Getting your business featured in the media can be a great way to generate publicity. But where do you begin? It’s all starts with defining what media coverage would help you most. Businesses relying on local trade will need to look to the media outlets in their region. However, if you offer a service, you could gain exposure in your industry title by offering insightful comment on a topical issue. Becoming known as the ‘go to’ expert in your field can lead to valuable media coverage. Alternatively, if you sell a product, you’ll want to get featured (and photographed) in a title read by your target audience, such as a women’s lifestyle magazine. Once you’ve decided which media you’re targeting,…

Have you ever been in this scenario: Web designer: "Thank you for signing off the design of your new website, lovely customer. How are you getting on with the content?" You: "I’ve not started it yet, but it won’t take me long. I’ll get it to you by Friday." Web designer (Monday morning): "Hello customer, can you let me have that text for your website today, I’d like to get the site live for you." You: "Oh bother, I did mean to work on it but I couldn’t find the time… and then it was harder than I thought it would be… so I did something else instead." And so it goes on. For some inexplicable reason, it can be…

Thought leadership is about building a profile in your industry as the ‘go to’ expert on a particular topic.  Anyone who is truly an expert in their field can adopt a thought leadership approach. A thought leader will generate insights – usually articles, videos, Podcasts etc - which help their audience to gain a better understanding of a common problem, or a new way of looking at a particular issue. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming or complex. You could start out by simply producing a series of quality articles, guides or blog posts on topics that will help your audience. From there, you can build up a library of articles and resources which are housed on your website or…

Email marketing can be a powerful way to engage your existing and prospective customers. But with most people struggling to keep on top of their inboxes, it’s harder than ever to get attention. Here are five simple steps you can take to improve the results you get from email marketing. 1. Set up analytics While printed newsletters certainly have advantages, it’s difficult to monitor what recipients actually do with them. With email marketing, especially popular platforms such as MailChimp and Campaign Monitor, you get analytics so you can see within minutes how successful your email has been. This information should be used to inform future campaigns so, over time, you build up a picture of the sort of content your…

One of the dilemmas companies face when buying in external digital marketing support is how to measure value for money. The traditional agency model is to charge clients per hour. But in our experience, clients don’t want to buy 20 hours or so of an agency’s time. What they want to buy is a commitment to achieving a particular goal, and for the agency to do the work required to achieve that goal, whether that takes 20 hours or 25. We’ve worked in-house for large companies, and understand how frustrating it is when the commercial goals seem to get lost among discussions about hours logged. Conversely, we’ve worked in agencies that have billed clients each month for hours worked, all…