In recent years, marketing has evolved from a discrete, isolated activity, to a key organisational imperative. This evolution - from casual task to core function - has brought about new, complex challenges for the marketer.
As well as mastering the practice of marketing, a successful marketing function must now undertake additional duties. It must justify its own existence, by demonstrating why and how it delivers results. It must interact with and integrate within the wider organisation, ensuring that marketing activity remains valued and respected as a legitimate function. And it must affect change throughout the organisation, so that effective marketing strategies can be enacted and corporate objectives can be met.
And for once, such grandiose ambitions are not exclusively reserved for bigger marketing departments. The lone marketer and large marketing function alike has an equal opportunity to affect change across an organisation that results not only in a better, more integrated marketing function, but also improved organisational performance and success.
So, how do you capitalise on these new challenges and opportunities for the good of your business and your customers? Our Top Tips offer five steps which, if enacted together, can lead to a truly integrated and customer-focussed marketing function.
Read Top Tips - Integrate Your Marketing Function
Regional newspapers value good quality business news. The effective use of public relations will enable you to raise the profile of your business and build a strong relationship with journalists.
Public Relations “…can be a vital and dynamic element of company’s overall marketing plan,” explains Ian Robins, Business Link’s Marketing Manager. “Unlike advertising, where coverage or space is paid for, PR is a way of gaining positive publicity through editorial exposure. PR isn’t just for big companies using national newspapers or television. Even the smallest business can use publicity opportunities to catch the eye of its local audience”.
Talking to Business Link, local business editors explain how best to get your company’s news and achievements into the media:
“We’re interested in the small start ups, we’re interested in the SMEs. Every business has a story to tell”.
Rob Buckland, Western Daily Press
“Our role is to act as a catalyst to drive business, because that’s our livelihood. We don’t have a paper otherwise.”
Ian Mean, Gloucestershire Media.
Download top tips
Listen to the full interviews : www.businesslinksw.co.uk/podcasts
For more information on writing press releases - or to view a sample press release - read the guide PR: The basics
Outsourcing can inject expertise into your business, filling skills gaps or releasing internal resources to concentrate on more important tasks. Whatever your motivation - successful outsourcing comes from effective implementation and management. It’s about what, who and how.
What you outsource depends on your strengths, weaknesses and priorities. Outsourcing secondary functions could help reposition internal resources to more worthwhile pursuits, strengthening your business. Identifying functions where you lack the expertise (or inclination) to perform specific tasks may highlight weak areas suited to outsourcing.
Who you outsource to is key. A good supplier will understand that your success is their success. Establishing an effective and mutually beneficial relationship can help protect your business in the long term.
How you outsource is about specifics. Carefully assigning roles and responsibilities between you and your supplier helps balance control. If you give too much responsibility away, it may be difficult bringing business functions back in house if necessary. Service Level Agreements can help firm up the detail, documenting assigned responsibilities and defining minimum service levels you and your supplier must work to.
Outsourcing is a two way street. If you implement and manage outsourcing properly, it’s likely you will establish productive and successful long-term partnerships.
Read Top tips - Make outsourcing work for you
More info - Outsourcing
When managing complex IT systems and services, things can go wrong. Prevention works with cure to ensure you are ready if disaster strikes. If it does, you need a plan to get your systems back on their feet before you lose too much time, money or data.
In addition to basic but important precautions such as installing security updates and maintaining tight password policies, it’s also important to think about disaster prevention from a strategic perspective, planning critical tasks such as data loss prevention and business continuity.
Read our Top tips - Prevent and cure IT disasters
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A presentation is a great way to deliver your key business messages to customers, staff or investors. We highlight ten ways you can improve your skills to make your presentations more effective.
Presentations are an increasingly important form of communication for anyone running a business. Many people find speaking in front of any kind of group a daunting prospect, but with a little preparation, giving a presentation can be one of the easiest and most efficient ways of getting your message across.
The main thing to get right is the most obvious—you need to be crystal clear in your mind what it is that you want to tell your audience. If you’re not 100 per cent clear about your message, you’ll have an uphill struggle to convince your listeners. You should be able to summarise your presentation in a few clear and simple sentences.
Once you’re clear about the substance of the presentation, you need to get the style of delivery right. Practice makes perfect, so rehearse your presentation as often as you can. If there’s a problem, don’t let a potential customer or investor be the first to point it out to you—family, friends and colleagues can be a great source of feedback here.
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Top Ten Tips - Improve your presentations