It’s a new year, a new decade and time for a new start. My name’s Ian Fergusson and I’ve recently joined the team here at Generate UK as a Marketing Executive. I am on a placement year whilst studying Marketing Advertising and communications at the University of Gloucestershire. I am a born and bred Essex boy, but moved to reading in 2009 to become a telemarketer.  I have previously worked as a Marketing Assistant for an International dental company and as a PR assistant for Chelmsford Borough Council.

I am extremely privileged to be joining Generate UK at this exciting time of growth. 2009 was such a successful period for the company I look forward to seeing what we can achieve in the New Year.  I knew I wanted a career in Marketing since I was 14 years old.  Whilst watching the series ‘Cold Feet’ Helen Baxendale became a career role model for me as her character played a Marketing executive for a publication agency. I have managed to pick up a plethora of skills on my marketing journey and I’m looking forward to learning a ton more at Generate.

The team here at Generate are proud of the success we have achieved throughout 2009 and are working hard to make sure 2010 exceeds its high expectations. Joe Baily summarises 2009 by saying:

“We’re extremely proud of where we are as a business. Our team have worked incredibly hard over the last 12 months, working to understand our customers as well as we possibly can. This approach has enabled us to deliver a profitable year and more importantly enabled us to work with brands such as Honda, NHS, National Trust and Senspa. We have also worked hard to forge relationships with local businesses as well, such as Pine and Oak, Donnington Grove, Q Associates, Chris Fidler, Momentum Windows and many more. It is important to us as a Newbury based business to work with Newbury based customers.”

What does 2010 have in store for Generate UK? First of all Generate UK were asked to take part in a technology programme due to air on the BBC. Keep a close eye on our blog and twitter for our aired date.  2010 will also see the launch of Generate UK’s new website which will reflect Generate UK’s focus on design, development and Internet Marketing capabilities. In March 2010, Generate UK will be back in Newbury for their popular marketing seminars. Further details of this event will be on their website shortly.

Happy New Year to all,
Kind regards,
The Generate UK team.

WELCOME to Generate UK’s Festive Online Marketing Workshop.

Date: 9^th December 2009

Time: 9am-12.30pm

Venue: Donnington Grove Country Club - click here for directions

A workshop designed to help participants understand and embrace a number of key online marketing activities.

The workshop will be dynamic and focused on sharing experiences with clients, partners and each other providing the dos and don’ts when it come to implementing a proactive marketing strategy!

The workshop will discuss:

• The principles of SEO – what are they?
• Business Blogging – to blog or not to blog?
• An effective website – do you have one?
• Email marketing –does it work?

The workshop aims to be delivered in an informative yet relaxed atmosphere helping Marketers and business owners become more knowledgeable when looking to contribute to their online marketing strategy for 2010.

On top of this you’ll have a chance to network with industry professionals through an hour of speed networking! Plus you’ll be entered into a special draw to win a round of golf or dinner for two!

The workshop is limited in numbers so please register here to avoid disappointment or call 01635 550431 to book your space.

www.generateuk.co.uk

The benefit of adopting the affiliate marketing model is that it’s an extremely low risk way to open up new sales channels. The downside is that it works best with a product or service that is more of a commodity than a bespoke solution.

Many of the world’s largest organisations operate their own network or belong to an affiliate one.  The main reason for this is that the cost to enter is minimal and the business method is simply that you pay based on performance. This means that as long as the affiliate meets your branding and quality criteria, you are in the beneficial position of only needing to pay once a sale has been completed.

There are two ways to approach affiliate marketing; either by joining a larger well established affiliate network, or by creating and managing your own program. Both have their merits and are worth considering in more detail.

Econsultancy.com recently predicted the UK market for affiliate marketing to grow to £4bn in online sales in 2009. This is an extraordinary figure and demonstrates the size of the channel available.

If you are considering an affiliate marketing scheme we would suggest:

• Create objectives for setting up an affiliate program.
• Identify products, services or solutions that could be used.
• Gap analysis on sales training material available and other sales tools.
• Explore your own affiliate network or join a larger established one.
• What are the rewards and criteria for being an affiliate?

Forums have been around since the birth of the internet and Wikipedia states that it is ‘the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board’. Forums can be useful and are much underestimated.  Meeting like-minded people and helping those out, through sharing content through knowledge, can be exceptionally powerful.

It certainly helps your perceived leadership position within your industries and often information is forwarded on.   Within forums, most people have a user sign off and this is the opportunity where you can leave a link back to your website.

Do you have a forum? Do you ever post on relevent business forums? Have your say by posting a comment below.

We can’t emphasise enough how effective a blog can be for your business, particularly when it comes to increasing your online footprint. There are so many benefits of having a blog, if done right, and this is why we always encourage our customers to consider the benefits. A blog can act as the platform for your online strategy and below are just some of the business benefits of producing a professional blog.

