How to hire a marketing company

The time has come to hire yourself a marketing company to promote your business.

However, please do be very careful when you hire a marketing company.

Because hiring a bad marketing company can make things much worse for your business than if you'd just not bothered to try to market your business in the first place.

Do the principals behind the marketing business have any qualifications in marketing? Are they members of any professional bodies?

Also, how experienced are they in marketing? Do they have any personal testimonials that they will be willing to share with you?

But further, are their qualifications in marketing genuine? Are their qualifications recognised by any officially authorised external invigilating and accreditation bodies?

 Are the professional bodies that they claim membership of legitimate?

And do check the membership lists of the organisation concerned. Are they really a member in good standing?

After all, it would not be the first time for someone to claim a qualification they were not entitled to, or to claim membership of a body which they are not a member of.

Ask for verifiable professional testimonials. If these are not forthcoming, just walk away from them, immediately.

How are they marketing themselves and their own business?  If they are not capable of marketing themselves and their own business properly, how on earth could they possibly be able to market your business effectively?

Are they understaffed? Is their office professional and businesslike? If not, remember the golden rule of business? Run Away, Quick!

How on earth could they possibly hope to be able to help market your business if they can't market their own business?

After all, they really aren't going to be able to help you, if they can't help themselves.

Ask to see samples of their work. If they claim to be able to work on major marketing campaigns for clients, let them prove it.

Do they fill their meetings with you, the client, with meaningless jargon and buzzwords? If they do this, demand that they translate them into English, or your local language. If they can't, then RAQ!

Also, if they claim to have a press release writing service, ask to see the original press releases and examples of where and when the press releases were published.

If they can't, do remember the golden rule: "RAQ! Run Away, Quick!"

I once wrote some press releases for a very small marketing company which was a client of mine, but only for a short while.

Their marketing 'expert' completely changed the press releases, adding some amazing grammatical howlers and altered the press releases from what had been "ready to print" news stories, into dreary and utterly banal wodges of marketing drivel that no editor would touch.

And you can trust me on that point, because as a news editor of many years standing on newspapers and trade magazines I regularly binned or deleted press releases which were written in just that way.

Remember, it's your marketing budget, so do spend it wisely!

These organisations might be of assistance to you:-
http://www.cim.co.uk/membership/
http://www.marketingagencies.org.uk/agencies
http://the-cma.com/about-us/

That's Books and Entertainment: Transform Your Communication Skills Speak, Write, ...

That's Books and Entertainment: Transform Your Communication Skills Speak, Write, ...: Transform Your Communication Skills Speak, Write, Present with confidence is a book created by a master of the craft Steve Bridger. The ...

Ever wanted to launch your own online shop or store? It's easy! Let me show you how!

In this modern day and age, setting up and running your won online store has never been easier!

Do you have to have any knowledge of programming? No.

Your own website development team? No.

Your own stock of items to sell? No. Well, not unless you want to.

I operate several online blogs that are all based on interests that I have.

I run a book review blog At this URL  http://thatsbooks.blogspot.co.uk.

Eventually I thought it would be neat to be able to launch my own bookshop in order to allow the readers of my blog to be able to buy the books that I had reviewed.

But how to go about this?

Eventually I heard that Amazon had an affiliate programme which I signed up for.

The instructions to create your own online shop/store are really very clear and they do operate a help service should you ever get stuck.

How do you start up your own presence? Just visit  https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/ and sign up.

You can sell anything from the entire Amazon range, from books to beauty, from grocery to gadgets and more besides.

Good luck with your new venture.

That's Books and Entertainment: Publishers! We will review books you publish at no...

That's Books and Entertainment: Publishers! We will review books you publish at no...: And at no cost to your authors. Why do we do this? Because we feel that it is important that fellow writers get the chance to get detail...

That's Christmas: This is the gift for the budding businessman or bu...

That's Christmas: This is the gift for the budding businessman or bu...: Most of us have a friend, or perhaps a family member or loved one who constantly talk about wanting to start a business. But there&...

Businesses as well as domestic clients should shop around for energy

SHOPPING around for the best energy deal is vital for business electricity users as supplier profits continue to rise, so says the Energy Advice Line. It's important for domestic and business energy users to get the best deal they can.

