My Marketing Dept Ltd

Discover how to hitch an easy ride straight to new customers. ‘Chocolate and wine go fine’ may not be a famous saying, but it is one that prompted Naked Wines, a direct-to-home wine seller, to partner up with Hotel Chocolat, a high-end chocolate retailer. Every time the customer would open their home delivery of Hotel Chocolat, a glossy Naked Wine voucher for £50 would flop out and tempt the chocolate lover to signing up to a wine delivery subscription. Naked Wines had correctly surmised that people who have chocolate delivered to their home might well be the same sort of people who would like wine delivered to their home too. What other businesses could be selling to your potential customers? Find out here https://lnkd.in/enVsDKMf

How do I find the best sales channels for my business? Many business owners probably only have a vague understanding about how their individual sales channels are performing, let alone which sales channels could perform the best for their type of business. What is a sales channel? A sale channel is an area of activity that helps people progress down your sales funnel at either the ‘awareness’, ‘interest’, ‘desire’ or ‘action’ phase of their purchase journey. Examples of sales channels include Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Linkedin, Google search and paid advertising options. But the list is growing by the year and there are new sales channels that will bring you sales, that didn’t even exist five years ago. Continue reading https://buff.ly/3T1u1AO #saleschannelanalysis #discovernewsaleschannels #areyouusingthebestsaleschannels

Do you want to know what the ultimate productive sweet spot is for the time spent doing social media versus the benefit to your small business? Social media can be a minefield if you are a small business. It can also be your best performing sales channel, if optimised correctly. It is no secret that social media giants want you to spend every living minute of your life to be actively on, using, looking at or creating engaging content on their platform. The more ‘eye-minutes’ they get on the advertisements that they serve up, the better. If those eyes are wide open and connected to an engaged mind, then even better. The platform algorithms that dictate how many people see your posts, are completely guided by these desired commercial outcomes. However, in an ideal world everything that you do for your business should be supporting the output that your customers are paying you for. Following this logic, you should be spending no time at all looking at, reacting to or commenting on social media. Is social media a complete waste of your time? Discover how to make sure it isn't https://buff.ly/4e17pbZ #socialmediatoptipsforsmallbusinesses #socialmediatips #socialmediabusinesstips

What are your company values? Are they manifested by the principles you personally believe in or the attributes you want the outside world to believe your business has? Greenwashing is an example of the latter, where is the business is portrayed as environmentally friendly when the real reason was cost cutting, or the change required no effort and was going to happen anyway. Your first value then should be authenticity, right. However, some values are assumed, and most customers expect their supplier to be 'authentic' to them in any case. This value is a given. If you are a B2B company like My Marketing Dept then I am sure you could include the following company values such as - Value for money  - Friendly and supportive  - Nice However, this can also be seen as a given and somewhat generic. So how do you communicate a value that is both authentic and is not a given. The answer to that is what people say about you and your your business when they don't realise you can hear them or see their comments about you to others. It is often what people think about you, when you’re not around. Therefore, when people say 'What a kind guy', 'He respects my abilities' and 'He has taken a huge weight off my shoulders' it is those comments that should become my values: My company values mirror my own values which are: - Be kind, always - Respect everyone's abilities - Add real value to their life If you would like a marketing services supplier with those values, then let's talk. https://buff.ly/41eRgKz?

Top Tip Time Fed up with receiving irrelevant spam messages via your website contact form? I know I am and worse of all, you cannot unsubscribe from these persistent contact form abusers. However, there is a simple free trick you can use to eliminate this poor behaviour and inbox nuisance. 1. Sign into your Google account, if not already signed in. 2. Search for 'reCAPTCHA admin console'. (reCAPTCHA is a Google product) 3. Click on any link containing the words 'Register' or 'Enable' 4. Once on the admin console, select 'Score based (V3)', add your website address under 'Domains', tick the T&C's check box and select the 'Submit' button. 5. You will now be presented with 'SITE KEY' and 'SECRET KEY'. 6. Open a new tab on your browser and login to your website editor platform e.g. Wordpress, Squarespace etc. 7. Navigate to your contact forms using the platform menu (e.g. contact form 7) and select 'integrate'. 8. Choose 'reCAPTCHA' from the list, followed by 'Setup integration'. 9. Go back to the first browser tab and copy the site key and secret key across to the fields in the second tab. 10. Finally 'activate' reCAPTCHA for that form by selecting the button underneath the completed fields in the second tab. That's it, all done. If you are looking for someone to help you with your marketing tasks or strategy then contact me via my contact form and I promise you that there will be no 'pictures of traffic lights' to select or 'I'm not a robot' boxes to tick. https://buff.ly/3P2tzPX #contactformspam #eliminatespam #mymarketingdept #optimiseyourtime

