Blogs
Christmas marketing made easy If your business success will rely on having a good Christmas this year, then join me for my Christmas marketing workshop, designed to help you plan effectively and make the most of the opportunity. This 2.5 hour workshop will give you the tools to develop a marketing campaign including how you
There are no guarantees with PR but that shouldn’t stop you getting results
Posted atThere are no guarantees with PR. That’s a guarantee. It’s important to ensure anyone considering PR knows the risks. It’s not advertising. It takes an altogether different kind of creativity to achieve results. I say that because for many businesses, having newsworthy stories that will attract the attention of the press isn’t a daily occurrence.
Who’s telling your story? 5 questions to ask your brand
Posted atI travelled to York by train last week and two surprising things happened. Firstly, as we pulled out of Kings Cross, the train manager invited all the passengers to go and have their selfie taken with a Tour de Yorkshire cyclist. He’d decided to take the train, rather than fly, and meet the fans. I
‘Brands shouldn’t confuse simple with boring’, was the message Innocent Drinks’ brand activation manager, Jamie Sterry, gave at a Youth Marketing Strategy conference in London earlier this month. Adding that being clear and honest was vital to attract young people to your brand. (Read the article on Marketing Week here) Now while the event was
If you’ve got a tight marketing budget then PR can be your friend, but it can be tricky to know where to start? Here are ten things you need to know. What is PR? In its simplest form, PR is about getting your company written about in the papers and magazines, or talked about on
Aldi shows us how to react to Christmas trading brilliantly
Posted atHow Aldi reacted quickly to John Lewis’ Christmas advert – marketing and supply chain at its best
Marketing tips for artisan traders attending Christmas fairs
Posted atIf you’re an artisan crafter or independent food business then this time of year is crucial for your brand and making the all-important Christmas sales. This blogs is full of tips to help you stand out.
PR for beginners: What are the different routes into magazines?
Posted atPR for beginners. This article introducing the different ways you can get coverage in a magazine.
Part 2: Getting started with Twitter – social media marketing as a newbie
Posted atHere’s part 2 of my guide on using Twitter for the first time, based on my experience. Part 1 as a reminder is here. Part 2. Growing your account When you’ve got into a rhythm, you can then start to grow your followers. New people will see the tweets you’ve posted and ‘get’ why they
Getting started with Twitter – social media marketing as a newbie
Posted atYou certainly get a wake up call when you leave a big FTSE100 and start up your own company. You become the go to person for everything: finance, new business, account management and of course marketing. It’s vital as a marketer I do the things I tell my customers to do which is why I
3D Marketing isn’t just for big brands. Read tips on how you can have big impact on a budget.
In my blog how to write a marketing plan, I underline the importance of testing your processes before you launch a marketing campaign. The last thing you want is to miss out on a return on your investment because your tills and online check outs aren’t set up with a promotional price, or your employees
Did Ocado get it’s Christmas marketing wrong or is it very, very clever?
Posted atOcado sent me – and thousands of others – a message this week to tell us that on 15 October we’d be able to arrange our Christmas delivery slots. Great idea I thought especially if you look back to November last year when all slots for Christmas had been taken. The advance notice I could
Five things you can learn from Jamie Oliver’s PR machine
Posted at5 tips for making a PR campaign work
Three hours to fix your marketing, with the simplest of things: a calendar
Posted atHaving a marketing calendar can make all the difference between success and failure. Here’s how to do it.
If you are about to start writing a blog, this will give you ideas on what to write about
5 reasons why you shouldn’t worry about the competition this Christmas
Posted atIt’s easy to get distracted by the competition when you are in the thick of Christmas trading. This blog looks at why you should stay focused on your marketing plan.
10 ways to promote your food business I read in Marketing Week that the food chain Eat is changing its marketing strategy. It needs to tell people what it does. It recognises that it can’t double its store count to 200 if it waits for people to discover the brand. As a result it is
When marketing is a waste of time Sometimes you have to have tough conversations. Tell people something they don’t want to hear. Invariably, that’s the position I am in when I sit down to discuss a small business owner’s marketing plans. It can be a blow to hear the words ‘I don’t think you’re ready
When bad news doesn’t have to mean bad headlines This week I’m talking about Yodel’s comms strategy. A stroke of brilliance. The delivery company, announced that this Black Friday it will cap the number of next day deliveries it makes to 600,000. As an outsider you’d think this was nuts. Immediate loss of business in