The early evening seminar will explain how the use of websites such as Facebook and Twitter can help to grow a business. It will take place in the new Arc Business Centre at Archway House on the outskirts of Market Harborough on Tuesday 31^st January.

The seminar was first given in November and was fully subscribed, with over 60 guests coming from all over Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. Speaker Alastair Campbell of The Ideal Marketing Company (www.theidealmarketingcompany.com) was delighted with the interest shown by local companies. “No one can really afford to ignore the impact of social media anymore” he comments. “However, many people are still unsure about how best to go about using social media effectively. After the feedback we received last time I felt that another seminar on the subject would be useful for businesses in the region.”

For more information on the seminar or to book a place, please contact Alastair Campbell on 01858 445 543 or email alastair@idealmarketingcompany.com

If you want to get 2012 off to a flying start, you might be interested in a free seminar I’m running at the end of January. Following a ‘full house’ for this talk in November I have been asked to run it again.

It’s taking place on Tuesday January 31st from 5pm till 7pm at The Arc Business Centre, Lubenham Hill, Market Harborough, LE16 9SZ.

The theme is making the most of new business opportunities in 2012 by using a combination of traditional marketing principles – combined with the best of social media and the latest modern marketing techniques.

As it takes place near tea-time, we’re laying on drinks and nibbles to make it even more tempting for you.

It’s free to attend, but we are anticipating another full house so PLEASE book early to avoid disappointment. You are welcome to bring up to 2 colleagues with you.

Just e-mail seminars@idealmarketingcompany.com if you’d like to come saying how many places you’d like and I’ll e-mail you full directions and a reminder a few days before the event.

Thanks for all the feedback from last nights marketing seminar with a focus on social media last night in Market Harborough.  Looks like we are going to run it again in January.  Will post details on here as soon as the date has been confirmed.

First of all, the good news – the fundamental principles of marketing have not changed since they were laid down well over a century ago. Personally, I don’t think that they will ever change, however, the best ways to put them into practice certainly has. Unless we all keep up with these changes it will be all too easy to get left behind. Your competitors may already be applying these ideas. It is now easier than ever to bring products and services to market at a lower cost and with less risk. In short, it’s an exciting time to run a business because marketing has cheaper and more effective:

• Faster to introduce to your customers

• Cheaper to create and replicate

• Easier to test, measure and improve

You are invited to a free marketing seminar in Market Harborough on November 29th from 5pm till 7pm which looks into how to combine the best ideas around ‘traditional’ marketing techniques (such as this direct mail letter) with the latest areas such as Twitter, Facebook, You Tube and LinkedIn.

You will be joining around 40 Harborough business owners at this event who between them will range from the total novices to the more experienced (even expert) in some of the areas. It will be a great opportunity to learn new ideas and gain valuable insight into marketing your company in 2012.

To reserve up to 3 places please call: 01858 44 55 43 or e-mail: seminar@idealmarketingcompany.com

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, e-mail marketing and blogging are becoming an ever important part of the marketing mix. Are you ready to embrace them in 2012? Have you got multiple marketing channels working in your favour to make it easy for customers and prospects to find you? Find out how to make the most of new technology whilst keeping’traditional’ marketing that work for you at this free seminar taking place on November 29th at the brand new ‘Arc Business Centre’ in Market Harborough.

Discover how to:

• Drive customers to your website
• Develop a new level of trust with prospects
• Focus your marketing into the most cost effective areas
• Why branding and benifits will never go out of business

When? 5pm – 7pm on November 29th

How much? No charge if you book in advance

What does it cover? How to make the most of the latest social media marketing technlogy by learning from traditional marketing principles

Who is it for? Small business owners, Marketing Managers and anybody with an interestet in winning new business for their company or start up business.

What else? There will be free drinks and nibbles upon arival and a chance to catch up with other business owners at the start and end of the seminar

Where is it? The prestigious new ‘Arc Business Centre‘ located on Lubenham Hill, Market Harborough, LE16 9SZ (the former site of the Welland Lodge)

Visit www.businessarc.co.uk for more details. Please note: We are expecting around 40 business owners to attend and the event is likely to be over subscribed so we advise that you book early. Just e-mail alastair@idealmarketingcompany.com or call 01858 44 55 43 to book a free place.

The talk will be on the theme of  ‘ The top 10 lead generation ideas to grow your business’

Running from 9.45 till about 10.30 It will cover plenty of ways to grow a company.  Receiving multiple streams of warm leads is, in many ways, the quickest.

This seminar offers the 10 most popular low cost ways to generate regular leads that can be quickly turned into new customers.

Presented by the author and MD of The Ideal Marketing Company Alastair Campbell, this seminar will offer practical no-nonsense tips for small business owners who have a limited amount of time & money to spend on their marketing activity.

 Visit http://www.leicesterbusinessevents.co.uk/ for more details about the event.

The “Start-Up Harborough” event, announced last month, has released its final list of speakers. The free event, organised by local networking group Working Breakfast, is being held on September 20^th at the new Innovation Centre on Leicester road from 3pm till 8pm. It has been designed for people thinking of setting up a new business, for people who have recently set up and for businesses that have been running for 3 years and under.

The speakers that have recently been announced are from a huge range of business backgrounds. There will be representatives from many different local companies addressing topics such as telecommunications, marketing and PR, recruitment, website design, security issues and legal matters.  Finally there will be a Q & A session on how to reach local audiences with several guest speakers making up the panel.

