As a Chartered Marketer, I would encourage all businesses to train their staff to CIM standard and to always look at CIM qualified marketers when they are looking for new employees. Why? Because not only is the CIM the world’s largest marketing organisation, it also provides practitioners like me, with useful and up to date insights which gives us the competitive edge too.

I’m lucky – my role as a CIM trustee takes me to HQ reguarly and with his in mind, I was able to ask Thomas Brown, the CIM’s Head of Insights what he thought would be the key issues for marketers in 2013.

Social media – from ‘platforms’ to ‘philosophy’ – The real power and potency of social media isn’t about how often or when you tweet – in fact, social media as a philosophy is something far bigger and more profound than the most widely discussed platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc). I reckon the conversation is going to start maturing this year – less about platforms (not to say they’re not still important) and more about the deeper philosophy… that social media is a new paradigm for how people communicate, share and digest information. More progressive businesses are already waking up to the wider potential of digitally-powered customer insight and dialogue beyond just tweeting. Applies both to SME and bigco.

Big data – and not just for big companies – I reckon analytics is going to be a really big theme in 2013 – ‘big data’ is the latest ‘in’ phrase, but it’s actually got substance. A lot of organisations are waking up to the fact that they are sat of a goldmine of information on customer behaviour and opportunity… in most cases, too much and in too many places. Understanding how to consolidate, interrogate and extract insight from this has the potential to unlock growth and will be a major theme of the year… especially as technology and processes are getting better and more accessible.

Marketing organisation/team structure – More for medium/large co here, but as ‘growth’ replaces ‘survival’ in the day-to-day vernacular, CMOs will need to take stock of their marketing resource: how it’s organised, how it’s balanced across different types of capability and its (what I call) ‘operating rhythm’ within the business.

Metrics and ROI - This old chestnut never goes away, but 70% of marketers say their business has become more measurement focussed over the last 12 months and I doubt it’s going to stop. Where talk of economic panic and major cuts may have subsided, marketers are increasingly expected to ‘show their work’ behind investment and spend decisions. This’ll be as true in SMEs as it will in bigco. o Stat source: CIM Marketing Confidence Monitor, wave one, October 2012

Smarter decisions – Coupled with the above metrics point… whilst gut feel and intuition have a role to play in business, in a world of limited resources marketers must be more scientific about their decisions. It’s not about modelling and measuring the hell out of everything… but it is about being more calculated and focused and creating the right analysis and planning processes to balance creativity (which I don’t think can be formula-ised) and structure. It’s also going to mean more collaboration across people/teams/functions.

Privacy and data – Consumers are getting savvier about data and privacy, and the EU continue to bear down on the marketing industry. This isn’t going to go away, and marketers need to seize the opportunity to be proactive before their opportunity is removed.

I lecture to Masters Students each week in Southampton and they often ask me to predict what I think is going to be the next big thing - I would love to know what you think is a key issue for marketers in 2013 and beyond.

2012 has been a roller coaster year for us here in the UK but with nearly eight years of business, we continue to weather the economic storm which continues to blight the global economy.

We’ll be back in early January – do call us if you need marketing support. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes for just a few hours can really give a business a kick start.

Best wishes

Ann and the Team

More Social Media

Social media continues to be a talking point both in business and the press. Whilst many businesses have seen a good and positive reaction to social media – many still struggle to understand the complexity of relationships and how they can measure effectiveness. Surprisingly Google + hasn’t made the inroads that were expected – I suspect in part due to many of the tools such as Tweetdeck still not integrating with the platform. Over the last month I’ve seen more activity on Google+ and I’m sure over the next month Google will publish figures showing an increase in activity.

Facebook launched on the US stock market and took a dramatic tumble with days. I do wonder if Facebook has peaked in the product lifecycle because unless it starts to innovate, users will start to move away. I have seen a significant fatigue amongst my friends and acquaintances.

Pinterest has started to generate traffic and is good for very visual types of businesses such as fashion and travel. We are in the process of setting up a number of corporate Pinterest accounts for clients too. I’ve spent a lot of time with clients this year setting up their basic social media accounts and encouraging their staff to embrace the culture. (It is sometimes like wading through treacle!). Most agree that once they are set up they find it relatively easy to find the time and topics to converse with their audiences. Many organisanations are still concerned about the number of likes and follows they have but the main thing is to always consider quality over quantity. The more you can ‘talk’ to devoted fans, the better advocates you will have. I myself continue to have a love affair with Twitter as I find this is the most effective tool for reporting poor customer service and monitoring the best bargains at the shops! As well as training businesses and more recently the students at Southampton Solent on Linkedin and Twitter, I’ve also been involved with another business who make excellent corporate short videos for Youtube. This coupled with a well managed data programme has raised awareness for several clients and also encouraged re-connection with clients who had ‘gone off the radar’.

