I was talking to a client yesterday and he told me that the most frustrating thing for him had been that he knew what marketing he wanted to do but that he didn’t have the time to: Pull it all together Update the company brochure Regularly update the company web site Agree and release press [...]

Blogs have been around for quite a while now and we do still seem to have a variety of newspapers and magazines available. That said there’s no doubt that the print media dominance has been severely eroded. I’ve talked before about how the number of readers of print media has been dropping for several years [...]

We all like to think we have a valuable ability to do an amazing presentation to our clients, employees and others. Unfortunately from long and sometimes bitter experience I can attest to the fact that there are very few people who are great presenters from the day they start. I’ve actually sat through presentations where [...]

Car sales consultant, Thomas Stuker, is being rewarded by United Airlines for flying with them 5,962 times. Amazingly he’s flown the equivalent of 400 trips round the world. The CEO of United, Jeff Smisek, was there to congratulate Stuker when he flew into Chicago from Los Angeles. As a member of the United Airlines Global [...]

I went to a menswear shop in Manchester today. It’s not in a particularly great location, and yet it’s close to the city centre. Plus it has free parking in the streets nearby. I’d popped in once before because I was intrigued by its location and I suspected that it probably wasn’t doing too well. [...]

I’ve put this Hiscox sponsored article on the blog because I think it’s important that SMEs know where they stand regarding cyber crime and can get some specialist advice. New research by specialist small business insurer Hiscox reveals that 75% of SMEs* do not feel completely confident that their office premises are safe from thieves and nearly a quarter [...]

Apprentices bake up some good results. Still, someone gets fired!

Captain America is being filmed in Manchester (UK) as I write. How do I know? Firstly, I live in Manchester and I’ve seen notices tied to lampposts telling me where I can’t park as filming is happening. Secondly I’m getting an amazing number of tweets about Captain America from many of the people who use [...]

Put strategy versus tactics in a boxing ring and strategy gets a knockout every time. That was the thought that ran through my mind as I discussed this very subject with a potential client. And yet that isn’t obvious to an ambitious, or desperate, business owner. Many times a business owner wants to have a [...]

The junior apprentice teams reverted back to boys (Instinct) against girls (Revolution). The task? To choose a bottled water to brand and sell. And as is usual in the final the finalists got to choose the people who’d been fired in the previous rounds. The end result was that Revolution was composed of girls, except [...]

Tim gets to demonstrate his project management skills, or does he?

Junior Apprentices make a complete cake of selling cup cakes in Selfridges

Junior Apprentices create Slide Stuff and Flex n Store. Find out which gets the most orders and who gets fired and whether it’s fair…

Does anyone truthfully know the reason for the growth of Internet marketing? I remember in the early days web sites were very unsophisticated and shopping karts and Paypal and Google didn’t work like they do now. People seemed to have very little trust that the Internet would deliver the goods they chose and bought. There [...]

I’ve just heard from a friend that there is to be no funding for social media training. Interesting… Internet marketing has radically changed the way we all do business. Social media is one component of that. It’s the newest and it too has the ability to change the way you do business. And it’s not [...]

Rob Shoesmith’s iPhone app called ‘Problem Halved’ has sold over 3.7m copies at just a dollar each. Shoesmiths success is the inspiration behind the launch of a free course to teach 18-24 year olds, based in Manchester, how to create cutting-edge mobile phone applications. THE WHITE ROOM is launching the unique course to help budding [...]

Social Media Marketing or social marketing as it’s becoming better known has actually been around for quite a few years now. It’s not just Twitter or LinkedIn. Social marketing also covers blogging, which only really started in December 1997 and started to take off much later around 2003/2004. Similarly Twitter started in March 2006 and [...]

Social Media Marketing – the workshop to workout whether to do it, what to do and how.

Social media strikes fear into company executives hearts. It raises many fearful questions, some of which may be in your head right now… Questions like: Q1 How can we prevent employees spilling the beans about what happens inside our company? Q2 What about if our customers leave negative comments? Q3 Isn’t it a gift to [...]

Social media hype drips from the keyboard of many enthusiasts. Yes, it’s a way of developing a conversation, yes it’s a way of improving rapport and yes it’s possible to display your expertise. However, without making sales, or promoting sales the whole exercise with social media is pointless and a complete waste of time. Remember [...]