PR & social media revealed at Newbury Profit Club seminar
The Profit Club run in Newbury by Action Coach Sally Rainbow-Ockwell always offers terrific value to businesses looking for advice with a side order of networking, and yesterday it offered a masterclass to help businesses develop its marketing strategy.
A host of expert practitioners had been brought in to focus on different elements of marketing as Sally Rainbow-Ockwell, who is also an associate of Morgan PR, coached them on creating their marketing strategy.
Morgan PR kicked off talking about the role of public relations in the marketing mix and how we think it actually embraces marketing and as PR is everything you do! Organic PR, I explained (you can watch video highlight of an Organic PR seminar we gave here) simply reflects what you do. No gimmicks!
We then moved on to social media and I was joined by fellow expert Karen Chapple from Irun Newbury as we took the audience of business owners through not only how important social media is to marketing, but also suggested an approach. The Free Daily Social Media Checklist offered by Morgan PR is a great way to measure and monitor a good base level of activity.
For many newspaper advertising still has a key role to play in marketing and Nick Eyles from the Newbury Weekly News gave an insight into the penetration they can achieve and the various options open to advertisers, both in print and also online. One example of a business feature he showed turned out to be one we wrote and photographed!
Roger Goodwin from Swindon Web Design and internet marketing company, Digital Trading Creative deftly shunned PowerPoint and explained how a website should contribute to your marketing. Only a handful of hands (including mine!) went up when he asked who spent more than five hours a week updating their website. The same hands were up for those who see a return on their website. Go figure!
Morgan PR are proud members of The Best of Newbury and Dawn Ray was on hand to explain how it has evolved to become so much more than a directory and is a good place to promote your business. Unlike the traditional print directories that have moved online with static adverts, The Best of Newbury is more dynamic and can really boost your e-footprint with the search engines like Google.
Print broker Joanna Harwood delighted everyone with a great case study of how she targeted companies she wanted her business Sentio to work with... and sent them gorgeous Valentine cards. And it worked! The tactile material illustrates her bid to make print sexy and we hope to be using her services again soon!
The final speaker was networking guru Dave Clarke who entertained with a series of cartoon that took everyone through the misconceptions they might have of networking and of course, how it should be done. You can read more about his approach to successful networking here. He was modestly reticent about mentioning his own highly successful networking organisation NRG Networks, which meets across the South for a monthly lunch. It is grown up networking.
Before a tasty buffet lunch prepared by Clubhouse Catering, which saw more networking and appointment booking, there was time for a few questions. Now, social media has for some time now been the sexy seductress that attracts all the questions at these kind of events and sure enough this was where people focused. From well founded worries about starting and not maintaining a presence, through to the important of consistency.
The all important Return on Investment (ROI) also featured and is a natural concern. Achieving a good ROI requires building a good base level of support through social media that can then be leveraged with the gentle introduction of business orientated promotion alongside the essential 'social' use of your social media. You have to make friends to make money!
We promised all the delegates our handy and Free Daily Social Media Checklist which details a good baseline for what we consider best practice on using the various tools. Admittedly some of them are monthly, but the idea is to give people a consistent level of attention that will help their profile online.
Profit Club meets at 08.30 on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at Deanwood Park Conference Centre on the Western edge of Newbury. Contact Sally Rainbow-Ockwell if you are interested in building your business.