TV Apps

This time last year, I’d been to the Apps World Show in London and saw some amazing developments with small mini programmes which primarily used mobile/smart phones to access information. TV Apps have definitely come to the fore with most TVs now being internet enabled and having a variety of apps stored on them. However I do think it then makes it difficult to decide what you are going to do as a family and I hate the thought of lots of TVs all over  house just so everyone’s tastes can be catered for. Another problem with using the Internet for downloading rich content is usually your broadband provider – we’ve seen our phone bill rocket as a family as the children are now downloading programmes from iPlayer to our TV and laptop!

Salesforce CRM

I think I am getting obsessed with this nifty bit of software! It never ceases to amaze me at how many businesses have no customer contact software for managing in-bound enquiries and customer relationships. Marketing is so much more effective if you can target a nice clean database. Salesforce CRM has been installed with three of our clients this year. With the help of Paul at Neonex we were able to collect all the important addresses – de-dupe them and then build a very useful database, from which clients are now conducting outbound telemarketing. There are a number of other packages on the market including Capsule and Sugar – whatever your budget there is a way to keep track of all the people you know and could potentially use your products or services. If you haven’t got something like this – do it – it will make you money very quickly!

HTML 5

Yes – it’s here – nothing much to add except, I love our WordPress website and those that our clients are using. I just wish I had the time to update my pages more (thank goodness for Twitter though, as that helps bring new content to the web site a couple of times each day!).

iMeet

Alas iMeet got swallowed up by its parent company. However in the last year I’ve used Skype and Google Hangouts to hold group meetings and both have been really good – as long as the broadband signal is ok. I enjoy using video for meetings – you tend to get fewer misunderstandings as you are able to interpret the body language of those you are talking to. I think this will be a tool which will continue to grow in popularity.

So that’s my round up on 2012…….Come back for the next exciting instalment of how I see 2013 panning out!

Like many, I have been guilty of setting up accounts and signing up to all sorts of websites and newsletters that I no longer use or need.  When it first became popular l like many others set up a ‘Myspace’ account and have never used it since. On the other hand, I use Facebook and Hotmail daily.

Starting with Facebook , there are two ways to end your account: delete your account or deactivate your account. If you are sick of people you barely know trying to ‘friend; you; or are you fed up of seeing annoying updates of new score on FarmVille, or ‘friends’ rants about TV shows you don’t watch or how badly their day was, you can deactivate your account. Your information will not be lost, and you will be available to recover whenever you so choose.

Here are the steps:

• Click the account menu  dropdown at the top right of any Facebook page
• Choose ”Account Settings”
• Select ”Security” from the left-hand menu
• Click on “Deactivate your account”

When you deactivate your account, your timeline and all information associated with it disappears from Facebook immediately. People on Facebook will not be able to search for you or view any of your information. You can reactivate your account by logging in with your email and password. Your account will be restored in its entirety (friends, photos etc.).

 You also have the option to delete your Facebook profile permanently; perhaps closing a business page of a business that is no longer running, or a page of a person who has passed away. If you want to do that you can follow this link on ‘Delete Facebook’ 

However, you do have a second chance. If you do decide you really don’t want to delete your profile and lose all of your pictures and information, Facebook gives you a 14 day period to not log-on. If you do log-on, all if forgiven and your profile is saved. But you if do not, your information will be lost for good.

 Tired of tweeting? If you want to cease being a Twitter stalker, or start a brand new account, or even leave the Internet altogether to network in the real world again, here is how to permanently remove the account.

Top Tip – Change your email address and/or your username before deleting. This gives you the opportunity to create a new account as soon as you have deleted the old account if you wish. You only need to do this if you wish to immediately create a new Twitter account with the same email or username.

Click “Settings” and then “Deactivate my account”. This is located at the bottom of the page.
Verify that this is what you really want to do. You have now deleted your Twitter account.

