ACPR Blog

Entering awards can help you raise your business profile and get free PR. Here’s a great list from Boost Marketing to get you started:

Business Awards
- Comms Business Awards – submission deadline: 31st March
- The UK Excellence Awards (British Quality Foundation) – submission deadline: 31st March
- HSBC Start-Up Stars Awards – submission deadline: Late April
- The International Business Awards – submission deadline: 12th May(late entries 9th June with fee)
- DELL Innovative Small Business Awards – submission deadline: Mid May
- The Trade Association Forum Best Practice Awards – submission deadline: Mid May
- Nectar Business Small Business Awards – submission deadline: Mid May
- The Green Business Awards – submission deadline: 19th May
- Barclays Trading Places Awards – submission deadline: Late May (more…)

If you want to reach over five thousand people each month who are looking for flexible work or work from home opportunities, Family Friendly Working is the ideal site on which to place an advert.

The majority of our readers are female with children, and visit the site at least twice a month, viewing around 5 different pages each visit. Readership is growing at 10-20 per cent per month. Family Friendly Working has news going out to the press every month and has recently been covered on:

Baby Surrey – Baby Hampshire – Families Sussex- Hire My Parents – The HR Director - HR Magazine  - Kidzine  - Mum and Working  - My Baby Radio  - Ni4Kids  – ParentDish -  Practical Parenting – Totz2teens - StartUpDonut - UKParentsLounge - What to Do With the Kids - Working Mums

Take advantage of our excellent links to parents by advertising on Family Friendly Working. A regular text link is just £2 per month on the Flexible Opportunities Page or Parent-Run Businesses Page. 

You can upgrade to make what you offer really stand out and include a banner on one of these pages for an affordable £9 per month

For the highest profile and to guarantee appearing alongside the latest content every day, you can opt for a front page advert.

Contact antonia@familyfriendlyworking.co.uk with any enquiries.

Please note that once you have submitted your payment details we will be in touch to request your text, banner or advert. Please note that you are making a recurring payment. If you want to cancel your advert at any time, you can simply cancel through Paypal.

Mumpreneur Profiles and Flexible Business Ideas Features

Once you have booked your ad, make sure that you maximise the chance to promote your business. If you would like to tell us about how you fit in work and family, look at the Q and A here. And if you want to tell others about your business opportunity, click here.

Press Releases

We are interested in news, views and events for mums and dads, working parents and people who run small businesses. If you run a small business, have a work from home opportunity, offer a franchise or publish information for businesses, please email your press releases to antonia@familyfriendlyworking.co.uk

Image by Sarah G

Get inspired when you hear Antonia share her tips for promoting your business or talk about how becoming a mumpreneur changed her life, and can change yours too.

March 2010

24th March Practical PR For South East Womens Business Service in association with the Athena Network and 1066 Enterprise

April 2010

21st April Antonia is speaking to the West London Businessmums’ Networking Lunch Times and ticket to be announced shortly

26th April Antonia is visiting Networking Mummies Dorset to run two Masterclasses and answer questions over lunch

May 2010

16th May Get great Mumpreneur Tips, Harrow when Antonia Chitty speaks to Excelsya.

28th May Q and A with Mums the Boss Leicestershire

June 2010

27^thJune Brighton Baby Expo Brighton Racecourse & Conference Centre 10am-4.30pm

September 2010

18th September The Mumpreneur Conference

October 2010

5th October The Business Mums Conference Brighton

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has joined forces with other business and employment organisations to call on small firms to sign a petition urging the Government to freeze National Insurance.

Research by the FSB with the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) found that increasing employers’ National Insurance by one per cent will cost 57,000 jobs at a time of record unemployment figures, but will not give any substantial help to plug the Government’s gap in public finances.

The FSB wants to see businesses using the petition to persuade the Government to reverse the planned one per cent rise in National Insurance and put a halt on any future rises in the foreseeable future. Raising taxes on small businesses must be a last resort if they are to do their job of helping to put the country on a steady road to recovery. (more…)

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 networking.

Word of mouth is one of the best ways to get new business: people take personal recommendations seriously. You need to be businesslike about generating recommendations, through, and networking is a good place to start growing the number of people who understand what’s great about your business and will tell friends and colleagues.

An endorsement or coverage in the media can be stronger than any advert as readers and viewers see it as an independent rating of your business. Using the media can be a low cost way to raise your business profile and attract new followers.

The key to effective networking is finding the right places to network, both online and face to face. Try a number of networking groups or websites. You will soon work out which ones show dividends for your business. Make regular networking online part of your daily activities, and build in face to face networking events as often as fits with your business.

Here are some networking activities to build into your marketing plan on a regular basis:

1. Develop great business cards with a call to action to pass on
2. Find online networking sites that suit you
3. Try a few face to face networking meetings to find one that works well for you
4. Practice your elevator pitch so you can sell what’s great about your business in less than a minute
5. Look into affiliate networking systems

We’ll look at your promotional materials for marketing next 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.

Do you need some ideas for press releases? Think about tying a release into a forthcoming event or awareness week. The list below comes courtesy of Expert Sources, a great site to subscribe to if you are trying to raise your profile as an expert.

—————————————————
MARCH 2010
—————————————————
Monday March 01
St David’s Day

Thursday March 04 – Sunday March 14
Geneva International Motor Show

Sunday March  07
OSCARS Awards Ceremony (more…)

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 the media. An endorsement or coverage in themedia can be stronger than any advert as readers and viewers see it as an independent rating of your business. Using the media can be a low cost way to raise your business profile and attract new followers.  

Think about the activities in the following list and consider which ones could work for your business. The key to getting good media coverage is to send out regular news. Work on your media relations little and often by building your chosen activities into your marketing plan on a regular basis:

1. Pitching and writing articles
2. Writing and sending news releases
3. Writing and sending letters to print media
4. Offering expert comments
5. Seeking out and putting forward case Studies
6. Holding media briefings
7. Supplying photographs and product images
8. Creating and sending media packs
9. Providing spokespeople
10. Running surveys and polls
11. Writing and promoting white papers
12. Product launches
13. Offering competitions

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.

If you’re looking for an inspiring day networking and learning new skills to take your business, go to Women Unlimited’s conference on March the 8th.Women Unlimited have kindly offered readers the chance to win a ticket to the conference. Follow the link to let me know that you’d like to enter. 

All entries must be in by Midnight 28th February 2010. Find out more about the Stepping into Success conference here.

I’ve just had a very confusing press release all about how confusing business energy tariffs are. Apparently there is new guidance to make it easier for small businesses, but because different energy suppliers have interpreted the rules in different ways, that’s not helped either. If you have business premises and want to see if you can get a better deal for your power supply, there’s a free guide to download from Make It Cheaper.com. They can also advise you on switching to a better deal.

Seventy-five percent of all businesses survive in the first year, but half of those fail during the next six years. The non profit organisation Small Business Administration lists from their research 7 key success factors:

1. Start for the right reasons
2. Good Management
3. Sufficient Capital
4. Location, Location, Location
5. Sufficient Planning
6. Sustainable growth and expansion
7. Have web presence

Their research shows you need to be successful in many areas to be a successful entrepreneur. However, there is one common area of failure, Insolvency Helpline UK states on their website: “50% of all failures are caused by cash flow problems”.

When starting a business many competing priorities need to be dealt with and Brad Rosser previously right hand man from Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson suggest in his presentations:

• Pay a little bit more if it means you can spread-out payments
• Spend the cash on items that bring in cash and not the back-office (more…)