Nothing causes more stress for busy parents than trying to get their child, who has special educational needs, into the right school. However, what really caught my eye this week was a comment made by Councillor Steve Forster, from Hampshire County Council, that the number of children and young people who require extra support 'has risen exponentially in recent years'. Let's just pause and reflect for a moment on the word 'EXPONENTIALLY'. As an ex-physicist, I know a thing or two about exponential growth. At it's root, it is a number that doubles after a set period of time and repeats this doubling after the same period of time until whatever is doubling runs out. In this case this would be the number of children who don't have special educational needs and disabilities . A grim forecast indeed! So what's going on? Are these disabilities caused by something we are eating, not eating? Is it electromagnetic signals or lack of exercise? I don't know, but anything that is growing exponentially is going to become a major problem for society in the near future. Maybe I am getting too dramatic. Maybe this Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) is simply being driven by exponentially better diagnosis as health professionals, teachers, parents and the suffers themselves now know what to look for. Do you think that more children and young adults are becoming disabled or that SEND diagnosis has got better? Many of My Marketing Dept clients are disabled in some manner and the business actively supports clients, regarding their business growth objectives, in a disability friendly way. If you would like to discover more about how we help people with disabilities then book a chat here. https://buff.ly/41eRgKz? #SEND #SENDrising #mymarketingdept

To employ or not to employ? That is THE question. You may be pondering the same question as some of my clients. Do you take on employees as your business grows? If you are a one person band now, hiring an employee effectively means DOUBLING your workforce! Yes, I know, it is a big step and a big leap of faith in your ability to feed two mouths rather than one. I also know it is the main measure of success and something most business owners anticipate as a sign of their entrepreneurial prowess. Let us have a quick look at the pluses and minuses of employing your first employee: + a dedicated resource that is entirely under your control + someone you can mould and develop into a highly productive engine of profit + someone to celebrate Christmas with at corporate Christmas parties + a lower hourly rate compared to outsourcing the same work - a potential lead necklace of high fixed costs around your corporate neck - the risk you may have picked the wrong person for the role - people bring problems as the saying goes, be prepared to spend time dealing with them - the cost, time and on going administrative hassle of recruiting an employee - the risk that they cannot adapt to changing work demands as the business grows It's a difficult choice. Employee someone if: The work can be neatly defined in a job description and you are confident that that level of work will continue for the foreseeable future then go for it! Get hiring. Top tip, try LinkedIn job board first, it is free for recruiters and job seekers. Don't employ someone if: Just a few months of paying your new employee without any paid work to do, would result in severe hardship for you or worse. Consider instead: - Working longer hours for a few more months to see how stable the work flow is - Outsourcing that work or other work that ties up your time, by the hour to a trusted or recommended third party - Turning down the extra work for now and see if it keeps coming back as an opportunity If you prefer the outsourcing option then lets talk. My Marketing Dept can temporarily or permanently lift all the burden of your day-to-day operational marketing tasks off your shoulders and free up your valuable time to reduce the risk of taking on an employee too soon. Our hourly rate of £35 + vat is lower enough to make economic sense for most businesses where the person being relieved of these tasks typically charges their customer an hourly rate that is greater than this. Book a chat https://buff.ly/41eRgKz? What we do https://buff.ly/3ZBHgKP #employornottoemploy #Optimiseyourtime #dowhatyoudobest #marketing

Happy New Year to you. So what do you plan to do differently this year? Or do you fancy a repeat of last year's box set of distractions, mistakes and unproductive working practices? Naturally, you want to improve on last year even if that means achieving the same thing in less time. But can you make this change on your own? Do you even know what needs improving? If it is your business that could do with a marketing check up and a spoonful of new inspiration then let's have a chat. Who knows, it may be the most productive conversation that you have had so far this year. Book a chat https://buff.ly/41eRgKz? What we do https://buff.ly/3ZBHgKP #Optimise2024 #dowhatyoudobest #marketing #marketingaudit

Merry Christmas and thank you for your support. As I down tools for the rest of 2023, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude to all my clients. They have enabled me to work from my trout stream flanked garden office for another straight year. They have supported an environment that allows me to look after my occasionally sick children and my mental health. Perhaps, most importantly for me is how much I have learnt this year by working with some very fine business minds. My clients are a constant source of inspiration for me for the amount of physical and mental stamina that they have and their ability to bounce back from set backs. I wish all my clients the very best of success in 2024, you all thoroughly deserve it. Have your customers taught you any thing in 2023? #merrychristmas #thankyou #mymarketingdept

Do you live in the present moment? For people that run their own business this can be quite a difficult thing to do. We are forever having to plan ahead, ensure the sales funnel is full for next month and figuring out our plan to be become filthy rich or simply survive. However, it is almost Christmas and it's time to put the mouse down and enjoy the moment. My moments that I plan to savour include: - Finishing the last work task of the year - Wrapping the last Christmas present (I find wrapping a chore, this that bad?) - The kids running into the bedroom on Christmas day, excited to have discovered some of their small presents left by their bedroom doors. - Looking forward to playing various board games with the family - Looking forward to imbibing a bit of magic water and eating my body weight in chocolate, mince pies, Christmas cake and turkey. - Looking forward to seeing friends and family over Christmas - Starting the New Year refresh, recharged and slightly fatter. What present moments are you looking forward to having? #liveinthemoment #enjoythepresent #mymarketingdept #nearlychristmas