From an Off Page Optimisation or Search Engine Marketing purpose and by its nature a blog is usually about a specific topic and is regularly updated. This in turn encourages the search engine spiders to visit your site more frequently, once this happens you are more likely to appear in the organic search results, which means free and targeted traffic. The more experienced bloggers will target new keywords and phrases in order to rank well and manipulate the search engines. Because of the flexibility of a blog, it is very quick to launch a new post and therefore start to rank for different keywords relating to your business.

A blog provides you with a tool to form direct contact with people who are interested in your services. Most blogs provide an option for its readers to be able to subscribe to them, meaning that every post you go live with will be sent to your subscriber base. These are people who have proactively giving you and your content the virtual equivalent of the ‘thumbs up’. You should value your subscribers very highly and ensure that you continue to provide them with content and information they are interested in. Conversely, these are the people you can test new products, seek feedback and leverage to help your provide a better service or product.

There are many ways to use a blog to build your brand or even to support an existing brand. In fact a blog is the perfect vehicle to use to interact with your potential customers, advanced bloggers may also use video or viral campaigns to tease their audience into coming back.

A blog allows you to differentiate yourselves from your competitors! There are two questions to ask here; do your competitors have a blog and do they use it? And secondly, can you use your blog to add credibility to your services and solutions? For example, if you’re an IT company would it be good to have an interview with one of your customers on your blog? The answer is yes, as it adds to the credibility of your service. Likewise, you could include your views on new product launches or industry trends, all the time differentiating yourselves with other players in your market.

There’s an old adage in sales and marketing, “people buy from people”.  This has not changed and is probably even more apparent in tough economic times. A blog provides you with an opportunity to create and build relationships with clients and prospects. There is a current trend for large companies to have a “CEO Blog”, this is where the head of the company writes a blog article once a week, which is designed to bring them closer to their target audience. It provides the reader with a feeling of involvement and interaction, especially if they are able to leave comments and respond directly to the company head.

Most of the leading blog sites will have a Social Media aspect to them. They are normally visible via small graphical logos, which can be used by your readers to submit your blog post to other social media networks. The more well known Social Media sites are called Facebook, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Sphinn and Digg. However, the list grows by the day and each will be focused on its own niche market or have its own rules. From a blogging perspective, the reason to be aware of the social networks is because if your content is good then it is likely to be picked up by them. If this happens, it can mean a huge increase in targeted traffic.

The Internet has created some amazing opportunities for companies to market their products and services to a wider audience, however you could also argue that it has meant an increase in competition in almost all markets. This is why it is important as we’ve mentioned to differentiate yourself from your competitors; one way to do this is to establish yourself as the de facto expert in your area. If you are an expert, tell the world. Use your blog to communicate and showcase your expertise, in a competitive market, as this will do wonders for your sales.

Depending on your niche and your content, there is every chance that you may be contacted by either local or national press. This is a great position to be in and will help you with brand building, and of course, provide you with some free advertising. Usually this type of contact is born from the understanding that you are an expert in your field or the topic you are discussing is of interest to their publications.

Online reputation management is becoming big news and we advise our clients to be aware of it and proactively manage it. One of the ways to do this is by managing the content and using your blog to control what is being said. It is a little more complicated than just that; however it is better to be in control of the blog then letting someone else manage it for you.

On top of all the great business benefits associated with a blog, creating and maintaining a blog is very simple. Once it is set up and designed, your only challenge is creating the content and keeping it updated regularly. There are sites out there that post every day, whilst others do it once a week. We recommend that you find a happy medium that will result in a good flow of content to keep your readers happy, without it becoming a chore.

Last week I attended my first Speed Networking Event at Windsor Racecourse and thought that it was certainly worth a Blog post! Initially I was pretty sceptical and didn’t really know what to expect, but I have to say I was really impressed.

The event was hosted by Speed Networking Events who are committed to growing Speed Networking throughout the UK.

I really enjoyed the afternoon and left feeling pretty exhausted! The format involved 20 different companies and you literally had three minutes (one and a half minutes each!) to tell each other about yourself, your business and how you could potentially help each other. After only 5 mini meetings I had already met some really interesting people and a few potential business opportunities!

Whilst not all 19 meetings represented an interest for me, I did find it fascinating to hear about people’s views, hear their enthusiasm and understand their business pains, all within 90 seconds!

After 9 meetings we stopped for a break during which we received an excellent presentation from John Shenton who represented a company called BIA who helps companies improve business growth through people communications. After some tips from John as to how we should approach each of our mini meetings and some more light refreshments, people then entered into the second phase of meetings with renewed vigour.

The idea is a simple yet effective concept and the event was certainly a worthwhile exercise, it really opened my eyes to other businesses and I would recommend any person(s) who want to meet new people and engage with different businesses.