Alastair Campbell of The Ideal Marketing Company, is one of the organisers and comments “The speakers that we have managed to get are very experienced in their fields, their advice will be of great value to the 100 plus business owners who have already committed to come along on the day.” He also goes on to explain.  “Many of the speakers will also be available to meet afterwards or to book 1-to 1 meetings”

The event will run from 3pm onwards and is free to enter, if you wish to learn more or reserve a place, please email wb@idealmarketingcompany.com or visit www.workingbreakfast.com.

The events sponsor Working Breakfast is a local networking group that meets every Wednesday morning at The Angel Hotel from 7am till 8.30pm and is a non profit making organisation based around new business generation, advice, support and friendship. Around 20 local businesses are currently members of the group which was formed at the end of 2009.

A new event aimed at start up companies is being held in Market Harborough on September 20^th at the new Innovation Centre on Leicester Road which the Ideal Marketing Company is delighted to be supporting.  If it is a success, the plan is to make it an annual event. ‘Start-Up Harborough’ is a free event aimed at people thinking of setting up a new business, for people who have recently set up and for businesses that have been running for 3 years and under.

The event will be a combination of seminars, workshops and exhibitions designed to offer free support and advice.  It is being organised and sponsored by local networking group Working Breakfast.  The event is free for anybody to attend and will run from 3pm until 8pm.

“It can be so confusing when you first set up in business so this will be a ‘one stop shop’ where people can receive advice, ideas and support on a wide range of areas” says the Working Breakfast’s chair Kathy Bakewell.  Mick Judge, the Innovation Centre Managers comments “We are delighted to be helping with this event which aims to encourage people to set up on their own. The town needs to encourage new business owners and this is a good step forward”

Topics that will be covered on the day include seminars and workshops will include legal advice, security, design and marketing.  To receive a full run down of the timings, a list of topics covered or to reserve a place please e-mail wb@idealmarketingcompany.com or visit www.workingbreakfast.com

The events sponsor Working Breakfast is a local networking group that meets every Wednesday morning at The Angel Hotel from 7am till 8.30pm and is a non profit making organisation based around new business generation, advice, support and friendship.  Around 20 local businesses are currently members of the group which was formed at the end of 2009.

Your marketing material is not about you! Or at least it shouldn’t be. Your marketing material is about how you help your customers. Write about how you can overcome problems that they are currently experiencing, how you can increase their profits, how you can generally make their lives better if they use your product. They don’t really care much about when your company was formed or who works the company although a little bit of that towards the end of the brochure might be fine for establishing your credibility within the industry. The vast majority of your brochure should be identifying problems that they have at the moment and then explaining how your company and products your company offers can help them.

The second mistake is to assume is that people are interested in your company. Perhaps one day people will become interested in your company if you deliver them remarkable results, but for the moment that’s not the case. At the moment they are only interested in your company insofar as it can help solve a problem that they have. Let’s look at two very diverse examples — Slim fast and Amazon.com.

In the Slim fast TV and press commercials do they talk about how the company was formed who runs it would its projected turnover? Of course they don’t. They talk about how it helps people to slim – fast. They talk about how their products allow people to lose weight rapidly. They use examples of people who have used it. They use appetising looking pictures of the product. They show before and after pictures of people who have taken the product. And that’s pretty much it. Everything in their advertising is focused on the result that the product will achieve for you. And in fact the same goes for any other successful diet product. It focuses on the clear benefits that the product delivers.

Amazon.com sells books. You might have heard about them, they sell around 150,000 books a day and rising. It’s a website that allows people to go online and buy pretty much any book that you could ever imagine as well as a huge number of other products.

By allowing people to put in the title of the book the author or a particular sector of publishing it makes it very easy to buy either a specific book or to browse through a wide selection of books on topics such from marketing to curry and everything in between. Of course there are other sites available but Amazon delivers items quickly, has regular special offers and there are lots of other things that they do to make my buying experience pleasurable. I have bought items from Amazon for many years – but do I have the first idea about when the company was formed or who owns it or where the offices are anything like that? No, I don’t and I don’t think I’m really very interested in any of that. I trust it as a company and as a brand, but I’m interested in it only as far as it helps me buy books and other items in a convenient way.

Now that you understand people aren’t interested in you or your business as much as the benefits your business delivers to them, you understand the biggest crime in most people’s marketing. If you look at the majority of websites brochures direct mail letters you will see the word ‘we’ appear an enormous number of times – often opening paragraphs. ‘We’ do this, ‘we’ do that when you look further into the paragraphs it’s ‘we’ were established in … ‘we’ work with etc. The word ‘we’ appears too many times.

In order to make your text more engaging to potential customers you want to have a major shift of focus in the text. Try to replace as many ‘we’ words with ‘you’ words.  So if a typical example of a brochure sentence reads ‘We are based in on Wembley high Street where we have been since 1973’. That could be replaced with a sentence along the lines of ‘If you travel to Wembley high Street on a regular basis you might have noticed our shop located beside the post office. You might have walked past it dozens of times well now we are inviting you to join us next time you go past and claim a 10% discount off any purchase’. Can you see the difference in tone between the two sentences?  One is aloof, distant and focused on the business. The other is focussed on the customer and their experience.

If you’d like to learn more about marketing, The Marketing Lunchpad Seminar programme covers dozens of ideas like this one.  Have a look here for more details.