• It can take up to 30 days for a deactivate profile to clear from Twitter’s internal systems. During the time that it takes to remove your account from Twitter, you won’t be able to create any new accounts using the same username or email addresses.
• You can restore your account by signing back in within 30 days after deleting it. After 30 days, your account will be completely deleted and inaccessible.

Pinterest is a very ‘here and now’ website and with any ‘fashionable’ application users often lose interest. If this is you and you want to close your Pinterest account, you must first login to your account. Next, click on your account name on the top right of the window to expand the menu and choose “Settings”. In the Settings page, scroll down to the bottom and click “Delete Account”.

After clicking the Delete Account button, Pinterest will display a delete confirmation. To delete the account, tick the ‘Yes, I want to delete my boards and pins permanently’ and hit “Delete My Account”.

 After clicking the Delete button, the account will be deleted and you will be taken back to the Pinterest homepage. There will be no notification about the delete process, but if you try to log in to your account again, the site will say it cannot verify your email and password.

Finally, to close a LinkedIn account is very straight forward. Login to your account. See your name on the upper right hand and click on the drop down box clicking “Settings”. In the bottom left hand pane select; “Account” then “Close your account” and specify reason for closing the account.

Allow 24 hours for the account to close – if you have large network it may take time. As your contacts on LinkedIn are likely to have a more professional nature, it might be polite to communicate with your connections to tell them you are closing your account and supply them with a new means of contact. And remember, by closing your only LinkedIn account, you will not have access to your connections or any information you’ve added to your account.

So there you have it – Ways to escape the pull of social media sites. Like the ones mentioned above, most websites have a ‘help’ page which should point you in the right direction if you are struggling.

If you want to give your account one more try to see how it can work harder for you, please contact Ann on ann@ambmarketing.co.uk or call: +44(0)2380 613255

Selina

www.facebook.com

www.twitter.com

www.pinterest.com

www.LinkedIn.com

CRM is a widely recognised and implemented model for managing interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. Whilst much of the technology was developed for large corporations, many small medium sized enterprises use cut down versions of the software to manage their own relationships and improve both sales and marketing based activities. Small businesses can get effective software for managing basic level contacts from as little as £10 per user per month. But what will it cost if you want something which basically gives you all the reporting you need as well as every other aspect of marketing in between?

The various technology systems we looked at have been around for many years in order to measure and value customer relationships. However, with growing marketing media options and a difficult economy, there has become a growing need for businesses to measure and gain further insight to each and every transaction to make marketing budgets work harder and better. With these changes, CRM led management investment is increasing as business leaders turn from basic contact management to marketing automation to fuel growth and halt decline and competition.

CRM systems are becoming more adept at meeting these needs. Revenue generation is high and satisfaction with vendors is generally strong. There are a wealth of Marketing Software packages – some which claim to offer an ‘all-in-one Marketing Solution’ whilst others are more niche. The outline below aims to give a brief overview of the types of software and their application, what sort of companies use them and what they’re good for.

Let’s start with the ‘market leader’….

Hubspot is probably the market leader in this field working with more than 7,500 companies in 46 countries to help them attract leads and convert them into customers. According to Hubspot (www.hubspot.com) their software can assist with:

• Lead Intelligence – The software tracks leads with a complete timeline-view of any interactions with the company owner/sales force.
• Email Marketing – The software sends personalized, segmented emails based on any information in the contact database.
• Content Production – The ability to publish blogs, websites and landing pages with built-in SEO and social media tools from the ‘hubspot’
• Social Media – One which is a hot topic at the moment with a lot of businesses asking ‘Where do I start?’ well this will let you publish content to a variety of social accounts, then nurture leads based on their social engagement.
• Marketing Automation – It can nurture leads via email, the company website, or any other channel the user chooses.
• Closed-Loop Analytics – Automatic track the ROI of all of your marketing efforts, both online and off.

The range of industries using Hubspot goes from the traditional businesses such as construction and manufacturing through to education and legal services. The cost ranges between $200 and $1000 per month depending on the level of service required (the professional service which covers the majority of services is $600/month). In comparison, Marketo, as outlined below starts at $995 per month and rises to $3195 per month for a bespoke specialist package.

Marketo, also one of the top applications, is focused primarily on B2B lead management and marketing automation with the majority of Marketo customers being smaller, fast-growing companies. However, they are now selling more broadly into other sectors, but especially Healthcare, Financial Services, and Publishing. They claim to be the fastest growing market automation vendor  and to “provide easy to use marketing software that allows you to generate, nurture and qualify more high quality leads” (www.marketo.com).

