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Laura’s Diary: Day 10 – Meetings and Marketing

Mar 10 | by Laura Allen | Student Work Placements
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Today has been a different day altogether!

I began the day by completing a first draft of the microsite wording for one of our new campaigns coming up.  After I had completed this I made a start on the next one; three down and two to go.  Halfway through drafting this copy I was able to take part in a meeting with Amanda and Julie, who are thinking about organising some workshops where they will both be able to speak on different subjects concerning marketing.

This was a nice change to drafting up my campaigns and I am now helping to organise the event- which promises to be worth its weight in gold as both Amanda and Julie are highly experienced in their sectors.  I am going to be responsible for the website updates and information as well as emails.  The event itself will be taking place in May so watch out for our updates on the website as well as on Facebook and Twitter!

I then composed the minutes for the meeting, which left the rest of the afternoon to drafting up the wording for the two remaining microsites.

I researched around the subjects to gain a better perspective as well as ensuring what I had written flowed on well from the campaign leaflets themselves.  After a few hours of typing, erasing and scribbling frantically with a pen I have now completed all five campaign leaflets and the three or more pages of wording needed for each of their microsites!

All that’s needed now is a quick glance over and making any needed revisions before they can go live on the website- but don’t worry, when they do I’m sure you’ll be kept informed by my blog, Tweets, Facebook, the newsletter and Amanda herself!

Laura’s Diary: Day 9 – Newsletters and Mailing Lists

Mar 8 | by Laura Allen | Student Work Placements
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Although I have got quite a bit done today I don’t feel as productive as last week.  Even Amanda has said the day has seemed long – maybe it’s something in the air!

Anyway, what I have managed to get done today is a lot of wording for our different campaigns and the microsites that accompany them.  All five will be done by Wednesday and ready to go live so you can see some of the fantastic work Koogar does – both new and old!

I have also written numerous letters regarding different campaigns as well as a small blurb about our new city centre location and signing clients up for our email newsletter.

Hopefully everyone will have received this at some point today.  It simply highlights that if you are on our mailing list we can keep you up to date with everything new and going on in the Koogar office – it’s a great way to track what we are doing and an even better way to pick up some useful marketing tips and other information, which leads me on to my new weekly post on marketing tips…

As most of you will know I am jotting down 5 marketing tips per day that I’m in the office.  I then research them and add an explanatory paragraph, which is really useful in helping me understand the whole concept of marketing!  Anyway, from now on, every Monday around 12:00 we will be posting one marketing tip that seems the most relevant and useful to our clients.  We will also be posting a snippet of the weekly tip on Facebook and Twitter to wet your appetites, with a link to follow to the blog post on our website.

If you have already checked out the marketing tip of the day, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else, I hope you found it interesting and insightful and look forward to more to come!

Marketing Tip #1: Case Studies

Mar 8 | by Laura Allen | Marketing Strategy
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Case studies are a great way to get to know your clients individually and your business relationship with them.  They are questionnaires you write and in a way interview your clients or send them it in an email for them to fill in once you have completed a service etc for them.

Once they return it you can then create a couple of pages just from a few questions.  Information includes their background, why they chose to work with you, what they expected from working with you and what they gained from the experience.  They are great to keep in a portfolio or you can use them on your website.

Why not take a look at our case studies on the Koogar website.

Laura’s Diary: Day 8 – Toot my own horn

Mar 3 | by Laura Allen | Student Work Placements
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I don’t want to toot my own horn (for lack of a better expression), but I seem to be getting more and more productive each day!  I have completed my list of things to do AND more in 8 hours!

I spent the first two hours of the morning on my own as Amanda was out of the office.  So, naturally, I thought I’d work my socks off and try and get as much as I could done to:

a)      Prove I can be very useful and productive when unsupervised. And…
b)      To impress Amanda :p

During these two hours I completed another one of our five campaigns and typed it up so that’s three out of five done now.  Well two that are complete with their very own microsite wording to accompany them and one that is in the beginning stages of becoming a flyer- but I still crossed it off my list, as in my opinion the first draft is complete!

