ACPR Blog

Check in every week with ACPR to get new ideas to help you market your business. This week we’re looking at your marketing your business over the internet. This is the fastest growing way to reach new customers and one that you can’t afford to miss out on. Make the most of internet marketing to find new fans and see your business grow.

Think about the activities in the following list and consider which ones could work for your business. The key to internet marketing is little and often, so build your chosen activities into your marketing plan on a regular basis:

1. Articles – write and place on other sites with links back to your business
2. Blogging – regular entries can help with SEO as well as provide interesting content for readers
3. Podcasting – use sound recordings to interest a different group of people
4. Vodcasting – video is an additional element to add interest
5. Website design and content – these fundamentals are essential for marketing your business
6. SEO – learn as much as you can about search engine optimisation to help your business appear in natural search results
7. Pay per click – useful for getting your business seen in places you can’t reach with SEO or before SEO gets results
8. Link building - links in can help riase you up the search results, but make sure not all links are reciprocal
9. Viral campaign – hard to engineer, magic when it takes off
10. Free downloads – create great incentives to get people to share their email address with you
11. e-books – offer extras of value to subscribers
12. FAQs – great way to put your business messages across
13. Affiliate schemes – a way to reward and encuorage those who recommend you
14. BTTradespace – very useful site to increase your business reach

We’ll look at social networking for marketing later in this series. For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

Check in every week with ACPR to get new ideas to help you market your business. This week we’re looking at your marketing your business through events. Events are a great way to reach new audiences, build your company reptation and grow your list of interested potential customers as well as make sales. I’m aiming to speak at one event each month this year: what programme of events could help you grow your business? Think about the following sorts of events and start researching ones that you could attend:

1. Conferences
2. Exhibitions and trade fairs
3. Consumer exhibitions, fairs and fetes
4. Festivals
5. Speaking opportunities
6. Seminars
7. Workshops and small group events

Ask the organisers for details of the sort of person and numbers attending so you can weigh up if the event is right for you. Build the events into your marketing plan so you can plan in advance and make the most of them.For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

Check in every week with ACPR to get new ideas to help you market your business. This week we’re looking at your e-marketing. This is how you use email to sell your business to new and potential customers. Do you have a newsletter already? Have you got your latest offer in your signature? And how do you encourage people to sign up and subscribe? Have a look at the following list and mark the areas you need to work on. Build these into your marketing plan so you are making the most of email communication:

1. Sign up incentives to grow your contacts database
2. E-blasts: quick offers or snippets of information
3. Email signatures
4. E-newsletters: regular monthly or quarterly news and offers
5. E-vouchers: special discounts for subscribers

For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty

Check in every week with ACPR to get new ideas to help you market your business. This week we’re looking at Advertising. Think about the following sorts of advertising. Which might work well for your business? Mark the ones you need to investigate and build them into your marketing plan:

1. Classified adverts
2. Directory advertising
3. Display adverts – national and local, magazines and newspapers
4. Vehicle advertising
5. Radio advertising
6. TV advertising
7. Internet banner advertising
8. Internet text link advertising
9. Adwords – pay per click
10. Advertising hoardings and posters
11. Cinema advertising
12. Direct mail

For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty

That’s just 9 weeks to work out how to promote your business and create a great customer base to ensure success.

If that sounds like a tall order, don’t panic. There are lots of low cost, straightforward ways to promote your business. And I’ve brought them together for you in an easy-to-follow work book.

A Guide to Promoting Your Business is designed for the business owner who wants to reach more and more customers by promoting their business for just a few minutes each day.

It is packed with practical exercises that actually help you promote your business. And everything in the book has been tried and tested in my own business and my client’s businesses.

So, if you’d love more PR coverage in 2010 but are unsure how to get it, A Guide to Promoting Your Business will make it clear.

If you want to raise your business’s online profile in 2010, A Guide to Promoting Your Business demystifies online promotion.

And if you want to get to grips with affordable marketing ideas, A Guide to Promoting Your Business is the book you need.

At just £15 it could be the first step to business success in 2010.

or

Click here to Buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners on Amazon UK

I can ghost write blog posts articles and other content for you and your business.

I help you provide interesting posts for your readers with additional benefits for the search engine optimisation of your website.

Why pay for New and Original Content for your Site?

Current clients find that Google picks up my blog posts within the hour, and I know from experience with my own blogs just how well regular new content leads to dramatic rises in both visitor numbers and search engine position.

What do I Offer?

I offer to post interesting, relevant, original and unique content on a regular basis on your blog. You can choose:

• Theme of posts
• Length of posts
• Frequency of posts
• Whether you want images with all or some of the posts

You can see examples of my writing on my own blogs, ACPR and Family Friendly Working. Contact me for links to clients’ blogs which cover topics varying from celeb news, family finance, parenting and other features.

How Much Does it Cost?

The cost of the service will depend on the above factors -ask me for a personalised quote. 

Email mail@antoniachitty.co.uk if you want to find out more about how regular blogging would benefit your business.

If you missed it live, you can still get lots of PR tips and business advice from the recorded webcast. Find out about:

• Where to start with PR
• What I advise if you made a good start at doing your own PR, but don’t know where to go next
• Online PR
• Getting into the Sunday Supplements
• Competing with Big Business

Over half of new mums would like to run their own business, and the number of mumpreneurs is growing daily. If you want to start your own home business, here are some pointers from Antonia Chitty, author of Family Friendly Working, to get you going:

1. Get a great business idea. If you’re not sure where to start, sign up for the Ideas and Inspirations E-course at Family Friendly Working.
2. List your priorities such as earning money, or finding work that lets you stay home with your children.
3. Write down your skills, and ask others what they think you’re good at.
4. Think about the hours you can devote to working. Be realistic if you plan to work around the kids, as they may not understand “mummy’s working”.
5. Research the market for your business. Will people buy your product or service? Is it unique enough to be appealing?
6. Pop into a local Enterprise Agency for advice. The Inland Revenue can also send an advisor to your house.
7. Go to The Mumpreneur Guide for a free start up e-course to help you get your business going.
8. Prepare a business plan. Set out aims and objectives, and the steps to take to achieve your goals. There is a free business plan guide to download at www.prbasics.co.uk
9. Work out how you will promote and market your business. Visit www.PRBasics.co.uk  for a free promotion plan and lots of PR ideas and resources.

Good luck with your new enterprise.

I want to get as much work out of the way as possible this month as my baby is due in February, so there is a discount on A Guide to Promoting Your Business - get it for £9.90 instead of £14.99 until 28 February.

You can also buy the Parenting Media Contacts Database for just £70 instead of £125. This is the quickest way to get in touch with hundreds of parenting journalists. Buy now: I won’t be offering it while I am on maternity leave as I won’t be able to keep it up to date and in daily use myself.

Do you want national media coverage for your business? A parenting magazine is looking for pregnant women and new mums who have been inspired by their pregnancy or baby to start a business or follow a new career path. Case studies should be free for a phone interview and to attend a photo shoot in central London (expenses paid). If you want to find out more, email antonia@acpr.co.uk