I am still a newbie in the blogging world so I was delighted when established blogger Alistair Gleave invited me to write as a guest for his own site. Once the feeling of pride had worn off I was struck by the “what to write” dilemma. My blog strategy is not generally very strategic. I tend to wait for an idea to pop into my head, usually sparked off by a conversation with someone, and then write a blog post around it. I do, however, tend to stick to my area of “expertise” ie Devon Marketing Agency or Devon business development and write things which I think will be useful/of interest to my target audience.

So, when Alistair suggested to me yesterday that I write about “my year” as my guest blog I was a little hesitant. Writing about myself is slightly off patch for me and it feels a little uncomfortable so I hope this is the sort of thing he had in mind…

It has been an interesting and challenging year for me.

Just over twelve months ago I was made redundant from my very demanding, full-time, well-paid, senior marketing job and one week later my dad was diagnosed with cancer. The New Year didn’t bring the happiness we glibly invite on each other with our “Happy New Years” but brought new stress in the form of worry over money, personal insecurity and frequent trips to the RD&E.

After several months of unsuccessfully searching for jobs and spending an incredible amount of time with my family I made the bold decision to set up my own business. I have always fancied the idea of being a “Devon Marketing Consultant” but never thought I would be strong enough to create my own business. However, with my dad on the mend and no job on the horizon it seemed like the obvious decision.

Devon Marketing Agency Straight Marketing is born

Straight Marketing (to reflect my straightforward, plain-speaking and honest approach) was born in June and with my new corporate identity and business cards in hand I went off to my first networking event in early July.

Five months on I am still here and feeling quite positive about the future. I have a website I am proud of (thanks to Optix Solutions), I have learned lots of new things and engaged in new activities (social media being one of them!), I have met and made friends with lots of Exeter business people and best of all, I now have clients who have paid me for my marketing expertise and been happy with the work I have done for them! Yesterday I received a fabulous testimonial from a client that I did a marketing plan for which really makes it feel worthwhile.

In terms of my own marketing I have to admit I have been pretty useless and failed to practice what I preach. However, it does mean there is plenty of scope to develop my business, as I have by no means explored all avenues. So far my marketing has focused on networking (which I have found very effective) and some online marketing (my website, social networking, blogging).

My plans for 2011 and beyond

I have recently teamed up with a Devon PR Consultant (someone I met through networking) and we are going to trade skills to help boost each other’s business. In the New Year I plan to start targeting companies direct and build on the clients and contacts I have already made.

As for 2011, who knows how my year will pan out? At the very least I hope my dad will continue to receive the all clear at the dreaded monthly visits to the hospital and that my business will continue to grow.

About the author

Alison Jobson set up Straight Marketing following over 13 years’ experience of working with service-led businesses on the planning, coordination and implementation of business development strategies and marketing communications programmes.

In addition to Alison’s marketing experience she holds the Post-Graduate Diploma in Marketing, is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and is a Chartered Marketer.

Straight Marketing, based in Exmouth in Devon, operates as your out-sourced marketing department. You gain all the skills and experience of an in-house marketing professional without all the associated costs of employing a permanent member of staff.  Straight Marketing can also provide clarity and an external perspective, which is sometimes difficult to achieve when you are entrenched in the business.

Alison blogs regularly on marketing topics at www.straightmarketing.co.uk

Why may you ask would i want to do this? well I work in the Internet industry, and have done for a number of years, as you would expect I tweet, blog, facebook, email on a daily basis. So just for a trial I thought that I would use our French trip as an experiment for me to turn all this off and go ‘au naturel‘ to see the results for myself.

This all started with an EasyJet flight to sunny La Rochelle in western France and a weeks stay at a lovely Gite in the area… So picture the scene at Bristol airport, phone turned off and filed deep into my hand luggage and not to be turned on until 7 days later.

The internet results it turns out as expected saw my reach fall, nothing too unexpected here. For example on Twitter if you have used the tool Twitter Grader you’ll know this uses an algoritum to measure your power and reach on twitter. For me no tweeting in 1 week has seen my grade fall to 97.6 out of 100 and I have fallen 4 spots to 11 in Exeter.

But in this week I had 16 new followers and i did not Tweet at all!!

