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Congratulations to Jo Goodwin of the team, who gained a distinction in her Market Research and Information unit of the Professional Certificate in Marketing for the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM)

Jo is currently working on the next unit, Stakeholder Marketing in international markets and we wish her the best of luck with this as well!

Tags: Chartered Institute of Marketing | CIM | Recognition | Awards

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A definition...
The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted: attributed their success in business to hard work.

Being successful...
How can we ensure success for ourselves and those around us?

There are many aspects that contribute to success.  Three key areas to consider are the aspects around Skill, Attitude and Activity.

SKILLS - You need to gain a skill, develop your skills, continue to improve your skills and maintain your competency levels.

ATTITUDE - Is your glass half full or half empty?  Are you positive that you will achieve your goals or are you expecting something bad to happen? Maintaining a positive mental attitude is fundamental to improving your performance.  motivating others will help them to improve their performance.

ACTIVITY - Are we really putting in the right level of effort?  Are we busy fools?  Do we spend our time wisely during the day - what more could we do?

For long term success you need to be working on all three of these activities.

If you are happy with sporting analogies, imagine the core skills a sportsmen or women is born with.  These need ongoing development and improvement.  There attitude needs to be focussed and positive and they need to put in the practice to ensure they can perform at the highest level when it matters.

As South African golfer, Gary Player (who won 9 major championships) famously said, "The harder you work, the luckier you get".

Are you developing your skills, maintaining a positive attitude and really conducting the activity you need for your success?

Tags: success | attitude | skills | activity

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Introduction to social media marketing

Social media is about developing personal, intimate relationships online.  It is about having and maintaining regular dialogue, sharing useful information.  If you share enough relevant, interesting information you will be seen as a trusted adviser.  As in all walks of life, when a person needs a service – they tend to think of a trusted adviser for advice.  Social media is no different – many businesses have achieved significant growth due to adopting a social media presence.

Current business relationships have been formed over many years of traditional networking.  Social media may not necessarily replace traditional networking, but can be used in parallel.  However, as social media takes time to build a following, it is important to start sooner rather than later.  It is estimated that only 6% of the business population are using social media and this is expected to grow at a significant rate over the coming years.

A social media marketing campaign is different to a search engine optimisation campaign.  The latter is about broadcasting, gaining links, developing key words for your site.  Social media marketing is about engaging with people and by doing so will help the optimization of your web site.

Why build a social media following?

Social media marketing allows organisations to create:

·     Trust

·     Contacts

·     Brand awareness

·     Feedback

·     Leads/enquiries for your business

Why develop a social media marketing strategy?

Prior to implementing any social media marketing strategy, it is important to understand what it is you are trying to achieve. 

Objectives are likely to include:

·     Increase visitors to the website

·     Increase general brand awareness of your organsiation

·     Increase third party credibility

·     Sustain relationships and increase the levels of engagement with your audience

·     Listen to what is being said

·     Analyse and become more informed of your market

·     Develop new ‘fans’ or advocates of your company

·     Join communities that advocate your products (and those of your competitors)

·     Help you develop additional key words and tags for your website

Developing a social media marketing strategy

A strategy should seek to provide answers to the following questions:=

·     Who is your target audience?

·     What information should you share? 

·     Branding

·    What content would be relevant and useful to the different target audiences.

o  Content needs to be engaging, issues around why you do what you do – not what it is you do.

-Why you exist – rather than we do this.

-We believe . . .

o   This portrays something personal

o   It also demonstrates your actual belief and is therefore more believable – rather than a traditional press release or sales brochure

o   It demonstrates genuine support – being there for people

-We have a passion for . . .

o   This demonstrates you are passionate about your business and your customers service

-Your opinion

o   This will develop trust – it is important to become the trusted adviser

o   People will be happy to spread your word

-Use the traditional advertising acronym of AIDA

o   A – attention

How do you grab attention, e..g, something may be free

o   I – Interest

How will you stimulate interest after gaining attention?

o   D – Desire

How will you stimulate desire – getting a person to want to use you or know more

o   A – Action

What is the required action for the recipient?

·     Who will spread your word?

o  Who will support/follow you?

o  How could this be encouraged

o  Social media allows you to become the media - The question is “how social will you be?”

o  People will share what you say only when they know and like you . . .

·     Where should we share the information?   What are the tools to deliver/implement the strategy

There are a number of online tools that companies can use the popular ones include:

Twitter – a fast messaging, quick response site – originally popular with 30-55 year age, but now large companies are developing a significant brand presence, as more Twitter branded sites appear.

