Brightfire

Content marketing is a new and emerging marketing strategy that is quickly becoming a major consideration to be included in a companies online marketing toolkit as the traditional methods of marketing become less efficient and so more costly.

The web allows companies and brands to showcase their expertise and (continue reading…)

Anyone engaged in sales and marketing activity will have made many cold calls in their time. But for us at Brightfire the number of cold calls we make and expenditure on mass media marketing have reduced dramatically in the past,  yet sales have increased and business is much more interesting. Couldn’t you find a better use of your time and money?  Think of how your life day-to-day sales routine could change if you were calling only prospects who you know actually want to buy from you. At Brightfire we know that many firms still – despite all the media noise and hype out there – have not realised it’s a digital world and the old rules have been thrown out the window.

So how would you optimise the online presence of your business  to drive inbound enquiry for new customers and not have to cold call again or buy expensive mass media? Here are a number of strategic considerations to drive traffic to your ecommerce  website, enquiries to your email inbox and make your phone start ringing: (continue reading…)

News from the Independent today:

Britons are the biggest online spenders in Europe, making nearly a third of all internet purchases across the continent during 2009, a report showed today.

Consumers in the UK collectively spent an estimated £38 billion online last year, accounting for 30 per cent of total European internet sales, according to price comparison site Kelkoo.

Despite the recession, online sales grew by 12 per cent in the UK during (continue reading…)

It’s pretty common. A small business owner comes to us looking for help promoting his or her business. We suggest using Twitter as a way to find new leads, build relationships and as an overall way to cost effectively market their business. The small business owner then turns around, tilts their head and responds, “Twitter? What can Twitter do for me?”

Well, We’ll tell you. Below are 80 ways a small business owner can use Twitter to build and market their business.

Build Credibility

1. Answer common customer questions
2. Share insight and opinion
3. Pass on interesting links/posts
4. Tweet links showing your company featured on other Web sites or mainstream media
5. Tweet often to keep your brand in customer’s top of mind
6. Share high quality content that is relevant to your customers needs
7. Share information about your organization that customers, colleagues and others may be interested to know
8. Promote competitors when they deserve it
9. Tweet links to Slideshare presentations or videos of speaking engagements.
10. Promote upcoming speaking engagements
11. Mention awards you’ve won or accreditations you’ve earned
12. Be the one to break the news in your industry
13. Livetweet events

(continue reading…)

I first highlighted this back in 2006 when undertaking some research for SPT, but it’s now been confirmed by the latest predictions of Gartner: By 2013, more people will be accessing the web from mobile phones than from PCs.

Gartner predicts that there will be 1.78 billion PCs in use that year, outstripped by the 1.82 billion install base of smartphones and browser-equipped feature phones.

“Websites not optimized for the smaller-screen formats will become a market barrier for their owners,” claims Gartner. “Much content and many sites will need to be reformatted/rebuilt.”

This new report also predicts that context – including location, presence and social interactions – will become as important to mobile services as search engines are to the web.

“The most powerful position in the context business model will be a context provider,” says Gartner. “Web, device, social platforms, telecom service providers, enterprise software vendors and communication infrastructure vendors will compete to become significant context providers during the next three years.”

To view the report in full, click here.