Selling disguised as market research

Business development tricks of the trade: Have you ever tried disguising new business prospecting as ‘market research’? Finding new customers to discuss your business products and services with is difficult for many people.  Many people have a natural fear of the unknown and ‘cold calling’ strikes a death-knell in many people’s darkest fears. Let Creative […]

Name checking tool for social media sites

Awesome, lovely superb…. just finding which social media sites exist today is hard but having to chase round and research available ‘names’ on each one for a new client – time consuming. Thank heavens for the wonderful people at NameChk.com They do the grunt for you. Now all I need is to go register the […]

Website design brief template

So,you want to brief an agency to redesign your website.  What is the best way to write a brief so that all the areas you need designed are covered? Helpfully, OneSourceGraphics have written out their detailed survey which sets of the principal questions to which an agency will need answers before pricing up a brief. […]

How to write an awesome creative brief

Getting fabulous creative work from your marketing agency depends on the brand team giving the best possible brief to set up the work.  Writing down what you want from your campaign and collaborating with the agency to agree the full terms of reference for the work you are commissioning is of the utmost importance. You […]

5 Tips On How To Beat A Video Conference Interview

Interviews are always a nervous ordeal but more often than not a well-prepared candidate will always rise above the rest of the pack and successfully take the job. That said, many candidates make the mistake of preparing for a video conference interview in the same way as a face to face interview which can leave […]

Website holding page – how to use for marketing gain

Taking your website offline is rarely welcomed by the marcomms team.  sometimes you have go do it. Brand Glue did a great job of making a strong message come through their holding page. In fact, since I took this screen shot, the timer doesn’t seem to have ‘counted down’ any more…. wonder if it’s really […]

Good practice: A website holding page

Following on from yesterday’s post about delays publishing a new company website – take a look at this one: What I like about it is it sets a deadline (the counter is clocking down all the time) it still says what the company does – USP – so the holding page continues to sell the […]

Marketing using Business Christmas Cards

Corporate greeting cards can be used in many ways to promote your business and to show appreciation to supportive clients; some traditional and some a bit more creative. However, there are some rules and tips you should keep in mind to get the best return on your investment of sending out a Business Christmas card: 1. […]

Cold email introduction – copy this campaign

Want to use cold emails as part of your customer acquisition?  We get dozens of approaches by digital media agencies usually picked up by our clients’ spam filters. Today we’re publishing one of the better ones as a crib for you to copy for your own use if you want to buy email lists and […]

Top 3 things for Writing a good brief for an agency pitch

‎We did a quick survey yesterday among brand managers to answer the question “What are the top three things you need to do to write a good brief for an agency pitch?” Move the sales needle, Information integration, Content marketing (Josh Stailey) What’s the problem, why is there a problem and media neutral so the […]