Similar falls were also experienced in Facebook and YouTube on a grading, reach and experience level – if this is what you want to measure yourself by.

The results on a personal level i think though were far more telling, for example i went to an Antiques Fair on the outskirts of La Rochelle and asked the french man in charge ‘is this advertised on the internet‘ or ‘est-ce la publicité sur Internet‘ his reply ‘Oui, mais nous aimons aussi parler aux gens‘ or ‘yes but we also like to talk to people‘.

So I guess that kind of sums the whole week up for me, there can be no doubt that digital marketing is here to stay and many companies have this at the cornerstone of their marketing philosophy which is right, BUT dont forget all the stuff that got you there, the simple engaging with customers, talking to them face to face – not everyone talks a digital language yet. When they do we need to make sure it’s made easy for them – its not daunting……

Time now to let you into a secret, people can’t spell, that right they can’t spell, so imagine all those listings where the title is spelt incorrectly, Tiffany spelt Tiffny or Panasonic spelt Panasoni – yes there are those listing out there so how do you find them and in the process get a bargain?

Well help is at hand as all you need is a free eBay misspelled search tool to find those bargains that still exist on eBay! There are literally thousands of items listed on eBay that go unsold or at a bargain price, due to mistyped or misspelled listings and you can find them by using the eBay misspelt search tool that will find the eBay misspellings, eBay typos and the misspelled variations of the bargain you are looking for and you find it here www.bargainchecker.com.

Let me know what you find, i have got a rather nice Tiffany or should I say Tiffny lamp!

The results are as follows;

Labour - Ben Bradshaw – 19,942 votes
Conservative - Hannah Foster – 17,221 votes
Liberal Democrat – Graham Oakes – 10,581 votes
Green Party – Paula Black – 792 votes
UK Independence Party – Keith Crawford – 1,930 votes
British National Party - Robert Farmer – 673 votes
Liberal Party – Chris Gale – 1,108votes

From where I am sat in Devon I think the change is far more subtle, the big media teams like the politicians themselves sit in this bubble and fill themselves with their own self importance which in my humble opinion is a parallel universe to where you and I are.

The televised debates are for me a classic example of this, last week the Sky debate had afterwards David Milliband gloating so much he was almost slug like, the self satisfaction as to what he saw and thinks we all saw was amazing as though his ‘spin’ would in some way convince everyone else as to what we saw and witnessed for ourselves. Kaye Burley was doing the rounds between all the three parties asking them to be honest but guess what they all thought there man was the best because ___ (you fill in the blank with anything!)

What for me has changed is those very politicians now look nothing more than pathetic, they are telling us how the debate we have just seen with our own eyes went as if we are incapable of forming our own opinion. And I for one was watching it along side all my twitter friends (1500 and counting) and contributing throughout this televised debate and afterwards when Kaye was doing her bit. Samples of my tweets to and fro are below;

• RT @jamesmb: As someone who pushed for a televised #leadersdebate, I feel I should apologise. – here here James… #dull #dull #dull
• @jamesmb just how old is David Milliband? he looks/sounds/acts about 12, have you just seen him on Sky? #leadersdebate
• @jamesmb Cameron won from YouGov poll #leadersdebate just heard it on Sky – wake up everyone!
• Right back to more important stuff Europa League – Fulham 0-0 and Liverpool 1 down…… sounds like even Fulham would have been more fun?
• RT @Bluegrass_IT: @jamesmb @alpenwest shouldn’t he be in bed now, after all he’s got school tomorrow Gordon will read him a story soon!
• @jamesmb have you heard him on Sky, and he is foreign secretary – do you think he takes his geography book with him – OMG!

For me this has seen the TV debates almost comical as they proceed seemingly in total ignorance as to the old media vs new media landscape has changed, the politicians sound almost ‘desperate’ or if you are the Foreign Secretary about 12!

The whole point of the TV debates is to let us decide for ourselves we do not need spin more spin and even more spin, a kind of mock the debate! Then the following day we have newspapers with their own take on events, again fitting the papers predefined script well.

I guess I am finding like many others that the traditional election coverage patronising and poor; it is in true old media ways pushed out through very narrow channels at a time and place and message that suits the ‘pushers’ with very little value added. This is in contrary to the value with new media which quickly sees through all the political guff very quickly, effectively and creates and stimulates conversation that the parties and old media, don’t control, by and large don’t contribute too and currently ignore.

