Happy Mondays (no, not the band, although I do hear that they are reforming for a tour one month this year).

As I got in the car to drive to work on Monday, it was with a sense of relief after surviving the usual chaos of getting everyone out of the house on time and in the correct clothing and the right bags and kit for the day.  My thoughts then turned to the day ahead [...]

Passive marketing – or how to get clients knocking at your door

During the first week of January this year, we took on two new clients and had two existing clients ask us to do more work for them. I wasn’t at work during the first week of January, and, as one of my members of staff pointed out, I hadn’t been out networking or meeting clients [...]

When a workshop is more than just a workshop

If you offer any kind of service to customers, running workshops are a great way of marketing yourself and your business.  They inform and advise and can act as a great way of speaking directly to your target customer audience.  Also, as will become apparent here, they are not a one-off event in terms of [...]

The case in the defence of Twitter

A client recently remarked “let me know when you get a sale from Twitter”.  In other words, “I bet I’ll never see the day we get a sale as a result of Twitter!” A statement said many a time I would wager.  My answer, said smiling: “No, you probably won’t if you just use Twitter [...]

Can Your Business Afford to Stand Still This Year?

If your business is standing still – always doing the same things, the same ways, for the same people – then you could be missing out on new opportunities and new business. Your competitors will be innovating – looking for different ways of making money – which means that you could be losing business to [...]

Making a case for case studies

A great way of promoting what you do is by writing case studies about your clients. They are also a great way to get feedback from your clients and to build up stronger relationships with your clients. But how do you go about doing it? Where do you start? How do you make sure you [...]

Marketing planning and why now is a great time to do it

Planning, that old exercise of writing a list of things you are going to do, only never to look at the list again!  Sound familiar?  The start of a new year is generally filled with repeated resolutions that are quickly forgotten once day to day life starts. We all do it in various aspects of [...]

Do you know your ideal clients?

Do you know your ideal clients? When someone asks you who your clients are, is your answer something like “anyone with a pulse and a cheque book”? If it is, I’m going to let you into a secret. No matter how hard you try, you’re always going to struggle to grow your business. You might [...]

What’s your marketing strategy?

Last week I wrote about setting goals for your business and marketing. Once you’ve done that, you then need to plan how you’re going to get to your goals – the strategies you’re going to use. Whatever sort of journey you’re on, you need to work out the best way of getting to your destination. Will you [...]

How opaque are your successes?

Every success should be totally visible in its entirity. It should scream out how wonderful it is and why everybody should notice it, be totally easy to understand how it operates and what it can do, be the envy of all who see it and have people clamouring to have one themselves. But behind every silver lining [...]