The software has been praised for its ease of use and short time to productivity. The analytics-based revenue performance management (RPM) provides revenue visibility for future quarters, based on lead volume and quality currently in the pipeline. Marketo is a salesforce.com/AppExchange partner, with a large majority of its customers using salesforce.com, but they have increased integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a popular software solution, which should help Marketo to sell to a broader base of customers.

Marketo offer email marketing, event marketing, web site landing page creation, ROI reporting and social media capabilities. They now also offer social apps such as Facebook page management, social analytics, and integrated social marketing. However, they have been criticised for their limitation in broader marketing automation functionality. Conversely, they claim to introduce a new product category every 9 months with the next one likely to be back-office marketing resource management (MRM) for managing marketing budgets, resources and brand assets.

According to their website (www.marketo.com) the top 5 ways Marketo can help a business are:

• ‘Fast and easy to start software’ which results in quality marketing campaigns live with less resources
• It can increase revenue by generating more leads for a business and turning a higher percentage of these into actual sales i.e. better conversion rates
• Reporting which shows which programmes are more effective at creating leads than others and exactly what activities led to sales, this making you and your team more effective.
• Direct access to the largest and fastest growing community of ‘marketing automation practitioners’ who can help a team become better marketers.

All are making similar claims about their ability to improve lead generation and conversion rates but this last point from Marketo is probably the most difficult to interpret.

Eloqua is Marketo’s biggest competitor also using technology to organise, automate, and synchronise business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, service and retain those the company already has, entice former clients to return, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service.

“Eloqua provides powerful business insight to inform marketing and sales decisions today that drive revenue growth tomorrow. More than 1,000 clients rely on the marketing automation power of Eloqua to improve demand generation and lead management while driving more qualified leads”(www.eloqua.com).

Eloqua scored high marks from its surveyed customers for product functionality, customer support and overall satisfaction with the product. Users with experience across multiple marketing automation products noted Eloqua’s longer time to productivity and steeper learning curve, but also its ability to support complex lead management processes. The price range varies from $2,000 to $6,4000 depending on the package chosen.

Another of the top products, Infusion Soft is built for small businesses, focusing on businesses with between 2 and 50 employees including professional services, service providers, online retail, trade and internet marketers.

“We’ve built everything you need into a single, well-oiled machine that automatically converts leads into new customers and grows sales from existing ones. So you can focus on your business. Or your life. Or both. Imagine that.” …..or so they claim! Their monthly fees are similar to Hubspot but there is a $1500 up-front fee on all packages.

Lastly, Pardot Marketing Automation is an on-demand solution which aims to highlight where to spend time in order to maximize ROI. The B2B marketing automation software provider features CRM integration, email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring and ROI reporting to help marketing and sales teams work together to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles, and demonstrate marketing accountability.

Their package costs range from $1000 to $3000 for up to 300,000 contacts with a fee of between $200-300 for blocks of extra contacts. Their advanced ‘micro-level’ web analytics functionality allows Pardot to capture all relevant prospect activities, both on and off of a business’s site, and help to determine who is showing the most buying ‘signals’.

We asked our client Paul Booth, Neonex, what he thought of this sudden rush of software applications, primarily aimed at marketers:

“With the shift to digital and social media marketing, more and more companies are seeking ways of automating and tracking the heavy lifting of their campaigns, and products like Hubspot and Marketo have stepped up to fill that requirement. Because it has become more important than ever to engage with end users as they become more technology savvy, unless companies are able to identify and nurture leads efficiently they risk missing out on valuable business. We’re seeing a shift from a sales-driven approach to customer aquisition to a marketing-driven one and it’s facinating to see how much the role of software can now support the critical  activities of a marketing team.”

Are you getting the most out of your marketing activity? Would you like a more in depth overview of these applications? Please call Ann on 02380 613255.

Selina

Today information in the form of graphics surround us in the media. Charts and graphs communicate data; infographics turn data into information. A good infographic is simple and requires very little text. Here is an infographic to explain what an infographic is (found at www.mashable.com)

Infographics aren’t for everyone. But love them or hate them, it’s clear that a well executed infographic is more enjoyable as a learning tool compared to dull monotonous copy. It is for this reason that they can also do wonders for your marketing. By using a simple and fun, well thought out, and executed design to depict your message you can have phenomenal success in social media sharing.