Comparing the market and switching to the best available deal is the quickest and cheapest way for firms to take control in a volatile and challenging energy market, the UK’s leading energy switching and advice service for business said.

Big Six energy supplier Scottish and Southern Electricity (SSE) has just announced a 38% leap in half-yearly earnings, a month after increasing energy tariffs for householders by 9%.

Centrica, parent company of British Gas, announced it was set to make profits of £1.4 billion this year on the same day the utility giant hit customers with a 6% rise in their energy bills.

Suppliers have also come under fire following allegations that they have been involved in price rigging of the wholesale gas market.

“Customers might be fed up with the energy market right now, as suppliers hit the headlines yet again with rising profits and questionable practices,” EAL spokesman Mr Morgan said

“But it’s vital for firms to remember there is no benefit in being loyal to a utility company. In this environment they need to take control of their energy supply and energy costs by comparing the market to get the best deals.

“It’s really the quickest and cheapest way to find the lowest business energy prices and to play energy suppliers at their own game.”

Mr Morgan said that many firms underestimated the amount of money they could save by switching suppliers as soon as their fixed-price energy contracts ended.

The Energy Advice Line had helped thousands of firms substantially reduce their business electricity spend.

“Depending on the amount of business electricity a firm uses, we can slash hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds off its annual energy spend by finding a better deal than the tariff offered by their existing supplier.

“Energy suppliers don’t want businesses to shop around because that’s partly how they make such big profits – from firms who stay with them year on year.

“We’ve helped thousands of customers to move to cheaper rates through simple non-pressure and impartial advice about the energy market and the suppliers that operate in the market.”

The Energy Advice Line is the UK’s leading business electricity price comparison site and switching services for business, and enables firms to compare the market for the best possible business energy deals at the touch of a button.

The service has a team of business experts who can give advice about business energy contracts and how to avoid expensive contract rollovers. It also offers a free contract management service to help firms throughout the duration of their energy contracts.

For further information visit www.energyadviceline.org.uk

New fix for Corporate Compliance

Compliance challenges for organisations are now one giant step closer to being greatly reduced, due to the latest version of an enterprise wide solution that’s ticking all the boxes for organisations of all types and all sizes.

RuleSafe® v4.0 uses a potent combination of personalised and targeted communication, special benchmarked measuring and enforcement to maximise awareness of and conformance with company policies among all employees.

Companies using this latest version of the RuleSafe® policy management and awareness solution can expect to make great strides in the management and improvement of critical GRC hotspots such as protecting data assets, corporate governance, health and safety, risk management, incident management, quality management and document management.

The RuleSafe® v4.0 framework uses up to the minute technological features and management thinking that are designed to genuinely improve real understanding and awareness of all of the main GRC matters all employees.

Each individual user has a personalised dashboard which shows their performance and what needs to be done to improve that performance in areas like acceptance of applicable policies, passing company GRC quizzes and knowledge tests and keeping in touch with new developments. Employees are also measured on how often they pick up and keep up to date on messages sent to their dashboard and keep up to date on required tasks.

Secoda Risk Management’s Charlie Fairbairn says “I believe this to be the most powerful policy management and awareness solution in its class. The benchmarking aspect of it is a very powerful motivator. For example managers can view the performance of managers and units below them, managers of business units or divisions can see the compliance status and progress of all their direct reports, and all employees can measure their own performance ratings against the averaged ratings of peers, or across the organisation as a whole”.

“Real up to date learning and understanding can take place with RuleSafe® and this system even features quiz editors and libraries to enable fast creation of fixed or randomised knowledge tests. These are a great way to verify employee understanding of your requirements. Companies tell me that they also really appreciate the flexibility, agility and configurability of this system” says Charlie.

The RuleSafe® Governance Risk & Compliance solution has of course proven to be a very good investment for organisations operating in challenging and heavily regulated industries such as banking and finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, utilities and energy, transportation and the public sector.

Secoda develops, sells and maintains the RuleSafe® suite of GRC software applications, and provides support and consulting services on which many thousands of corporate users depend for their employee GRC programmes.

For more information call 08456 4 27001 or visit http://www.secoda.com