BusinessTalk FM

Our MD, Julian Jordan has done a couple of interviews with BusinessTalk FM - one about the implications of government spending cuts for small businesses in the North West and one about Marketing, Media Relations and Social Media.

If you want to hear what he has to say, listen here:- http://bit.ly/aHt6RH

Five top tips for SME online marketing

Firstly, you shouldn’t need convincing that online marketing is necessary. Consumers are online and looking for local goods and services right now – so don’t miss out. Marketing your business online can give you measurable results – you can see where you spent your marketing budget and accurately track where the leads are coming from and what return they are bringing you. It’s relatively low-cost (even free in some instances) and it can deliver a high yield. So, what’s not to like?

Here’s a few things to consider...

1) Take control of your website

You need your website to do a job for you. It shouldn’t just be a brochure. Yes, it should look good and read well, but it should also build awareness for your business, generate leads and (where possible) make money! This process is a lot easier if you can operate the site yourself. If your site has a Content Management System (CMS) you’re laughing. If not, you’ve got a problem. A CMS allows you to update your site through a web browser – which is a lot less hassle than waiting for your web company to update it and charge you for the privilege!

If your business is a start up, there are alternatives if you’re operating on a budget - you could just run a blog until you’ve got the budget for a proper site. Have a look at some of the free blogging resources out there like Blogger.com or Posterous. If you want to be a bit more ambitious, have a look at WordPress, a free publishing platform. If you can spare the time and effort you can build yourself a free site – one client of ours, Ghost Town Records, did exactly this and the result is pretty impressive.

2) Drive traffic to your site

If your website is going to work hard it needs people looking at it – so don’t just wait for this to happen, make it happen. You can pay to do this using Google AdWords – so-called pay-per-click. You only pay when someone finds your ad on search engine listings and clicks through. You can qualify your ad by making it “geo-targeted”. In other words, you can specify the geographic area where you want people to see your ads – why pay to advertise to an area where you don’t want to sell?

However, you can also drive traffic to your site for free using social media sites. Every time you update your blog or your website – post links on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Similarly if you got a new offer, let people know – include a link to the offer page on your site. Social media gives you an opportunity to be seen to add value, offer advice and get conversational. Just yesterday a member of the BrandSpankin’ team happened to tweet that her killer heels had lived up to their name and she could do with a foot massage – she got a direct message back from a business called Happy Feet with a link to their site. She contacted them and was offered a free sample! That’s an example of excellent “conversational” social media marketing in action. And suffice to say, BrandSpankin’s high heeled Diva has posted it all over the place and let all her friends know!

3) Build a local list

It’s pretty easy to organise a list of contacts isn’t it? You could even get people to sign up to it on your web site. When you’re at events if you get someone’s card, politely ask if it’s OK to send information through to them. At its most basic you can use social media tools like Twitter to stay in touch. But why not start to send out e-shots to your list? There are free tools out there that you can use to do this, such as Mail Chimp. Not only can you manage a professional looking e-shot for free, you even get to analyse the results as it tells you who opened your e-shot and who clicked through. With that information you can then start to schedule a series of follow up calls and convert some of that interest into business.

4) Get on Google Maps

If you go to Google.com/places you can put your business on Google maps – meaning people conducting a local search will see you business and your location, plus they can click through to your website! Many Google searches show local listings and this is a good way to get your business “above the scroll”.

5) Optimisation

Search engine optimisation (SEO) can be a costly and complicated exercise, but when done properly it will bear significant results. A basic way to enhance your SEO (if you have a CMS) is to ensure that the text within your site contains keywords that your customers and prospects are likely to use when looking for the product or service you sell. You can research high volume search terms by using this tool –

http://bit.ly/KeywordIdeas

This approach will provide some very basic assistance – if you want to explore SEO much more thoroughly, give us a call. (01282 878 301)

However, there are other forms of optimisation you should consider – simply making your business more visible and “findable” will help you to get a return on your digital marketing investment – this is sometimes called Digital Asset Optimisation. We urge small businesses to consider as many methods as possible to create this online visibility. So make sure you’re engaged in the social media conversation – have a Facebook fan page, have a LinkedIn company profile, use a blog, tweet to your followers, use free PR resources (such as PR web or release-news) to publish you press releases, set up a Youtube channel etc, etc.

There are loads of free resources available - and they can be managed in a way that isn’t too time consuming. The opportunity they present is to significantly raise you profile, generate increased traffic to your, website, increase your lead generation, and to generate more revenue.

And, if you’re still not convinced that you can do all this yourself, give us a call as we can provide PR and Social Media Marketing training – and if you’re from a North West business, we can probably get it fully funded for you.