Information graphics are visual devices intended to quickly and clearly communicate complex information. They have become a tool for internet marketers and companies to create content that others will link to, thus boosting a company’s reputation and online presence.

An infographic needs to be both look good and be useful. A great guide to creating and using infographics for your marketing can be found here .

Whilst the title and design of an infographic is key, many marketers don’t know how to get the best out of them and reap the benefits available. It is no good having exceptional content if nobody sees it. The main goal should be to generate inbound links to your site and to make your posts incredibly sharable. Great tips on how to promote your infographic can also be found here.

If you want to see some of our favourite infographics, visit Ann’s Pinterest site or give us a call if you would like to discuss how you could use infographics within your social media campaigns.

Selina

Olympic Park – 6 August 2012

Firstly I must apologise as this is my business blog and I’m just about to gush. Not about my wonderful business but about ‘inspiring a generation’ – the strap line and mission statement of the London 2012 Olympic games.

I backed the bid before 2005 as I had always dreamt of us hosting the Olympic Games. I knew that it took Montreal 30 years to pay off their bill for staging the World’s greatest event but I always knew I wanted my country to host the Games. So when everyone said it was a waste of money, I would always disagree with them, counting off the years and months until we became the host city of the 30^th Olympiad of the modern games.

Yesterday I walked through the gates of Olympic Park with my two sons in eager anticipation of the day’s activities. For us it was seeing the superstars of the American NBA play basketball in a temporary structure which seated 12,000 people! We weren’t to be disappointed from the moment we got off the train at Waterloo, we were greeted by the station manager and his team with ice lollies for my boys – who were obviously very impressed.

The underground network was a little busy but nothing more than I am used to. Arriving in Stratford we cruised through one of the most vigorous security searches I’ve experienced, with the VOLUNTEERS smiling and welcoming us. I put the volunteers in capital letters as they have come and given their time for me and my family to have quite simply, one of the best days of our lives.

I wanted my boys to experience that feeling of wonder and achievement and when they stood proudly in the arena singing ‘God save the Queen’, I knew I had achieved what I wanted from my day. The basketball was amazing but above all we were celebrating our Britishness and the amazing and diverse people who have achieved wondrous things this week.

In the words of young Ben, who I follow on Twitter “If you believe, you will achieve”. I knew we would create a Games to be proud of. I knew it would make people happy and I knew we would forget our economic woes, if only for 16 days. Roll on the Paralympics – amazing achievements will come to London again in a few weeks and I can’t wait.

My only disappointment? That London will not see another Games in my lifetime. But as Alex, my 10 year old said this morning, “Mummy, the Games will come back before I die….They came to London when Nanny was 12 …..so they’ll definitely come back before I reach 75!”

I truly hope our children and the adults of Great Britain will take this inspiration into their everyday life. Whether it’s to be a sporting great, to build the amazing facilities we now have as the legacy of the Games or even to give some time as a volunteer like the amazing ‘Gamesmakers’.

Sponsorship deals vary from ‘Worldwide Olympic Partners’ (e.g. Coca-Cola & Procter Gamble), London 2012 Olympic Partners (e.g. British Airways & Adidas), London 2012 Olympic Supporters (e.g. UPS & Cadbury) and London 2012 Olympic Providers and Suppliers (e.g. Ticketmaster & Holiday Inn). Each level of sponsorship entitles companies to different marketing rights with extremely stringent rules on what, when, how and where they can promote their Olympic affiliation: Stricter rules still are what the rest of us cannot do. When London won the right to host the Olympic Games, the London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG) became a guardian of the Olympic brand and was entrusted with its protection. British Parliament granted LOCOG the exclusive right to grant its partners and licensees authorisation to create an association between their business, goods or services and London 2012. It also gives LOCOG the right to prevent people creating such an association without its authorisation.

The main objective of the Olympic Marketing programme is to ensure independent financial stability of the Olympic Games. “Revenue generated by commercial partnerships accounts for more than 40% of Olympic revenues and partners provide vital technical services and product support to the whole of the Olympic Family” (www.olympic.org/sponsors) so we must ask the question – what do the sponsors get out of it?

