Where's the magic?

Guest blog by Sheryl Tipton

PR and marketing are funny things. Every business needs them but few really know how to get the best from them.

It’s fine if you’re part of a large company with an in-house marketing team ready to jump onto Facebook every hour of the day, or produce reams of content to boost your ratings; but if it’s your small or medium sized business and it’s down to you to find and develop potential new customers, losing out on your PR and marketing could mean losing out to your competitors.

So, where to start? Should you do a little bit of Twitter? Could you write a few blogs? Or are you better spending that hard earned cash on a glossy brochure? All three (and more) are often points for discussion when I first meet clients, or even when just casually chatting at networking events. 

Tell someone you’re a PR expert and their eyes light up (especially if you’re carrying a magic hat and can conjure up rabbits too!) as they then hope you’ll able to fix their marketing over the time it takes for you to drink a cup of coffee. It’s not that easy unfortunately BUT a good, well thought out and timely strategy will go a long way to helping you achieve your goals.

Having a PR and marketing strategy means putting a system in place. There does need to be organisation, thought, time and creativity, but once you begin to understand that most of what you need revolves around your ideal target audience, not your product, then things become a lot simpler.

There are so many ways that you can promote yourself in the fast paced world in which we live, but again once you begin to mould your content around your target market, the places that in which you should promote yourself, be they online, in the media or elsewhere, begin to slowly become apparent, without too much difficulty, and this then guides your decisions.

PR and marketing experts are sadly not magicians. We can’t wave magic wands and make new customers appear for you in a flash (oh I wish we could, it would be so interesting on a cold June day) but what we do is work very hard to make sure that the communications you put in place in your organisation really deliver results for your business.

And now, even better, through our training courses we can now help you to independently know where to start, and how to write your own strategy.

Our half day course will help you to:

·         Understand the elements of a marketing plan

·         Identify your target audience/s

·         Use competitors to your advantage

·         Work out your business strengths, weaknesses and USPs

·         Understand the stages of the customer buying process

·         Choose the right solution to promote your product or service

·         Maximise attention across all channels

·         Use all resources, without breaking the bank!

·         Evaluate the return on your investment in effective PR and marketing 

So, if you’re struggling to know how to begin, or if you’ve spent some time on marketing with little result, do come along to our PR and Marketing session in Brighton on 17^th June, and see how we can spread a little magic to help you stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Book an Early Bird rate now here: Chimera Courses