rebecca on November 27th, 2008

Ian Hills is MD of Purple Pilchard They provide marketing strategy and tactical advice for medium sized brands.

I asked Ian about his most recent new client wins.

We won 2 new clients last week.
Both are brand new.  One off a recommendation and one off our website.
1 – The key for us is people like our [...]

Continue reading about Shout! With Ian Hills of Purple Pilchard

rebecca on November 27th, 2008

From David Airey  who has some great links to others writing on the subject (mainly focused on Graphic Design and Freelancers) including Amanda Vlahakis 

I liked Amanda's so much I wrote a comment.

 I'd qualify your 'spend more' message by saying you can get more value for your spend by using direct marketing and digital marketing [...]

Continue reading about More Recession marketing advice

rebecca on November 26th, 2008

About 12 years ago I had an accountancy firm client called Websters – they were suffering a lack of new clients and when they'd successfully grown an audit client the organisation moved onto working with a big accounting firm when it wanted to IPO – you had to have that stamp of approval to [...]

Continue reading about Communicating in a new way

rebecca on November 25th, 2008

I use Intuit Quickbooks accounts system.  And I called today to ask about the new VAT rates and how to manage the switch over.

They refuse to support my 2005 version of the software because it comes under their "Sunset" Policy. [i.e. phasing out each year's version and forcing upgrades onto customer]

But advised that 'within a [...]

Continue reading about Spitting mad

rebecca on November 25th, 2008

I will be speaking at Amplified 08 a "Network of Networks" event to bring together the creative thinking around several business networking events.

This is a ground-breaking event for business in the UK.  I have had the pleasure of being at a couple of 'seminal moments' when great things started (Social Media Cafe planning event [...]

Continue reading about Amplified 08 – speaking and thinking for our futures

rebecca on November 24th, 2008

A website is a key tool to stating your business and commmunicating the personality of your firm to its markets.

Here's a novel twist, a page listing "Alumni".

Mulberry Marketing Communications has a page called "Mulberries " and says nice things about people who used to work with them. 

Hopefully at least one of them will either [...]

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rebecca on November 22nd, 2008

Image via Wikipedia

And another tool that may come in handy.  Written
for the Firefox browser, a tool that enables you to assess your website
(and others) for the Search Engine Optimisation and key words that are
being used. SEO for Firefox.

It's a plug in and appears at the bottom of the browser window.  Greyed out if not [...]

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rebecca on November 21st, 2008

Tips from Marketing magazine piece on search marketing on a budget.

The message – just do it. 

1 – set up a website

2 – establish a simple linking strategy to raise visibility in natural searches

3 – do your research on search

4 – be prepared to spend time setting up an monitoring the search strategy

5 – set up [...]

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The offer. 

What a bundle of aspiration-clashed-with-reality is contained in that one phrase. But making a clear and attractive offer is even more important now that you have less time and more to achieve.

As before, I'm using my own recent work as an example for this post.  When I approach a new organisation, I have a [...]

Continue reading about Top Tips for biz dev in a Recession Part 3 – Making your offer compelling

rebecca on November 19th, 2008

I was reading JP on the supposed death of blogging.

Now there is a bit of sadness from the early-adopters like Adriana and Hugh that the intimacy of the early years has bone.  And the hugely hyped when they change their habits.

But surely, when a medium goes mainstream it's bound to change.  There are [...]

Continue reading about Is blogging dead? Hell, it only just got started