Suffolk Marketing Blog - Midsomer Training

Another website by Business Vitamins goes live!! Midsomer Training offers covert surveillance training and anti-surveillance techniques to a number of public sector organisations such as the Benefits Agency. Whilst it was clear that such organisation aren't going to simply go to Google to choose a new training partner, Midsomer Training realised the importance of "looking the part" on-line.


Although only requiring a modestly sized website, they wanted a bespoke design that set them well apart from other (inferior!) training providers.

Business Vitamins managed all the graphic design and built the website, as well provided all the hosting and domain purchasing services.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog | How Unprofessional!

I recently found myself chatting with someone at a local business networking lunch. We began to talk about the various events we attend and were surprised our paths had never crossed before. The gentleman in question mentioned one particular business breakfast, but quickly continued with; ‘But that’s only for professionals’. The patronising words ‘so not for you my dear’ were implied but not spoken aloud.

An hour or so later I was driving back to the office and was still thinking about his comment. I felt extremely irritated. There were two things playing on my mind. First, why is marketing often not recognised as a profession and second, being professional is surely about the individual?

Because I’m a marketer, I was not ‘a professional’ in this man’s eyes. Yet, I’ve studied for a number of years; I have a degree and professional qualifications. Clients come to me because of my knowledge and experience to help their businesses grow. But this individual who is a banker/lawyer/accountant/ (delete as you see appropriate) does not see my profession as on a par with his own.

Most people can begin their working lives as an accounts or legal clerk if they so choose, but it takes time and dedication to qualify. Anyone can take a position as a marketing executive, but again, it takes determination and effort to gain Chartered status. Surely, if a person has studied, passed exams and is paid to give advice in their chosen field, they are a professional.

This individual had clearly not considered how five little words allowed me to draw my own conclusions about him. I felt very insulted by his one throw away comment. I cannot change his opinion about Marketing as an industry. To him, it is not a bone fide profession and never will be. However, he considered himself a professional purely on the grounds of his job title. But to me at least, he certainly did not come across as such.

In my opinion, to be a professional goes far beyond the industry sector in which you work. It means being a qualified and experienced expert in your chosen field; giving easy to understand explanations and honest advice. It’s about keeping up to date with the latest developments in your industry. It’s about passing on the benefit of your experience to the next generation. It also means ensuring others never feel inferior or less important than you. It’s about putting clients at their ease and forming relationships built on trust and mutual respect.

There is definitely more to being a professional than industry sector and wearing a dark-coloured suit. After all, those who are members of the oldest profession rarely have letters after their names...

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Suffolk Marketing Blog | Questions Questions...

You have some lovely customers and you have probably spent a certain amount of money ‘buying’ them. You have probably purchased and given out some business cards. You may have paid for a website and domain name. You may have invested in an advert. You may have attended a networking event or two.

As many people know it is much easier and more cost effective to keep your existing customers and sell to them again, than it is to do all that hard work all over again to get some new customers. Don’t waste money acquiring customers only to ‘throw them away’ after a single sale.

Two years ago, a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) revealed that four out of five executives believed that companies were losing sales every year because of a failure to engage with their customers. Furthermore, eighty percent suggested that increased customer engagement would translate into improved customer loyalty, and three quarters said it would translate into increased revenue and profits.*

In the 'Do You Listen to your Customers Survey' conducted by Research Plus+ in 2010, over 50% of businesses that had obtained feedback from their customers said that their turnover and their profits had increased as a result.
How are you communicating with your customers? Are you listening to what they say? What have you done as a result of what they told you? Customers are increasingly sophisticated. In the past you might have told a few people if you had experienced bad service or a poor product. The internet has transformed this. A quick message on Twitter or Facebook could quickly reach hundreds if not thousands of people.

Yes you can ask the questions where you will get praise for things done well by you and your team. Although this is encouraging and can be useful when you want to boost the team, these are not the responses that you really need.

To improve and be able to find out what your customers are looking for, you need to hear their other comments. You need to ask the difficult questions and find out their ideas on how you could improve.

