Plan      -       Action      -       Measure       -       Review      -     Retest

My aim is that this simple, but effective sequence will help businesses to expand their knowledge and go away and do something differently (and more successfully!) with their next marketing campaign.

Before I start please be aware that this process is cyclical so in order to make this work you need to use it in this way, it’s a learning curve and changing process with each stage being just as important as the next.

Stage 1 – Plan

I am always surprised to hear a number of businesses don’t formally do any planning for their marketing (or sometimes their business in general), planning is more often than not the key to most marketing and business success, as they say failing to plan is planning to fail. Therefore at the most basic of levels you need to consider the following before commencing any marketing campaign, I would suggest writing down the anwers –

Who are you targeting (small businesses, 50 year old females…)?

Where are they found (homes, workplace, leisure activities….)?

What do they like / dislike (price, quality, accessibility…)?

What medium will reach them (email, leaflets, adverts…)?

What are you trying to say (sale on, we have opened a new store…)?

Why should they buy from you (service, price, knowledge….)?

What do you want them to do (call you, visit website…)?

What do you want to achieve (brand awareness, enquiries, sales….)?

What does success look like (10 enquiries, 1 sale, increase in footfall…)? 

This list could easily go on and on and I would, as stated before, write your answers down - use a mind map, have a brain storm or whatever format you are comfortable with. This will then start to make some sense and will allow you to start to organise the information into sections and priorities which will, in turn, help you formulate the structure and message.

Always bear in mind that different businesses have different markets and you need to know and understand your own, some may be very broad whereas others are extremely niche, this planning process should go into as much detail as possible so you can define your campaign strategy to directly meet the requirements of your market.

By thinking about the answers, writing them down and doing some research you will go a long way to identifying what marketing tools you should be using, what message to send out and how you can maximise your success.

Keep your eyes open for the next blog post which will introduce the ‘action’ stage….

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It is well publicised that the Public Sector spending cuts will impact some businesses more than others, this seminar will offer advice to businesses so that they can make the most of the opportunities and also look to see how they can address the threats that they may face.

Presentations will be made by Keith Loven of LOVEN Patents & Trademarks, Andy Clayton of The Energy Cell, Paul Clayton of Healdi and Julie Taylor of GTI for you.

Having already run a number of successful seminars together, including one for the University of Lincoln, the organisers are keen to help businesses see how they can make the most of the changes in the Public Sector spending, Andy Clayton Marketing Manager at The Energy Cell says –

“How a business goes about its sales and marketing is pivotal to its success, those who currently rely on Public Sector contracts will need to address how proactive they are. They should also look at how they position themselves as there can be a big difference between what the Public and Private sectors look for in a supplier”

The organisers are also keen to recognise that there will be additional opportunities that will arise in the public sector, Keith Loven of Loven & Co adds –

“As budgets and staffing numbers are cut, more outsourced contracts are going to be made available, so businesses need to look at how they present themselves for these opportunities”

The seminar will give hints and tips from specialists in their field that will enable the delegates to go away and action some changes. Topics to be covered include protecting your brand, developing the image of your business, the use of the telephone and managing sales processes.

The seminar will be run in two locations, the first is at the offices of The Energy Cell in Kirmington, North Lincs on the 5th August and the second at the offices of LOVEN in Lincoln on 10th August. Both are from 4pm – 6pm, and there is a charge of just £20 to attend to cover refreshment and venue costs.

For more information about the seminars please email hello@energycell.co.uk

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Lincolnshire based design agency The Energy Cell are pleased to welcome it’s latest member to the team, Andy Clayton has joined the company to manage their sales, marketing and commercial activities.

Andy, who has a background spanning business marketing, customer service, event management and more recently as General Manager for a well known design and print business, plans to increase their engagement with businesses in the region –

“My initial aim is to bring the company to the forefront of the regional business scene, we already a have range of national and international clients but we strongly believe that our proposition and expertise is well suited to many businesses in the local area”

The Energy Cell, who have been delivering their mix of online and offline design expertise for over 10 years, are keen to continue to expand their activities, Managing Director Neil Wakefield commented

“We are delighted to welcome Andy on board; he brings along a wealth of experience in marketing and business development from a variety of industries, which will not only add value to our business, but to those of our customers too. His appointment is the first investment in our 3 year plan, in which we aim to expand the business significantly in terms of client base and financial growth”

The Energy Cell are a creative online and offline design agency developing great ideas for top businesses and brands in the UK and around the world – www.energycell.co.uk

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We’ve managed to squeeze in our annual review of  The Energy Cell website and have just pushed it live today.

