In an online article at www.marketingweek.co.uk entitled ‘Young marketers need to focus on basics to succeed’ there was an interesting quote from Claire Harrison-Church, former Sainsbury’s director of brand communication.

“It’s important that marketers are externally focused. So many people in the business get swamped about running the business in which they are involved that they can miss that the consumer has moved on and is busy doing something else”

Focusing on truly understanding your customer is something that I continually talk about in my blog but it amazes me that not only do business owners need to be reminded of this but also marketers. Every marketing initiative needs to start with the question – what will it deliver to the customer or prospect?

The Sales Formula

Twitter is a remarkable social media platform for businesses. We love it as a way to connect with new people, keep in touch with those we know, find out what’s going on in our world and get our message out there. And all in 140 characters too!

But if you’re new to Twitter it can be more than a little confusing. You’ve set up your account but just exactly what do you say? What sort of information should you share? What rules do you have to play by?

Here’s a quick guide to the type of Twitter activity we see to work best. We hope it helps.

Valuable Content

Have you ever wondered why some companies are winning the marketing game, even in a tough market?

Valuable Content

Banks are “unlawfully” changing loan terms and refusing to negotiate with small businesses, a law firm has claimed.

According to a survey of small companies and investors, a quarter of entrepreneurs, private equity and hedge funds have reported that their bank had tried to change the original terms of their loan. 22% said their lender wanted to reduce the loan’s maturity.

MarketInvoice Blog

 Today’s recruitment campaigns have demonstrated you don’t need to be a big company to create buzz around your brand. With more and more businesses recognising and leveraging social media to communicate their hiring messages, we’ve seen that recruitment advertising can take many forms.

webrecruit Blog – online recruitment, staffing and HR tips and tricks

I’ve always said it, if politicians were businesses they’d have no customers.

This is something that Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg have had to find out the hard way. The coalition, a marriage of sorts, had grand plans of steering the country out of recession and into calmer waters – and while I’m not commenting on their policy choice, there is clear evidence to suggest that the rescue package we were proposed some two years ago has lost some of its shine.

News of a ‘second honeymoon’ and joint appearances indicate that someone somewhere has warned them: people are losing interest. 

Sales training and leadership insights

 It was all going so well. In fact, as it turned out too well… All I needed to do was agree dates with the client for a series of workshops worth nearly £10k to us.

That should be the easy part? Right? Wrong! I delegated the job of agreeing dates to my chief organiser, Lisa. Lisa diligently chased her opposite number at the potential client’s organization, but e-mails, messages and phone calls were just not returned. So, I took the task back and went straight to my contact. I got the silent treatment as well…

It’s at this point that you tend to think that the worst has happened. i.e. the client has decided to not proceed – even though they were so keen just a few weeks ago. However, most of the time it’s not that the worst has happened. In fact here are just a few reasons why your phone call is not being returned:

1) The work is now no longer an organisational priority – however, this could change.

The Joined Up Networker

Why company owners and management do not release the value of the skills within their business defies any logic?

Leaders, now more than ever, should and must use all their resources to maximum efficiency and rebuild culture and efficiencies within their business, whilst fully accepting the challenging times that businesses have now been trading in to survive for an elongated period. 

I am Lara Morgan

We are seeing a steady steam of Digital startups (at least, they are intended to start up, not just stall on the starting blocks) which are depressingly displaying the same failings:

Build it and they will come. Sitting closeted away for months building some kind of marginal functionality is not market research, it’s Digital onanism.

Big marketplaces, guaranteed success. Because Travel and Music and Social Media and Discounting are huge in no way means that an unconvincing or me-too offering has a hope of hell of success.

A Web of conceit. No, it’s not just a website editor, it’s a WEB PLATFORM TECHNOLOGY. There are lots of people attempting a late stage landgrab in the SME website market, claiming that the kind of technologies that we now take for granted somehow constitute a paradigm shift, only deliverable by themselves. Good luck to them (they’ll need it.)

Funding Enterprise: freeing-up money to help grow great British businesses

 Like learning to drive, leading and managing people is an experiential journey.

My entrance onto the leadership stage was when I was promoted into the role, having stood in for the team leader from time to time   I don’t know about you, but although I had practiced at managing people I hadn’t experienced it properly until I had to do it for real.

People Discovery