Roll on May 6th.

View Larger Map

I think the question now is what inovative businesses are going to begin incorporating this in their websites. As an example when am looking to stay in a hotel I always check to see if the description, ‘stunning and peaceful location’ actually looks it on Street View or maybe the 2 minute walk to the station misses out the dual carriageway or underpass, the truth can now be seen for yourself. For me the obvious product this links with is house sales, you can now check out the exact road of the property without even going – how cool is that?

So how do they work in action, take for example the weekend just gone, I went to Sainsbury to buy a new TV a Samsung 32” in fact. Unfortunately Sainsbury had sold out BUT would have a new delivery on Thursday, impatient for a TV I then went to Currys in Exeter to find exactly the same TV but £50 more expensive, never mind I thought they have a price promise, which not only offers to match but also give you 10% of the difference.

The all encompassing price promise isn’t as it seems, it doesn’t work if the item is out of stock, the fact Sainsbury sold the TV and were getting them back in on Thursday (4 days time) carried no sway. You would have to pay £50 more for the same thing, so basically Currys let the sale walk out the door for £50 that they would have given anyway, seems bizarre to me!

And yes before you ask I waited the 4 days…..

So the upshot if you are going to offer a price promise then do it, not yes we can do it BUT ‘xyz’, we live in a competitive world where people will shop around. It was Peter Drucker who said

“Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.”

Hello there! If you are new here why not subscribe to my RSS feed for updates on this and other topics.
Surely the internet has proved to be a great place for anyone and everybody to remember someone and build some kind of profile to that, take the eternal moonwalk a place where you to can be like Michael Jackson and upload your 10 second tribute for all to see. Or maybe we should remember on these cold days back to the sunny Dawlish Airshow and the Devon Air Ambulance as well as the simply amazing Vulcan surely an awesome machine.

So my top posts of the year are;

Online food delivery, progress or a killer of the local village shop? a really important question for the community we live in that surely really needs us all to support these village amenities so they dont disappear for good.

Twitter case study – Westfield Shopping Centre this has to be one of the most amazing shopping centres i have been to. Indeed i dont think the words ‘shopping centre’ does it justice, and with a fab social media strategy they are definately one to follow.

The Importance of Quality Photography for your websiteand this is my business, helping people get the most from their website and imagery i think is so important and quite often overlooked.

And finally worthy of mention is the post five ways for a business to get its social networking right, a fact so often overlooked.

So Merry Christmas to all my readers from 2009 and heres to 2010 if you’ve liked what i’ve written or even hated it please leave a comment i dont mind.

Alistair
x

Hello there! If you are new here why not subscribe to my RSS feed for updates on this and other topics.

I am now beginning to question whether I shall continue to use eBay as I have experienced a number of issues with the site and them recently which leads me to think there are better options out there,

Integration between eBay and PayPal
I work in the Internet Industry and I have to say the payment gateway between these two is rubbish, simple as that, they clearly haven’t read any sort of documentation of attaching a shopping cart and making it work properly.
Fees
In recent months the fees for private sellers have gradually crept up to such an extent now that small items being sold, you really have to question if it’s worth it. The fees are structured with an insertion fee and a final value fee and the ‘optional’ upgrade fees and payment fees.
Insertion Fee Private Seller fee
£0.01 – £0.99 No fee
£1 – £4.99 £0.15
£5 – £14.99 £0.25
£15-£29.99 £0.50
£30.00 – £99.99 £1
£100 + £1.30

Final Value Fee
If the item doesn’t sell then no final value fee, just the insertion fee
If the item sells for £0.01 and above you pay eBay 10.0% of the amount of the winning bid, up to a maximum Final Value Fee of £40.00
And then to add insult to this process if the buyer uses eBay, yet more fees, these are currently quoted at up to 3.4% plus 20p per transaction.

Private Seller Support
I have had a number of issues recently with chargebacks and Postal strike issues and I have to say the support I was offered by eBay and PayPal was poor at best, so be warned.

Also check out my post Debenhams Outlet on eBay.

In future posts i shall cover some other options for you that may suit you better.