For more information about an event in your area visit Speed Networking Events

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet.

Email marketing is now one of the most cost effective ways to market to your potential customers; as a result, it is no surprise that the UK market grew from a value of £221m in 2007 to an estimated £274m in 2008. Despite the economic doom and gloom, this growth is expected to rise further in 2009.

There are a number of reasons which are contributing to this continued rise:

• The economic climate is putting pressure on everyone’s marketing budgets, however at the same time there is a need for an increase in retention marketing, which email marketing is perfect for.
• There is an increased number of email service providers, which is bringing down the cost and adding value to the marketing department (in most cases anyway).
• We’re all beginning to see the benefit of email marketing from a return on investment perspective. This is certainly the case when measuring the cost of the campaign, however it’s fair to say that many businesses need to go one step further in terms of measuring their campaigns with the amount of business it produces.
• Most businesses recognise that they have to work harder for their slice of the cake and as a result there is a greater focus on building email lists and encouraging email sign ups from webmasters and marketing managers.
• Email marketing offers businesses the opportunity to send highly targeted and very relevant email correspondence.
• Businesses in the UK are beginning to understand the benefits of autoresponders and trigger emails.

Understanding how to send correct and effective communications is critical if this channel is going to work for you, so we would seriously advise anybody to understand this market thoroughly and carry out your research first. Seek advice from the professionals as delivering bad communications can seriously damage you brand.  Data, message, timing, creative, response, analytics….they all count!

If you’d like help with your next email marketing campaign, let us know. We’d be very happy to show you our system.

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet.

If you’re not currently book marking your online collateral we ask the question why not? It’s free and Social Bookmarking provides you with the opportunity to share your own website content and collateral with the public, through social bookmarking sites. The main one being Delicious.com

There are over 15 billion web pages published on the World Wide Web and this is growing daily. People are using sites like del.icio.us every day to bookmark their favourite pages and check out other peoples favourites. So, by bookmarking your own content, making it available to others, increases the opportunity for people to find it.

In terms of increasing your Internet Footprint, it is a no-brainer and will help to drive targeted traffic to your site. Why not click on the social media links below and investigate how it can help your business. Alternatively, we’d be very happy to have a conversation with you on 01635 550431.

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet.

Feeds are also known as RSS. There is some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but most people opt for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. In essence, the feeds themselves are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people.  News feeds allow the user to see when websites have added new content. The user can receive the latest headlines and video in one place, as soon as it’s published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.

The big benefit to RSS is that individuals can opt-in to content of interest and totally control the flow of information that they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.

If you would like to learn more about how RSS feeds can help your business, contact us on 01635 550431,

Business is tough at the moment and small businesses have to think beyond their next piece of work. It’s interesting to hear directly from businesses about their challenges in terms of creating new business opportunities; which is why we’re pleased to hand over this blog post over to Christopher Eades, director of AA Eades and Son.

“We’re a small local building firm based in Newbury and for us having that steady flow of business coming in is vitally important. Over the years we have built a fantastic reputation locally for quality workmanship at competitive pricing.  Whilst business is still okay, with the downturn in economy I felt it was important to look at new ways to seek out new business rather than just rely on word of mouth.

I was discussing my situation with a friend who in the past has used email marketing and suggested that I tried it.  I was sceptical at first; could it really help me and directly bring me business?  I thought I would seek out a company to talk to and was recommended by another friend to speak to Generate UK. As you can tell I often go on recommendation!

I contacted Generate UK and sat down with them to look at the possible options available. We haven’t got a website, this is something that we are thinking about, and so I thought the online activity was limited in terms of where I could send people to so we opted for a direct response.

We decided to trial an email marketing campaign and as I mentioned after being pretty cynical I have to say I’ve been very pleased with the results. We invested in two thousand local contacts and Generate UK designed and sent out a personalised email campaign promoting our company and the services we offer with a promotion attached.

As a result we received 137 responses and 18 of these have turned into positive enquiries which we have quoted business for.  The great thing about the campaign is that Generate initially tested a batch of 50 to analyse how the message was received and the response it had. The initial message was tweaked only slightly and the main message was sent. It was a text based communication that was personalised with the recipients’ first name and signed off by me with my personal email address.

The campaign has more than paid for itself and I am teeing up another one in the near future.”

Christopher Eades – Director, AA Eades and Son

Thank you Generate UK!

Email marketing is now one of the most cost effective ways to market to your potential customers; as a result, it is no surprise that the UK market grew from a value of £221m in 2007 to an estimated £274m in 2008. Despite the economic doom and gloom, this growth is expected to rise further in 2009.

For more information on email marketing click here or to speak with one of Generate UK’s internet specialists about building a direct response campaign please call 01635 550431

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