BrandSpankin PR & Social Media Marketing Courses

Our next course starts on Monday 6th September and concludes on Monday 13th September. We are now taking bookings for our October course. The normal cost is £500 per attendee, but North West businesses can still get places fully funded

The BrandSpankin’ PR and social media marketing course trains businesses to:-

- Formulate key messages properly
- Write a compelling, “media-ready” press release
- Formulate an objectives-based Comms/Marketing plan that locks marketing activity into their Business Plan
- Understand the requirements of journalists and publication editors
- Use a series of freely available tools to monitor and measure the success of their campaigns
- Understand how to optimise and best utilise their presence on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Foursquare.
- Use a variety of online PR resources to self-publish their news releases
- Use blogging platforms to "self-publish"
- Massively enhance their online presence – so-called “Digital Asset Optimisation”
- Significantly increase traffic to their website
- Significantly increase return on investment

Attendees also:-

- Have a q/a session with a business journalist
- Have a one-2-one follow up from the course
- Receive presentations from each module of the course
- Receive a “starter-pack” of journalist data and the means to build this for themselves.
- Receive regular updates on new developments that will assist you to stay ahead of your competitors.

East Lancs businesses reaping huge benefits from social networking

NEWS RELEASE: 19.07.2010

EAST Lancs-based businesses have been ahead of the national picture when it comes to adopting social media to promote themselves, according to a local businessman.

Julian Jordan, MD of Pendle marketing and PR business, BrandSpankin’ has been running training courses for businesses to show them how to use PR and social media to enhance their marketing efforts at little or no cost – and with over 50 businesses having attended the courses this year, over half have come from the East Lancashire area.

“When it comes to using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote themselves, East Lancs businesses are definitely early adopters,” said Julian. “We’re also finding that many local businesses are benefitting from using blogs and Youtube channels to enhance their more traditional approaches to marketing.”

Prior to setting up BrandSpankin’ in Pendle, Julian managed marketing and media relations for telecoms businesses in London and Manchester, and he thinks that whilst these sorts of bigger businesses are missing a trick, small and regional businesses are adopting social media techniques to market themselves very cheaply, whilst being able to measure the effects and successes of their campaigns.

“In the current climate, social media is great for small businesses because it’s free and effective. It’s much more about having a dialogue with customers and prospects, than shouting your message at them. This is why I think it works really well for a lot of East Lancs based small businesses, as they have always traded on the basis of giving a good service and building a relationship with customers, so the tone of social media really suits them.”

-Ends-

August PR & Social Media Marketing Course

We've just confirmed dates for our August PR and Social Media Marketing course. Why not get in touch with us to see how you can get your place fully funded? Call us on 01282 878 301.

The course will run from 10am until 4pm on consecutive Tuesdays - the 3rd and 10th of August. It costs £500 per attendee, but if you're a North West based business with 5 or more employees, we should be able to help you get the course fully funded.

The course will enable you to:-

- establish your key messages
- write a compelling "media ready" press release
- formulate an easy to manage marketing communications plan
- understand how to measure and monitor your work for free
- get to grips with marketing you business via social media

You will:-

- experience a q/a session with a journalist
- get publication/journalist data to distribute your press release
- win positive media coverage (!!!) to build awareness of your business, its offerings and values
- generate more leads

Don't just take our word for it - here's what some recent attendees have to say...

"The atmosphere on the course was relaxed and friendly. I learned how to write and distribute strong press releases - and monitor coverage. Since the course we’ve had stories in the Nelson Leader, Lancashire Telegraph, Bolton Evening News - plus online coverage. The social media elements have helped with lead generation, so we’ve seen a real return. Overall was thrilled with the course and better still it was fully funded by Business Link!"

Victoria Evans - Office Manager, Uno Coffee, Nelson


“Great course, can’t wait to put it all into practice”

Tracey Taylforth - Marketing Manager, Hillendale Group, Nelson


“Brandspankin’s training has helped us get to grips with PR and social media. We got our first item of coverage before the course had even finished”

Tracey Humphries - Practitioner, Vitality+, Ramsbottom


“Thanks to BrandSpankin’, we’ve now won coverage in business and
regional media – and we’ve been in The Daily Telegraph”

Andy Gott - MD, MobileBroadbandSupermarket.co.uk, Manchester

BrandSpankin’ to host Mobile Marketing event

PENDLE marketing business BrandSpankin’ (http://www.brandspankin.co.uk) is set to host a mobile marketing demonstration for east Lancashire businesses that are looking to generate significant footfall and turn passers-by into customers.

The event is to take place in Simonstone, Lancashire on Wednesday 21st April, and will be co-hosted by BrandSpankin’s technology partner, C2-UK. The event is free to attend but places are limited, as there is significant interest in this form of mobile or proximity marketing.
The system operates using mobile handsets that have Bluetooth enabled, allowing businesses to send messages, discount codes and special offers to people who are in the immediate vicinity, allowing businesses to pull in people who might otherwise just pass by.