Twitter Feed 

·     Twitter allows organizations/individuals to enter into a conversation

·     Twitter is a conversation management system

·     It does not work as a broadcast of products

·     Twitter allows you to enter/start conversations

Facebook – rapport building site, useful traditionally for audiences under 35 year of age (but this is changing), more of a consumer based site – although this is changing rapidly as more corporate brands use the facility

Ecademy – one of many business networking sites, useful as positioning yourself as a business specialist

LinkedIn – contact building site – allows others to recommend you and links people to other people through common ground.

YouTube – audio/visual facility to communicate

Posterous/Word Press/Blogger – blogging tools that can be linked to your website

Gowalla – useful if you are running conferences as you can “check in” at a location and demonstrate where you are

StumpbleUpon – latest news and articles that a reader can search on specific topics of interest

Article Directories – there are a number of different directories (hundreds) that can all have articles posted to them.

Forums – there are a number of different forums where you should be seen to be posting and responding to comments

Developing your own forum – there may be a possibility for you to act as facilitator for introducers to share issues of concern, by logging into a customer log in area

·     How should the information be shared?

Tools can include:

o         Written word

o         Audio – podcasts

o         Video – video blogging, conference presentations

-Tag keywords from your videos to help get you noticed

-Videos have been proven as personal

-People like to hear what people have to say

·     How will we monitor the effectiveness of our social media?

Social Media Monitoring

There are a number of software packages available that can determine what online “conversations” are taking place around particular topics.  This can help in assessing where to add comments into existing conversations/topics, e.g., Twitter trending, Alterian, etc.

Monitoring social media activity allows you to:

·       engage with clients

·       compare with competitors as you will have a greater insight into them

·       get a full demographic of the information of the person making the conversation

·       translate foreign languages/Analyse what is being shared

o   White papers, articles, presentations

Tags: social media | online marketing strategy

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The following presentation addresses market reputation and how a better reputation maybe acquired.

What is reputation? (Powerpoint, 2.8mb)

Tags: market reputation

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There are a number of ways which require a bit of effort including:

• Get to know the committee locally and nationally
• Offer to write an article or speak at a national conference or local branch event
• Run a workshop alongside their conference
• Sponsor an element of an event, e.g., menus at a conference dinner, where you could put an advert about your organisation on the back
• Help them to develop a new revenue stream - affiliate marketing programme, a new training course, etc
• Ask to get involved in any strategy issues they might be working on at the moment
• Offer to sit on a committee

Tags: professional organisation | marketing | workshops | commitee

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As you may remember, Win Marketing were working with DARE, the national drug awareness and education charity, and Oliver Wilson, to organise the 2010 'Oliver Wilson DARE Golf Day, Dance and Dinner' event.

Held at Notts Golf club, Hollinwell, the 23 teams all teed off at lunch time, just as the rain started to fall, which, luckily for the golfers, was only short lived!

Ann and Jo from the team were on hand during the event to ensure everything ran smoothly.

We had a few sporting celebrities who came along, including Teddy Sherringham, former England footballer, Chris Broad, ex - England cricketing legend, Ian Woan, former Nottingham Forest footballer, and Tony Woodcock, ex - England and Nottingham Forest football player.

A good day and evening was had by all, successfully raising nearly £20,000 for DARE, lets hope next years event can raise even more!

Tags: News | Events

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In July, I will be running the 5K Race for Life. I have never done a 5K in my life so this is a real test for me as I plan to run (not walk) the whole of the race. Please dig deep and sponsor me online - it's quick, easy and totally secure.

Tags: News

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On Tuesday, Win Marketing organised for Scott Hamilton; Leicester Tigers Rugby player to visit Leicester General Hospital in celebration of a £10m investment which has meant that every bed in Leicestershire and Rutland hospitals have been replaced with brand new electric ones. 

Working with Medstrom and Hill-Rom we managed to gain local coverage by getting East Midlands Today and the Leicester Mercury.

We will be adding a copy of the news story on EMT shortly, so keep checking back to watch it for yourselves! 

If you want to read the press release on this then you can download it here.

UPDATE: You can now watch the news story from EMT below:

Tags: News

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Ann and Chris were pleased to be invited to the Leicester Tigers end of season awards dinner, where Ben Young was awarded Players Player of the Year Award, and Dan Cole received thew Newcomer of the Year Award.

Win Marketing are pleased to sponsor Scott Hamilton, who received the Sponsors Player of the Year Award. Ann and Chris are pictured with him below.

Good luck to Scott, Dan, Ben and the rest of the Tigers team in the Guinness Premiership Final!