So what are you waiting for? Ask your customers how you are doing. You might be surprised at what they say, both good and bad.

“Embrace the difficult questions and welcome any disappointing answers.”

* Study reported in a blog by Pam McGee ‘Don’t Focus on the Customer; Engage the Customer’ see community.dynamics.com.

Mark Barton helped to set up Research Plus+ in 1993. Research Plus+ specialises in undertaking business research and research on contemporary social issues. This includes customer / client satisfaction surveys and consultations and staff surveys. Most of the research undertaken is designed to help develop an organisation’s policies and practices.

 Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog | Knowing When To Let Go

In this month's Business Vitamins blog, we have a guest blogger, Jane Cattermole of 'BayTree VA'.

Over to you Jane...

I recently posed the question ‘how easy do you find it to delegate?’ on the LinkedIn East Anglia SME Business Forum group. It resulted in some thought-provoking comments, which showed that delegation is something that’s far from easy for small business owners. This isn’t surprising given that we’ve started out by trying to do everything ourselves, whether for cost reasons or because we’re still in the process of shaping our business and don’t feel confident about briefing others.

However, there comes a time when you’ve got to step back, reassess and acknowledge that it’s fool-hardy to try and do it all. If you find that you’re regularly working into the early hours, then you’re not going to be doing the best by your business or yourself. Indeed for your business to grow you have to recognise that ‘you need to work on the business and not in it’. This means you need to find people that you can trust and delegate to. In the current economic climate, it’s understandable if small businesses are wary of employing a member of staff, particularly if the company has fluctuating work flow or could benefit from expertise in a number of areas.

Therefore, delegation tends to mean coming to terms with outsourcing areas of work, saving you from grappling with tasks that take too long, are beyond your level of expertise or are distracting you from your key areas of business.

A common concern is that delegation leads to a loss of control. But delegation isn’t about abdicating responsibility, but assuming the role of overseer rather than active participant. When deciding to try your hand at delegating, manage your expectations. Delegation is a shift in the way you work and isn’t a quick fix, so acknowledge that “delegation takes time before it makes time”.

Once you start, you may find that delegating becomes addictive, so here are a few tips that might help:

• Write/work out a detailed brief setting out what needs to be done, why it needs to done, who it is being done for and when it is needed.
• Be realistic about the timescale. Allow enough time to take account of queries, other work commitments etc.
• Make yourself available to answer questions and provide clarification. By encouraging communication you are more likely to end up with the result you want.
• Give constructive feedback. You are building a relationship here, so be diplomatic and give praise where praise is due.

You may think, ‘it would be easier to battle on myself’! But when you can delegate effectively, you benefit from an additional member of your team who understands your business, who can be more proactive and altogether more useful, and who gives you the gift of time. Whether you decide to outsource to a virtual assistant, marketing expert, book-keeper, graphic designer or social media expert, it’s worth taking the time to induct them about your business. Have a structured approach to communication, and there’ll be a good foundation from which trust will grow.

Delegate with confidence and you can then concentrate on the strategic and fee earning areas of your business.

Jane Cattermole runs Bay Tree VA which provides freelance PA and secretarial support to business owners, home-based professionals, project managers and consultants. Drawing on over 20 years experience working with senior management, Bay Tree VA provides a wide range of services and was also awarded Best Young Business in Bury St Edmunds 2010. www.baytreeva.co.uk

 Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog | The King Is Dead; Long Live The King

For a long time, there has been a business mantra that the customer is king. Today I had a situation where it felt clear to me the customer was clearly in the wrong. So as a business owner, I had to make a decision to go against the grain.

We’re a small marketing and PR agency based near Bury St Edmunds in rural Suffolk. Although we’re not exactly Saatchi & Saatchi, neither are we a one-man band company, and we have a rich and varied client base across East Anglia.