The UK has more active mobile contracts than people and over 90 per cent of handsets have Bluetooth functionality – potentially giving businesses unprecedented levels of access to foot fall that they would otherwise miss out on.

“Open rates” for this form of mobile marketing are in the region of 13 per cent, whereas traditional small business marketing techniques such as door drops, direct mail or flyers can typically have as little as a 0.5 per cent response rate.

Julian Jordan, MD of BrandSpankin’ said: “At the event we’ll be demonstrating the ease of use of our mobile marketing solution. Unlike a lot of traditional marketing forms you can really measure the effect of this approach and see an unprecedented return on your marketing budget. This kind of solution makes massive sense for small businesses such as bars, clubs and taxi businesses – but equally larger enterprises like football clubs, supermarkets and concert venues can see huge and immediate responses.”

Businesses interesting in attending should contact BrandSpankin’ on 01282 878 301 or 0161 453 3230.

BrandSpankin' PR and Social Media Courses

January saw the start of our PR courses for small businesses. Taking place at Pendle Innovation Centre where BrandSpankin’ is headquartered, we are planning subsequent courses – the next of which will run in March.

The course covers areas such as understanding your business brand values and propositions to determine your key messages, writing a compelling press release, building a comprehensive communications plan, and using social media to support your PR and marketing efforts.

For our first course we welcomed attendees from Hillendale Land Rover, Anvic Developments, Louvreties, Enterprising Pendle, Coffee Uno and Brooklands Retreat.

Let us know if these courses are of interest – we can help you secure funding to cover your costs!

Attend our PR Masterclasses

Like many other businesses, BrandSpankin’ has been buffeted by the economic climate over the last year – as you can imagine, Marketing and Public Relations are budgets that are frequently first to be cut. Nevertheless, when we meet people in business in our area they often suggest that they’d be very keen to build more awareness of their business, to generate leads and to be seen to have a higher media profile – whether that’s local & regional, trade and business, online or even national. The sticking point for many is the (perceived) cost of PR – especially when weighed against the measurable benefits.

Therefore, we have been looking at ways we can help businesses get consistent, positive media coverage that communicates who they are, what they do and what they stand for – without incurring significant costs. As such, we are proposing to run a two day course in January – and teach a member of your team the tricks of the trade, so instead of having to retain the services of our business (or a similar one), your business will be capable of generating positive headlines using an in-house resource.

Building awareness for your business in this way, will help you to be ‘front of mind’ when your targets are about to make a ‘buying decision’. Recognition of your business and familiarity with your offerings builds trust amongst prospects and customers alike. And you can convert that trust into winning new business and retaining your existing customers.

A member of your staff can join our PR masterclass – this two day course costs only £199 plus VAT, but there are limited places. Not only will your business then be able to make your message more compelling, you’ll be able to target your message appropriately, write effective press releases, get your story published, use social media to give your story much more traction and you’ll significantly increase traffic to your website. What’s more, we’ll be following up with every participant on the course to ensure that they put their skills to good use - to ensure that you generate positive media coverage (that’s worth more than the cost of the course itself!).

The course will be delivered by our MD, Julian Jordan, who has 20 year’s experience as a journalist, media relations expert and marketer. He has been the Managing Editor of The Asian, Production Editor of Unified Communications and Editor-in-Chief of Information Services Monthly. He has also successfully managed Media Relations for brands such as Vivendi-Universal, Onetel, Your Communications, TouchStar Software, Moonfish and MobileBroadbandSupermarket.co.uk

Here’s what a current client has to say about our media relations services:

“BrandSpankin’ have helped us immensely with our media relations. Now, people are blogging about our service and social media activity has significantly increased our website traffic. Most importantly, we’ve generated coverage in trade and business media, regional media and we’ve been in The Daily Telegraph. Building awareness in this way will help us become the first point of reference when people are looking to purchase mobile broadband.” - Andy Gott - Managing Director, MobileBroadbandSupermarket.co.uk

Our media relations course could similarly be the difference that gives your business vital cut-through and differentiation – positive headlines are potentially just a phone call away!

Give us a call on 01282 878 301 - and here are some more details:-

http://bit.ly/1dgldj

Top tips for marketing your small business...

Or, how to hold your nerve when all around you are losing theirs

A lot of small businesses we come across are often guilty of ad hoq marketing. Sales are down one particular month, so they decide the following month that they’d better “do some marketing”.

You wouldn’t do your books on an ad hoq basis (I hope!) and you wouldn’t turn up at the office on an ad hoq basis – so why would you leave your business development to chance?

Businesses that prosper are always the ones that plan their marketing and consistently communicate their values, products and services to their targets, prospects AND existing customers.