Tags: News

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Win Marketing were pleased to co-ordinate the appearance of Ex-British Lions and England Rugby legend, Dean Richards at the annual dinner of the Doha Ladies Rugby Club.

Dean has just returned after an entertaining evening with the ladies. If anyone is interested in booking Dean for either after dinner or motivational speaking, please contact Win Marketing on +44(0)1509 265890.

Tags: News | Events

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In EMAGs campaign for justice for Equitable Life victims, Graham Garner from the Leicester/Loughborough EMAG committee ran from Leicester to Loughborough today. 

Nicky Morgan, election candidate for the Conservative Party for Loughborough has signed the EMAG pledge and came along to support Graham and EMAG in their efforts to gain quick and fair compensation for Equitable Life victims. 

Jo and Ann from the Win Marketing team went down to Loughborough Town Hall to also support Graham.

Well done Graham!

Tags: News

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Since our last blog update, Tim Stimpson, ex-British Lions, England and Leicester Tigers Rugby Player has agreed to be the MC for the evening event of the Oliver Wilson DARE Golf Day Dinner and Dance. 

We have also got some fantastic auction prizes up for grabs already!

Here is a poster that we have designed that has gone round the local golf clubs to promote the event: 

If you want to book your place for this event go to our events section where you can book online.

Hope to see you there!

Tags: News | Events

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Thats right! Win Marketing are working with DARE, the national drug awareness and education charity, and Oliver Wilson, to organise this years 'Oliver Wilson DARE Golf Day, Dance and Dinner' event, and bookings have recently opened!

With already a number of guests securing their places through our new events section of our site, it is looking like the event, which is being held at Hollinwell Golf Club in Nottingham on June 24th 2010, will be extremely successful and enjoyable for all who attends.

To find out more about this event, go to our events section, where you can book your place online.

We will keep you updated with the progress of this exciting event!

Tags: Events | News

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Win Marketing are currently working with EMAG (Equitable Members Action Group); who are campaigning for justice for victims of the Equitable Life Scandal.

EMAG intend to make all election candidates aware that they are seeking their support for the proper government compensation recommened by Parliamentary Ombudsman.

Win Marketing are working with EMAG assisting and supporting committees in their regional campaigns in the build up to the forthcoming general election.

If you want to support EMAG in their campaign, visit www.emag.org.uk or follow them on facebook or twitter (@EquitableVictim).

Tags: News

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At Win Marketing, we know how important it is to keep up to date, which is why we have recently launched our new website. Keep checking back on our blog for the latest news from the Win Marketing offices.

Hope you like the site!

Tags: News

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What is marketing and can I afford it?
by Ann Goodwin

Successful marketing is about meeting the needs of customers – profitably. People say to me marketing is the same as sales – but in my opinion they are wrong, selling an item is one thing, but did the customer really need the item and will the customer come back for more? The value of a happy customer can be experienced for many years after the initial sale.

Other people say to me marketing is advertising – but again I disagree. Advertising is one form of marketing, which fits together with the many promotional opportunities open to a company.

Marketing is all about identifying what your customers need, and supplying it when they want it, where they want it, at a price they are prepared to pay, with a value that is perceived as better than the competition.

How can I assess if my business offers customers this?

Quite simply ask them. Large companies invest millions in market research, trying to understand as much as they can about the market they operate in. Because it may not appear to be essential in the day to day operations of running a small business it is rarely achieved. However, conducting research can not only be financially advantageous it can be interesting and intriguing. It can provide you with valuable intelligence vital in making a decision.

The sort of areas a company should have an understanding of with regard to their market place include:

Understand your customers

• Who are they?
• Why do they buy?
• What would they prefer to buy if they could?
• Individuals and organisations – what does each person look for when they buy my product or service?

Who are my competitors?

• How do they promote themselves?
• How are we different?

What is happening in my business?
What are my strengths and weaknesses?
What is happening in the market in which we operate in?
What are my opportunities and threats?
How will technology affect my business?

Do you know what your customers really want and why they want it? Do you develop your products, services and promotional material to meet these requirements?
Can you afford not to!?

Many people think marketing is costly, but it should be seen as an investment. Good marketing should test ideas and keep the investment to a minimum until you can assess the results.

Understand what customers want
Understand why the customers want it
Understand how, when and where they want it
Ask them – don't be afraid, don't assume you know it!
Develop a promotional strategy to let them know – this does not have to be expensive it could be merely direct mail letters, telephone calls, or appointments.
Be consistent - Ensure your promotional tactics are consistent – advertising, website and electronic marketing.
Ensure you deliver what you say you will.
Maintain the relationships to understand what else the customer might want.

Tags: Articles

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