That's Books and Entertainment: Shifting Stories How changing their story can tran...

That's Books and Entertainment: Shifting Stories How changing their story can tran...: It's said that everyone has a story. But what if you could help people to change their story? What would happen to them? What would be...

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...