Ideal Marketing Company Blog

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

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.

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.

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

Thanks to Tara Carlile-Swift who sent me the following feedback from yesterday’s event:

“Once again Alastair’s speaking style captivated, inspired and challenged our audience who ranged from start-up businesses to established SME’s. His down to earth approach to marketing is refreshing. Our delegates left with real advice they can implement straight away - which is why Alastair’s style is so relevant in the current climate”

Tara Carlile-Swift

Tara Carlile-Swift
Founder - East Midlands Business Live! & New business live!

www.embusinesslive.com

How do easyJet do it?  I’ve read books on the low cost airlines including easyJet and i still don’t understand how they can strip away so many costs.  For examle last week we flew to Crete.  For 4 of us (including all the extras that they charge) it cost £600. Two years ago XL, who have now gone bust, charged more that double that for the same destination at the same time of year.

I understand the idea behind easyJet and the other low cost airlines, but it still staggers me that a 4 hour flight to another country regulalry cost me less that a 1 hour train ticket into London, one hour from my house.

What’s more I have always had a good experiance when flying with them. The flights have always been on time, the staff friendly etc.

They are a great example of giving added value to customers - even if I don’t understand how they can do what they do and give such good value!