I was priveleged to act as a resident Business Consultant at the latest BStartup show at Olympia which took place …

 

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… on Thurs 26th anf Fri 27th November 2009.

I conducted Business Strategy Consultations for many businesses, however in particular we worked with www.InMarketingConsultancy.com who was ably represented by Rosamaria Reig.

The company works to assist Spanish based companies to conduct business in the UK and also those UK based organisations who need marketing expertise to be able to operate and sell in the Spanish market.

Blogging is one area of using the internet that is misunderstood. Blogs are seperate and distinct from a ’standard website, blogs are in nature dynamic with frequently changing content and is a vehicle that is used strategically to drive business and branding.

 

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Small business owners have a great oppotunity to compete on a global stage by making use of their blog, the business owner must understand that they actually do not have to produce all of the content that appears on their blog [even though I write all (I have one guest writer) the content on mine !] if they are not that that way inclined :-

• Use your blog to build your brand online
• All top sports people, politicians, celebrities use blogs
• Use your blog to promote your expertise
• Use your blog to give relevant content to the world reinforcing your brand

Making use of the new technologies which includes blogging should be an integral part of any company’s ongoing marketing strategy; starting today – make it a part of yours. If you do not know what to do then, get help, ask, barter, negotiation : get in touch with me and we’ll see how we can help you on your way.

-Stephen C Campbell

At the end of last year my business partner and Public Relations Expert Kelvin Graham put on an event at Cass Business School where I spoke about Marketing Strategy Development with a focus on using the internet as a primary marketing channel. You may listen to an exerpt here – let me know what you think

 

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Key points :-

• Branding is a key component of a company’s marketing strategy
• Consider what your brand is
• Determine how you will communicate your brand to the world at large
• Ponder your brand as the business owner
• Consider the brand of the company as seperate and distinct from your personal brand

Ok, so let’s continue with these thoughts on Small Businesses making use of Business Consultants :-

Making using of a business consultant certainly does not mean that one does not have the requisite skills to run their business.

One of the main advantages to using a strategic business specialist is that they can take a look at ones business with a critical eye and help one fine tune it. They can help to see what can be improved with the operations and what needs to be changed.

The fact is that the advice that will be given by using a specialist strategic visionary and expert business marketing consultant may not always easy to hear, but the advice may help to advance ones company.

Taking the steps to hiring a strategic business consultant really goes on to help people see that the business owner cares enough about their company to actually go and ask another person, that is someone who is more experienced and knowledgeable, how it can run more smoothly and how they can improve upon the operations.

When we analyse some of the reasons why the smaller companies fail, we can see that the reasons can be put down to to lack of a strategic business plan to follow. Getting outside help can assist move the operation forward in the right direction.

So in summary, with the use of the internet one is now able to get expert from the other side of the globe, so do not let anything act as a barrier or hindrance. Make mentoring and coaching something as a matter of course that you have as a part of your business’ overall strategy and direction.

Any thoughts or comments please get in touch and let me know if there is anything I can do to help you with the direction of your business.

-Stephen C Campbell

This is the first of a two part post on the subject of Business Consulting with small businesses. You see, I speak with a lot of small business owner and am constantly suprised at how many of them try to do everything themselves, are generally resistant to change are typically not marketers and in most cases have never made use of an expert marketing consultant to help them to get where they want to get to, in as short as possible time – here goes …

It is a matter of course that businesses will continue to make use of the skills of strategic business and marketing consultants. We see this on a constant basis with the larger corporates filling in the gaps of knowledge and skills as a matter of course by hiring in professionals who are skilled in specific areas that are needed by the company at any given point in time.

When it comes to dealing with some of the smaller companies we see that it is not uncommon for those business owners being wary of hiring in business consultants, for many and varied reasons including the fact that they feel inadequate and not in charge of all of skills required to run their company.

We know that that is really the wrong view to take, and in actuality that view is really far from the truth. As mentioned above there are many very successful people in business who use business consultants to help them amongst other things to develop their niche marketing strategies. The thing about these specialists is that they can take a look at your business with an unbiased and impartial view. These specialist should be looked upon as an editor of a newspaper. When people write articles for the newspaper, often they cannot see the mistakes that they have made. The editor takes the article and fine tunes it to look and read the very best that it can.

… More on this in this business marketing strategy post