This is just the first stage of a complete overhaul of the website which will include new services for our existing and new clients including Exhibition Displays (live now), Energy Cell Share Centre (coming soon), Energy Cell Contact Manager (coming soon) and Energy Cell Proposal Builder (coming soon).

In addition to this we are updating and re-organising our portfolio section with some of our latest projects and also improving the way you can view the work.

Our primary drive for this recent update to the site was to improve the web technology running the site. We took the leap to HTML5 and CSS3 a few months ago now, but as we’ve been successfully testing new techniques in design and build, we have now rolled out these tests into our live site. We know have a great foundation to deliver the latest web technologies and show our clients what can be achieved.

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We’ve recently took the plunge into the unchartered world (sort of) of HTML5. We’ve used our own site as the ‘test subject’ and taken the progression from Strict XHTML to HTML5.

Giving our clients the best solutions possible for their online presence is paramount, so keeping in touch with the latest internet technologies gives The Energy Cell the tools and knowledge to do this. We felt the emergence of HTML5 and the platform it gives for delivering such things as richer multi-media, rendering graphics on the fly, geo-location and the ability to access web applications off-line were features we wanted to be able to deliver for our clients. We shall be developing some of these techniques in our ‘testing’ area and we will share our findings once we are happy with them.

So a small reward is for our hardwork to be recognised and featured on the HTML5 Gallery

So we just need the browsers to catch up…sound familiar?

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We are pleased to announce the launch of the brand new Mars Drinks UK corporate website.

The new site sees the introduction of a new content management and web application platform delivering a range of dynamic content and services to Mars Drinks customers.

Thanks to everyone involved at The Energy Cell and the team at Mars for helping to make this happen.

http://www.marsdrinks.co.uk/

New Online Shop coming soon in Phase 2!

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Fellow designers will know what I mean when you find you’ve been working on a project for such a long time that you begin to question some of you own design decisions you made at the early stages.

It can be hard to see the ‘wood for the trees’ once your latest site has gone live or brochure has gone to print, and appreciate how good (or not so good) your work has turned out. So it can be reassuring when your work is recognised by your peers, and it’s the turn of our website to receive some attention this week.

So well done energycell.co.uk

See it here

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I’ve recently changed my mobile phone to the ’snazzy’ HTC Hero.

As the phone’s OS is built on the Google Android platform, many Google doors have opened up and I have duly stepped into them. One of these doors is Google mail, or Gmail depending on how early you have signed up to this excellent FREE service from the guys at Google.

What attracted me intially was the ability for me to store all my phone contacts as Google contacts. This means that they are stored in ‘the clouds’ as oppose to on my SIM card. This contacts list is also my address book in Google Mail. So when I make any edits to my contacts list via the web in Google Mail, my phone’s contact list will update itself. I know, amazing!

The same goes for Goole Calendar. Any event added to the calendar via my phone, will appear within Google Calendar on the web within seconds.

I am now completely ‘cloud based’, although I still have my POP3 account also collecting mails as a backup. I’m sure it won’t be long until I’ve completely fazed this out however.

It seems I’m not alone in embracing cloud based personal organisation. In a recent poll published on CSS Tricks. 53% of people asked, used cloud based email systems compared to 18% local machine based.

Go to CSS Tricks to read more about this poll.

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Great North Run 2009

On the 20th September 2009 I travelled up to Newcastle to complete my first Great North Run. It was a very sunny September day and the amount of people running was absolutely unbelieveable – never have so many lycra clad Paula Radcliffe wanabes converged in one space! (Well if they have I certainly wasn’t there!)

The atmosphere was amazing, the crowds were brilliant (a big thank you to the young girl at 11 miles handing out ice pops!) and 13.1 miles of pavement pounding later I crossed the finish line in a time of 1 hour 40 minutes and 47 seconds – finishing a respectable 190th in the ladies section (and beating Gordon Ramsey!) I must say a special thank you to the rest of the Energy Cell team for their support esepcially to Dave for recording it for me – next year maybe we can have a few more Energy Cell team members on the start line with me??

Watch this space!

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We are pleased to announce the launch of a new site produced to Mars, the FLAVIA Distributor Consumer site. The Energy Cell team have worked  closely with the Mars Drinks to create a new site to support the marketing efforts of a network of hundreds of distribution partners servicing thousands of customers across the USA.

Our design and technical teams worked with FLAVIA’s US marketing department on the design, build and implementation of content management tools. Needless to say, the site is built encompassing the latest web technologies and passes all WC3 Strict XHTML and accessibilty guidlines with flying colours.

Visit the site now and take a look for yourself, please let us know what you think…

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