In this podcast, Alex Gibson from ‘The Persuaders Marketing Podcast’ interviews Don Farrell from email marketing specialists ‘Circulator’ to gain a ‘best-practice’ insight into why email is still a very popular form of marketing for SME organisations.
Listen to this podcast »
Tuesday 9th March 2010, 12:24 pm
Podcast – Email Marketing Tips
Monday 8th March 2010, 5:10 pm
10 ways of reducing your legal costs
Reducing costs is more important than ever in the current economic climate. Legal advice for business is expensive but usually unavoidable. However, because of the inherent nature of legal fees, reducing them can seem very difficult. Here are 10 ways of reducing legal costs.
1. Appoint a panel .Where legal advice or support is required on a regular significant basis, the appointment of a legal panel should reduce costs. Limiting the award of work to a particular panel encourages more efficient accumulation of knowledge by the client and the firm prior to instruction. This reduces reaction times, learning curves and other risks. The more knowledge a firm can accumulate in advance about your company, the less chargeable time is needed up front for particular matters . Read the rest of this entry »
Thursday 4th March 2010, 3:51 pm
Why you need a business plan - and how to write one!
Do you run a business but believe that a business plan is just for starting up?
Or are you one of those people who believe they just don’t have the time to plan? Well, I have news for you. Business planning is not just for start-ups; it is an essential element of running any successful business, particularly given the growing uncertainty we face and the unyielding shifts in consumer behaviour.
If you think time is the problem, think again and make time to plan. One of the key benefits of planning is that it helps you understand what you need to prioritise.
A business plan is not just a document. It is a holistic analysis of your company, the environment it operates in, and a route map to achieving success based on the resources available. Unfortunately, the image most of us have is of a 30-page bound document. The focus is on the output when the real value in a business plan is the business-planning process itself.
The following list represents some of the key benefits of planning: Read the rest of this entry »
Wednesday 3rd March 2010, 3:30 pm
Traditional Marketing with Digital Thinking
So often there seems to be a pitched battle between those that over-evangelise digital formats and those that greatly exaggerate rumours of the death of traditional media. There are also the new messiahs of ‘integrated marketing’, which is often pitched as the new ‘third way’ - the solution. In fact what is often the case with disruptive technologies is that new channels allow you to do what you did before, just better.
That is not to say that there hasn’t been an awesome change to the communications industry - but the basic principles of best practice remain the same. Engage the consumer, listen to what they have to say and respond. Senator Feargal Quinn, at a recent Marketing Institute breakfast in the Mansion House reminded us of the core message of his influential book ‘Crowning the Customer’, that a customer that feels valued is a customer that returns - and brings their friends and family!
With so many new channels in existence, delivering varying types of content, from TV to Twitter, it is important simply to make sure that you have a presence on the channels that the people you are trying to reach are using - in exactly the same way that you would broadcast your TV ad during the programme that your particular demographic would watch, or print your ad in the newspaper or magazine that they would read. Nothing new there. Read the rest of this entry »
