoft and Oakham.

“With all the recent regeneration, including the fantastic new facilities such as The Curve, Leicester is a really exciting place to be at the moment,” explains festival co-ordinator Hamish Walker. “We have seen a great deal of growth in the arts in the city which DOT is proud to be part of and we hope that events such as Arena Festival will really help put Leicester on the cultural map.”

Planned events include exhibitions and installations by a range of artists, a magic show with a difference, music events and street projects. Many events are free and some include audience participation. “We are really excited by the variety of artists that we have managed to attract,” adds Hamish. “There is a diverse range of media and performances for people to come and see, many of which we hope will be interesting and thought provoking. For full details of the line up and when individual events are taking place visit www.arena-festival.co.uk

I haven’t mentioned for a while that I am a member of a networking group in Leicester called Working Breakfast.  It’s based on the London Road at the Regency and meets every Thursday – see www.workingbreakfast.com for more details of what the group is about.  At the moment we are particulaly looking for a well respected leicester recruitment agencies to join.  If you know of a good recruitment agency in leicester or if in fact you are one, then you’d be very welcome to come along one week to see what you make of the group.  However only one can join so don’t put your vist off for too long…

Free Marketing Seminar at Hothorpe Hall, Leicestershire

The Ideal Marketing Company is delighted to present a free marketing seminar at Hothorpe Hall – Low Cost Marketing Ideas to Weather the Economic Storm

Following on from a series of successful marketing seminars earlier in the year held locally and around the UK, this brand new seminar gives you practical, low cost ideas on what you can do to keep you existing customers coming back and win more new business – despite the economic storm that is gathering.

This early evening seminar is free to any business owners or people with a marketing function within a company. It is aimed at small businesses with limited marketing budgets who want to make their funds stretch as far as possible – typically employing less than 50 staff.

Date just announced : Tuesday November 18th

Time: 6 for 6.30pm till 8.30pm

Location: Hothorpe Hall, LE17 6QX (near Market Harborough)

Cost: FREE

What will this free marketing seminar cover?

During the seminar I’ll cover 12 of the key main low cost marketing areas to help your business. These ideas cover making the most of existing customers as well as seeking cost effective ways to win new business. Previous slow-downs have shown that companies who cut their advertising lose their share of the market, whilst those who continue to market themselves do far better in the long run BUT only if they undertake the right marketing activity.

Why should I attend?

If you are the owner or manager of a small company, you’ll be only too familiar with these problems -

Fear of Failure – too many small companies go out of business because they don’t understand how to market themselves. Out of the ones that survive the early years, few rarely go beyond ‘making a living’ for the owners

• Small businesses don’t have big budgets to spend on marketing
• Business owners don’t have enough time to attend lots of courses & seminars
• Lack of ideas and fresh ways to attract customers
• Not enough time to put any existing marketing ideas into place.

This seminar is aimed at companies who want to grow, but aren’t sure the best way for them to go about it and have limited marketing budgets to spend.

How will this Marketing Seminar help me?

‘Low Cost Marketing Ideas to Weather the Economic Storm’ will give you lots simple, practical ideas to introduce to your company straight away. You’ll also learn about the Marketing Mentor Programme and how it can give your business:

1. Have a clear sense of direction in your business – where it is heading over the next 5 years and how it is going to get there
2. Generate enquiries though successful direct mail and e-mail programmes
3. Read about the success of your business in the local / trade and national press
4. Convert more leads to appointments and more appointments into sales
5. Produce a brochure and leaflets that people read rather than toss in the bin
6. Create a website to get noticed by Google, and visited by prospects
7. Become the ‘go to’ company within your target markets
8. Convert more customers, launch more successful products and keep more customers happy
9. Receive more warm leads and find out how to close more sales more easily
10. Keep your customers loyal and buying from you again and again
11. Increase your profits by creating a simple sales strategy that makes sure even a junior sales person can increase their average order value
12. Decrease significantly the chances of losing major contracts and improve the chances of extending the work you do for your best clients
13. Make networking work for you and excel at exhibitions
14. Have your company and products stand out for the crowd
15. Learn how to make your advertising results increase 50 fold
16. Ensure your customers stay with you for longer and spend more with you than ever before
17. Stay ahead of the competition and maintain the lead in the market place

How do I book a place?

Free places for the marketing seminar are limited, but to check availability e-mail seminar@idealmarketingcompany.com or call 01858 44 55 43 for more information. You can reserve up to 3 places for yourself and friends / colleagues.

When I was running a recent marketing seminar I was aksed how easy is it to get decent media coverage and PR for a small company.  Surely, they asked, only a large comapny can get any decent coverage.

I totally disagreed and said that small companies can get good PR coverage if the can tell an interesting story.  The most recent example of this is our clients The Quest Institute who attended the Marketing Mentor seminar in September.  One of their clients Lisa Butcher is on the cover of Rapport Magazine this month with a 2 page sorry about them on the inside.  They emply just 4 staff but are brilliant at what they do.  

They are also in this month Running Fitness magazine and have recently appeared in Zest as well as on BBC Radio and several other publications.  It has nothing to do with the size of the company – it is to do with how interesting and relevent the story is to the publication.

Other people who have experianced the marketing mentoring offered in the marketing Mentor programme can tell a similar tale. See www.themarketingmentor.co.uk for more information on the article and to claim your free marketing tips booklet.

Alastair Campbell from the Ideal Marketing Company delighted to be named as ‘best community business’

A local marketing firm from Market Harborough has been awarded the Community Business of the Year Award this week. Alastair Campbell, who is MD of The Ideal Marketing Company based in Coventry Road, was nominated for the award by clients. Over the past 12 months he has worked on the campaign to bring a cinema to Market Harborough, helped run the publicity for the town’s Arts Fresco event and also runs regular marketing seminars at Hothope Hall which are free to local businesses.

Six other local companies were put forward for the award which was organised by online business directory The Best of Market Harborough. Local business owners and clients were then invited to vote for the business that they considered most deserving of the award, with Alastair’s company The Ideal Marketing Company, taking over 50% of the votes.

Alastair was delighted to be presented with the award at the Angel Hotel on Wednesday evening at the Harborough Chamber of Commerce meeting. “It’s always nice to receive recognition for what you do, however, the greatest reward as far as I’m concerned would be if the plan for a cinema for the town actually succeeds, and the good that would do for the local economy,” he comments.

Alastair’s free bi-monthly marketing seminars for local businesses run at Hothorpe Hall in Theddingworth – the next one takes place on the evening of November 18th and is free to attend.  Reserve a place by e-mailing seminar@idealmarketingcompany.com or vist www.themarketingmentor.co.uk