So here’s a few things to consider:

1. Budget accordingly. Things may take longer and cost more than planned. Look at your business plan – how much growth are you anticipating? Plan your marketing activity to meet that objective. Then ask yourself which areas of marketing have worked for you previously (e.g. a specific publication, direct mail, your website) – then direct your budget to those areas.

2. Your marketing will always require tweaks – and some things that you do won’t work. You need to learn along the way what works best for your business (i.e. gives you a return on your investment). The idea that the savvy businesses don’t cut their marketing budget in a recession is a falsehood – if it isn’t delivering, scrap it and focus your limited budget on something that is!

3. Taken together, these two points should illustrate that easy choices aren’t necessarily the best choices. Just because “we’ve always done it this way”, doesn’t mean it’s always going to work – especially as your customers have an increasingly sophisticated understanding of “media and marketing” - let’s face it, things have moved on from the days when we had just four terrestrial TV channels and half a dozen national newspapers – some of your competitors may be about to steal a march on you!

4. There’s an irrational person in your office – ignore this individual at all costs. The world is full of nay-sayers – don’t let them de-motivate you! So what if they hate your website/new logo/brochure/eshot/press release? An uninformed, knee-jerk, gut reaction says nothing about whether or not something is fit-for-purpose!

5. Getting butterflies before you hit send is almost certainly a good thing – it’s good to have a few doubts. That in itself should be sufficient to check, double check, ask a colleague (not the irrational one), even ask a customer. Nothing worse than blundering through something, absolutely convinced you are right – when the chances are, you’re wrong.

6. You’ll never please everyone, so why try? Even if you only please one in a hundred – do you realise how big a market that is?

7. Sticking to a conviction or principle is very laudable. Doing what demand in the marketplace dictates is very profitable. Laudable or profitable...you decide.

8. Marketing is a means to helping your business make more money. Design work conducted for your business should never lose sight of this. Creativity is great, but only if it serves that purpose...I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you’re unlikely to win an award in Cannes...probably best to focus on generating leads and awareness!

9. Is your marketing measurable? Do you track what effect it’s having? Can you say for every £ you spend, you generate £s? There are lots of ways this can be done – it helps you figure out what works and what you should do more.

10. You will make mistakes, but try not to make expensive mistakes. If you’re going to commit to a marketing project that costs, look at what other businesses like yours have done and assess if it’s worked for them. Are there ways you can mitigate against high costs – there is funding and training available for example (call us and we'll let you know about it) - this could offset your costs and enhance your skills and experience.


So there you go! Food for thought, I hope. If there are any points that provoke your interest or, for that matter, raise your blood pressure...let us know.

And, of course, if there’s anything we can do to help you market your business more successfully – get in touch!

http://www.brandspankin.co.uk/

Online advertising overtakes TV

I heard on the radio this morning whilst driving to work that online advertising had finally overtaken TV in terms of revenue in the UK.

It's not at all surprising really. During a recession it makes sense for businesses to tighten the belt and in terms of marketing spend. You need to be able account for your spend in terms response and return on investment. And online gives you just that - it's dead easy to monitor, so for every pound spent you can account for what comes in.

The important thing is - the most successful online advertisers tend to be the most successful at marketing themselves through other channels too. So the key to it is to have an appropriate mix - and the affordability of online methods (eshots, pay-per-click, SEO, proximity marketing) means that well organised small businesses who have a strategic approach built into their business plan have reall opportunity to punch above their weight.

http://bit.ly/gEkDX

C2 Website goes live!

We're delighted with the C2-UK website that we've built - it's just gone live today. C2-UK is an East Lancashire telecoms company that provides services to business customers. We've recently revamped their corporate identity, giving them a fresh, clean new look - we’ve followed this work up with a variety of marketing materials and have now launched their new website (have a look at the link below). The site extends their fresh look and feel, makes them look credible, professional and approachable - acting as a lead generation and sales channel. It's thoroughly optimised to feature very highly on Google and other search engines, so we expect them to see some traffic - but just as importantly, we think it will be pretty memorable when people get there!

http://www.c2-uk.com/

BrandSpankin' enters the blogmosphere!

Welcome to the BrandSpankin' Blog for all things connected with Marketing, Graphic Design, Web and Media Relations - all with an East Lancs twang. And just now and then, we might ski 'off-piste' and comment on this, that or the other.

Just a few things for starters:-

- We're keeping our fingers crossed for Burnley who play Reading tonight in the second leg of the Championship play offs. Come on you Clarets.

- Before that we'll be in attendance at the Chamber of Commerce event at Stanley House in Mellor.

In the meantime, I'm just off to try to claim parliamentary expenses on my Prince Albert...

www.brandspankin.co.uk