May 07, 2004
[Bouncing Back] Marketing Without A Budget
This was the first session of the day, so we were all getting used to how it was going to work. The format was an open discussion amongst the group, facilitated by the session hosts, so things jumped about a bit. My rough notes...
- Speaking at trade shows/seminars is a good way of raising your companies profile. After a while, the organisers will tend to increase pressure to have stands, attend shows where you'll be a paying customer, etc.
- Trade Partners UK will help with costs for trade shows (possibly just those abroad)
- Google and Overture adwords well thought of within the group
- Annual reports for competitors often include information about the market, and are generally freely available from their website
- Hiring MBA students as interns can be very cost effective, and hopefully provide good prospective employees in a couple of years
- Providing free tech papers or books as freebies can drive traffic to your website
And as a couple of the attendees were involved with journalism, there were a couple of pointers on dealing with the press
- Noticing technical errors in news stories and (politely) suggesting corrections is a good way of introducing yourself to a journalist. There's a fair chance you'll be noted down as a "friendly expert" on the topic, and then contacted for quotes on related stories in future
- Target the right journalist at the paper when sending out press releases. Shows that you've spent some effort, and helps stop your press release being lost in all those just sent to the paper
This blog post is on the personal blog of Adrian McEwen. If you want to explore the site a bit further, it might be worth having a look at the most recent entries or look through the archives or categories over on the left.
If you want to hire my company to help you with the Internet of Things then get in touch. If you want to learn more about the Internet of Things, then buy my book Designing the Internet of Things (amazon.co.uk amazon.com).