The Marketing Matters Podcast

Since marketing began, the idea behind it hasn't changed: communicating and advertising what you do to your market. To achieve that, a steady flow of content reflecting your business proposition should be a significant priority. While websites and hosting can be considered the tools that allow for you to communicate, you also need the skills and resources to achieve an effective marketing solution.

Continuing our series on bridging the technology gap, we go behind the scenes and take a look at web hosting. Good hosting can make or break how effective your site is in the ultimate goal of driving your business. The wrong type of hosting can either give poor performance or, at the other end of the scale, you pay over the odds for something you don't need. While a website is important for your business, the hosting is just as important for your website.

A website is a very important marketing tool and can be your single most important piece of marketing collateral, yet many people don't take advantage. The building of a website is considered a project and, once completed, sits there rarely to be touched again. Typically this is because of the "technology gap" between the experts hired to build the site, and the SME businesses left wanting to use it but not knowing how. A website needs to be used proactively, something only achievable if you feel full ownership of it.

Over the next several episodes we will be exploring the way technology and the real world of business should fit together,

Over the series, we will be considering a wide range off business issues including websites, promotion and content. Our aim is to help you to think differently as to how to approach technological challenges. 

This is something I was told when I did some Sales Training at the start of my career back hen Adam was a lad, and its stuck with me. This week we discuss the importance of listening to and understanding your customers.

If you want to add value to your offering, then understanding your expertise and applying it to make your customers lives easier or more fruitful is a sound strategy.

During lockdown, most retailers are shut and prevented from regular sales. While they waited to officially re-open, many have gone with a barebones "click and collect" system across social media but are they missing a trick? What can they do to improve business and make it stronger post-pandemic? Marketing is not just something on the backburner for when you're short on work, it's an on-going process that continually needs to be addressed.

When presented with a task, your first objective is to achieve your goal. However, with the incorrect tool at your disposal, this can quickly morph into the frustration of just trying to make the tool work. Whether its hardware, software like a wordpress plugin or a relationship with a partner or supplier. If you can get the right tool for the right job, the investment will help not just now but in the future.

In the tech world, it seems to be a more and more rare occurrence that you communicate with a real person. Automation is the popular way to go and, when it works and delivers what's required, is great. But when you're presented with a challenge you can't solve alone, access to a real person is invaluable. 

Creativity and innovation are the most important drivers in business... so why is true creativity now so rare? Today "new" ideas are either truly creative and backed up by big investment, or are more generic developments of existing ideas.

In today's podcast we look at the creative process within SMEs, and examine ways that you can build creativity into your business without it costing the earth.

Over the past 6 months, "working from home" has taken a whole new meaning. The suggestion is that everybody wants to work from home but is that actually true or is it simply a case of they don't want to commute? Spending lengthy periods on public transport or sat in a traffic jam every single day isn't a good use of anybody's time but, on the other hand, always working from home can be an isolating and lonely experience. What people really desire is freedom of choice.