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.

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

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.

Marketing Seminar Southampton

Marketing Seminar - Southampton

Thanks to everybody who came to my marketing seminars in Southampton this morning as part of the Venue Master annual event held in Southampton over a 3 day period.  Hope you found the marketing ideas useful and will take back a few ideas to help attract more new business leads.  Hope the rest of the event goes well and that you enjoy the keynote speech on Friday from Ruth Badger in the morning.  It was a lovely venue and it’s always a pleasure to speak to such a lovely audiance. I really enjoyed running thismarketing seminar in Southampton.

Marketing Seminar at the Angel Hotel

Free Marketing Seminar – November 2009

What can you do to minimise the marketing mistakes that can happen when you launch a new product, run an advert or send out a direct mail campaign? ‘12 Reasons Why Marketing Fails’ is packed with simple ideas that will help you to avoid the 12 most common errors that spell disaster for your next marketing campaign.

If you want to avoid the wasted money and missed opportunities for growth that can result, book your free place today.

You can also find out more about the ‘Marketing Mentor’ programme and how you can enrol in it for no charge as it is currently fully Government funded.

Details about the free Marketing Seminar at the Angel Hotel, Market Harborough

Date: Thursday November 12th at 5pm

Location: The Angel Hotel, High Street, Market Harborough

Duration: 5pm for a 5.15 start till 6.30pm

Parking: Free in The Angel car park behind the hotel

Please e-mail Helen@idealmarketingcompany.com to reserve up to 3 places or call 01858 44 55 43

Phone seminar

Thanks to everybody who joined in on the Marketing Mentor call today. Pleased to say that we were able to give out some useful ideas and I think everybody listening found something useful to takeaway with them.

To find out of you qualify for free funding for the marketing mentor programme (if you employ between 4 and 200 staff you probably do) call 01858 44 55 43.

Marketing Seminar in London

Looking forward to a new marketing seminar that I will be running next week for the Mace Group at their head office in Camden North London.  Sorry - this is a private seminar for Mace staff only.  I will be running a similar seminar in Market Harborough in early November

Market seminars leicester

Special Seminar on Brand Development and Protection

The most valuable brand in the world is google with an estimated value of $100bn (source: Millward Brown report 2009), this is a staggering sum and google relies almost exclusivity on brand awareness to promote its business.

In the current economic climate customers are increasingly turning to trusted and well known brands whether they are seeking cheaper products at supermarkets such as Aldi or for new and exciting technology such as Apple.

As a business your brand is essential in a competitive market. This is why our second seminar in the series looks at how to protect your brand and how to develop your brand.

The Seminar will consist of the following two presentations:

Alastair Campbell, The Ideal Marketing Company:  Creating a Powerful Brand – What are the simple lessons that every company can introduce when looking at the critical area of branding?

Jason Hathaway, Edward Hands & Lewis Solicitors: Protecting your brand – trade mark registration, passing off and other related legal rights.

The seminar is on 24th September at the Leicester Space Centre starting at 8.00 am and will finish at 10am.

I would urge you to book early as we are expecting a good turnout.

To book a place please e-mail alastair@idealmarketingcompany.com