One such client, who shall remain nameless, owed us money for a website we’d designed and built for his business. The site had been live for nine months and the client had still not paid us all the money owing for the job. Initially, we spent some time chasing invoice payment in the routine way. Then we had a call to say the client was experiencing financial difficulties. We worked out a payment plan that suited us both. We felt happy that we had behaved admirably and with understanding. But when the time came to make the first payment no money appeared. So we chased again. You can see the pattern.

After some time, the client offered us a token gesture payment, still pleading poverty. We listened again and extended his credit terms. The story goes on and nine months later, there is still 20% of the invoice outstanding.

So, here is the question. When do you decide enough is enough? For me today, it was not about the money. It was about a feeling I had towards the client. Something was just not right and I felt there was more to this than met the eye. I felt he was trying it on. So, we took the decision to turn off the client’s website until the account has been settled. In doing so, we have clearly lost the client who was angry and accused us of not being understanding of his situation. But why should I accept the sob story any longer? We don’t need clients that cause us this amount of trouble and cost us time and money.

As a small business owner, where customer service is crucial, when do we stand up and say:’ You know what, the customer isn’t always right and I’m going to tell him’. We are conditioned to be afraid to lose a client, and so we bend over backwards to be helpful. But there has to be a limit. We also have the right to say;’ I don’t want to work with you’. That is one of the delights of being a business owner.

So for the first time today I took the decision to abandon a customer and not bend over backwards anymore. And you know what, it feels good.

Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog | Ensure Radio Doesn’t Drive You Ga Ga

Unfortunately, radio can often be brushed aside or added to a PR campaign at the very last minute. Given the power of the radio to influence opinion, it is a grave mistake to simply ‘whizz the press release’ over to the local radio to ‘see if they might be interested’! There’s no ‘might be interested’ news for radio. It is clear when you have an opportunity to go on air, and here are a few pointers:
By far, the majority of radio stations are local. They are interested in hearing about stories that have an impact on the local community. Time and time again, the news desks at radio stations receive numerous ‘generic’ press releases not specific to that particular area. If your company has a product that could impact every household in the UK, it is no good just telling a local radio station that. You need to find a way of relating that ‘fact’ to their target audience. It might be that there is a local body that recognises the problem your product is designed to overcome or you may have conducted a survey that proves people in that area need to take action. Be careful though, radio journalists have very little ‘air-time’ to play with and even the slightest hint of product promotion will stop them from even considering your story! They are interested in straight-forward news.
It is no good sending a press release aimed at newspapers and magazines over to a radio news desk. It is always advisable to prepare a radio advisory story. Basically, it is a much shortened version of your initial press release and is much more colloquial in its tone. If you are not sure whether it is right for radio, try reading it out aloud – if it sounds like there are too many words and you stumble when reading it, go back to the drawing board and have another go. Make your sentences are short and ensure that each one links with the next so that it reads more like a story. Always try to summarise your story in the first paragraph though, making sure it takes no longer than 30 seconds.
Before you approach the news desk you need to think about exactly who is capable of going on air. They need to be able to speak clearly and confidently and about your company and be unflappable when questioned by a reporter.
It is always best to take note of all the times when your spokesperson is available and if you are aiming to appear on to a live show, you need to be able to tie-in with their schedule.

Consider a third party spokesperson. Somebody willing to talk objectively about the issues you wish to be broadcast will go a long way to making your points more credible. Make sure this person is fully informed about the content of your radio advisory and that they know what you intend to say. Again, you will need to know their exact availability in advance.

Remember, if you cover all these basic rules all that’s left to do is pick up the phone and speak to the radio station. If your story is not time critical, consider asking to speak to the radio’s forward planning desk. They are quite often the best place to start!

 Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog - GL Building Services

GL Building Services is a small family owned and managed construction business based near Newmarket, Suffolk. The owner of the business was proud to have been selected by Forest Heath District Council as an approved provider of extensions and small building services - but had no website to link to from the Council website.

Business Vitamins were selected to design and build a new website. Working with another local service provider who wrote all the website copy, Business Vitamins created the new website in double quick time and set up all the hosting and domain registration as well.

Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

Why not find out more about Business Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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