Chief marketing officer from Diageo, Andy Fennell, has said that Diageo would not consider the Olympics because it was too expensive and very hard to get a decent return on investment (Marketing Week). You might assume that the sponsors who have spent a small fortune on becoming sponsors would know what they are doing.  But when the vast majority of the sponsors’ advertising looks very similar (the obligatory athlete, the London 2012 logo and the Olympic rings present), and is running concurrently, in the same places, as well as to the same people, you have to wonder how much they are able to differentiate themselves.

While most brands are doing everything they can to avoid being lost in the mass market of marketing comms, the sponsors of 2012 seem to be creating their own little cluttered environment and spending millions for the pleasure. According to an article in Marketing Week . Coca-Cola is the most successful sponsor of London 2012 because half the British population now recognizes it as an official sponsor of the Games (Based on aided recall!). Adidas only managed to get 25% of the population recognizing its association with the Games, while BP Managed just 10%. On the other hand, brands like MasterCard and British Gas, which don’t sponsor the Olympics and are therefore banned by LOCOG from even hinting at any link to the Games, are recording aided recall scores of 22% and 20% respectively!

But I’m sure as one of the most successful brands in the world, Coca-Cola does not care about sponsorship awareness, but may be more focused upon the 40% worldwide uplift in volumes they achieve through Olympics-related sales promotions.

Procter and Gamble’s UK and Ireland Olympics Projects Director, Nathan Homer, gives three reasons for becoming sponsors. Firstly he says it is to build the business, aiming to make $500m (£325m) in additional sales this year thanks to its London 2012 association. Secondly, to use the Olympics to launch Procter and Gamble as a corporate brand, as something separate from the individual brands that P&G owns and finally, Homer says that being a sponsor to the Games “can be a powerful tool within our workforce, in the UK and around the world.” (www.bbc.co.uk). Games sponsorship has previously aided the successful notion of being a preferred employer for employee inspiration and talent attraction (e.g. Law firm, Freshfields).

As the longest continuous sponsor of the Olympics, Coca-Cola recognizes that attitudes to sponsorship have changed and want to understand more about the social value our sponsorship brings. They are working with independent think tank Demos to create a new model of sponsorship evaluation that looks to quantify the social impact of sponsorship activity and hope to be able to measure their sponsorship of London 2012 against this model, which will allow them to see what they do well, where they need to improve and how they can apply this knowledge to future sponsorship and marketing activity. (www.coca-cola.co.uk)

So, whilst it may not be that apparent as to what they are getting for their money, one would hope that the marketing teams of the sponsors themselves have clear objectives on what they hope to achieve, and how they plan to do this.

Selina

When a deal seems too good to be true, it quite often is. However, newspapers, magazines and other media will have a target to hit and will be chasing round for the last few spaces and will therefore be selling the space at vastly reduced rates. They’ll usually contact their regular clients first  but you might get lucky. BUT – Before you make any decision ask them the following questions.

What is the print run or readership figures? Note that readership figures are generally 2.5 x  the print run for newspapers and up to 7x the print run for magazines. When you’ve got this figure divide the amount you are paying by the readership/print run which will give you the cost per POTENTIAL customer. Then compare it against the cost of an email or leaflet campaign, taking into account you have more control over where you target them.

How it’s distributed. If they self distribute ask them which outlets they give it to. Is the magazine available where your target market is likely to be? A Parish newsletter for example – whilst not a ‘formal’ advertising medium, can be highly targeted.

Where it’s distributed geographically? Is this an area you have potential or existing customers?

What are the demographics of their readers .i.e. age range, gender, disposable income. Does this match your own target market? We suggest visiting www.businessballs.com/demographicsclassifications.htm to get a list of UK demographics. 

This list of questions is by no means exhaustive and there will be other factors you will need to take into account depending on your specific business. However, as a general rule, if the answers to those questions are all favourable – and most importantly they have the stats to back it up, you should consider placing an advert.  If however, you’re met with a resounding silence – don’t bother wasting your time or money.

Other resourcses to help you when deciding upon advertising media is BRAD Insight - a great referance of all UK advertisers as listed with the Post Office, and ABC audit which is owned by the media industry and independently verifies and reports on media performance. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising is a professional body for agencies in the Uk media and Marketing communications industry and of course the Chartered Institute of Marketing is full of valuable resources.

If you have any questions about advertising campaigns or would like to know more about how we can help you, then please get in touch.

Selina