Choose the ‘write’ route

If you’re going on a long journey, there may be many ways of reaching your final destination (both in terms of the route chosen and the method of transport). Your ultimate choice may depend upon factors such as speed, cost and convenience.

Similarly, there are many ways of promoting awareness of your company and/or its products and services. The one you choose will depend upon factors such as:

The ‘write’ approach to marketing

Most people in business have the (usually misguided) notion that they can write well. After all, they learnt English at school, so there’s nothing to it, is there? That’s a bit like saying that we all learnt maths at school, so none of us need accountants…

In this article. Phil Allcock looks at a specific type of writing – copywriting. (This shouldn’t be confused with copyright, which is an entirely different subject!) Copywriting refers to the production of words for different types of marketing material.

New Year Resolutions & Predictions

New Year has come and gone and all around the World talk inevitably turns to resolutions. Are you looking towards a slimmer you? Giving up smoking? Perhaps you have decided to dedicate more time to others.

It’s also a good time to sit back and review your networking. Is your current activity working for you? Are you in the right networks, getting the referrals you want for your business?

Take the time to check you are on the right track. Even the top networkers do it. I spoke to some of the UK’s leading networking experts and heads of networks to find out what they expect to happen in networking in 2009 and their own plans for the New Year.

ecademy

ecademy security breakdown gives a stark warning

ecademy – the business-orientated social networking site, that we have covered many times within the pages of Business Matters, gave a stark warning to its members of the possible pitfalls of using social networking as they left supposedly private support emails sent through the site publicly viewable as the result of a programming error earlier this week.

Do you feel lucky?

Often, salespeople put their success (or lack of it) down to sheer ‘luck’… but just how much of their achievements should be put down to luck alone? How can certain salespeople excel during a sales slump whilst others fall the wayside? Are some salespeople just born lucky?

I remember a quote from the golfer, Gary Player, when accused of being "lucky" he said, "The harder I practice, the luckier I get".

Making Marketing Accountable

Marketing accountability should be a priority, but in reality there is a lot of talk on the matter, and less action.   Given access to large corporate budgets, marketing staff have promised returns on investment and increased market share.  However, the evolution of the dot.com era has contributed to the fact that marketing staff can no longer get away with promising big results without quantifiably measuring them.

The future of networking

Increasingly, businesses have been looking to ‘word of mouth’ marketing to find clients with the growth of networking groups providing opportunities for companies to spread the word and get referrals.
Times move on and with the growth of online social networking opening people’s eyes to the power of the internet, companies are looking to see how the increasing number of ‘social’ business networks can be used for marketing and sales purposes.

Is video content the future for business websites?

If you, like me, are the kind of person who hides away when the video cameras come out, you might well ask, why on earth would you want video content on your company website?

The reason why I’m recommending that you think differently today is because I believe that 1. video content is the future for business websites and that 2. business websites with video content attract more customers and drive higher sales.