Next I moved onto creating two pages of wording for a company in Manchester, who Amanda is re-designing their website for them.  It’s a very rough draft as I had to generate these two pages from only three small paragraphs of information, but as an English graduate and someone who likes to talk I managed to pad it out!  I also completed and finalised my marketing tips and now have 30 that are ready to be viewed.  And if that wasn’t enough I completed first drafts of the remaining two campaigns that Koogar is excited about- very, very busy today!

For the rest of the day I utilised my time from doing small, but time consuming jobs to big and time consuming jobs!  I sent out emails for everyone in our database (which, by the way, will update you every time we add something to our website.   Whether it be a new blog so you can keep up-to-date with what Koogar are doing or a new microsite detailing some of Koogar’s new and special offers).

I have edited two blogs which we are working on at the moment- one is going to be LIVE soon and is definitely worth a read.  It’s called ‘2 things people forget once their website has gone live’.   It gives a very informative insight into what may seem like mundane elements to a website, but are in fact the most important; Domain Names & Web Hosting.

As well as completing these and a few other small tasks I have read over and made several changes to the customer questionnaire Koogar sends out to new clients.  I am very pleased with this, although I have not began typing anything up yet, as I have been mentioning it quite a lot over the last couple of weeks, but until today had yet to make an impression on it!

Overall I am extremely happy with how today has gone and am thrilled that people, including clients actually know who I am, which is of course down to the blogs and Amanda telling everyone of course!  I was speaking to a client earlier today who asked me how I was getting on and wished me luck, which I thought was lovely to do and made me feel like a true Koogar member!

Laura’s Diary: Day 7 – Blogging and Microsites

Mar 1 | by Laura Allen | Marketing Strategy, Student Work Placements
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Its been another jam packed day here at the Koogar office!

I have spent the morning working on the wording for the Email Marketing campaign micro-site.  After a couple of attempts I think I’ve finally cracked it- just need Amanda’s approval.  Once the site / page has been created I can upload the four pages I’ve been working on, which explains in a lot more detail what our email campaign is actually providing and why it is an important aspect of marketing for businesses.

I have also worked on the wording for another campaign we are currently working on; “If I had a pound…”  This is only on its first draft, but I am really pleased with how the whole campaign is progressing and can’t wait to get some feedback from prospective clients!

Throughout the afternoon I have been working on some new blog posts, which hopefully can either go onto the website by the end of today or tomorrow.  The new blog posts consist of tips, your competitors and things not to forget.  It came to Amanda’s attention from looking at the website that the blog posts seem to consist of just myself and Matt’s diary.  Now, there is nothing wrong with this as it means we ourselves, Amanda and visitors to the site can see how both myself and Matt are progressing in our new roles.  However, Amanda and I both felt the need for something other than a diary on this page.  As a result I now have a variety of topics which I am going to research and write a short blurb on so as to break up the diary entries and put some tantalising information up for clients and prospective clients to ponder over!

So, for the remainder of the afternoon (a whole hour) I am going to concentrate on the new blog posts and hopefully get one up on the website by 5pm- wish me luck!

Laura’s Diary: Day 6 – Bit of everything

Feb 27 | by Laura Allen | Student Work Placements
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Today I’ve been working from home and have made a start on the client questionnaires that I’ve been meaning to make a start on for a while now.  After doing this I began typing up my marketing tips- yes I’m still doing them, although I don’t think I’ve mentioned them since my first day, but I’m keeping on top of them.  I’m writing small blurbs of information on each of them so hopefully they can go up somewhere on the website sometime in the future and hopefully you will fing them useful.

I have also started on another press release for a feature on Koogar on another business online magazine, which should generate a lot of interest.  We will be in April’s edition and once we’ve got the details sorted feel free to check it out as we will have a special offer on there too!

All of this has kept me busy for the majority of the day and I’ve got a fresh list to make a start on next week that I can’t wait to get my teeth sunk into.

Laura’s Diary: Day 5 – VERY productive day

Feb 24 | by Laura Allen | Marketing Strategy, MyWirralHub, Student Work Placements
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Today has been a very busy, but very productive day for me!

I’m pleased to say that I have finalised the wording on another marketing campaign, which will hopefully be produced and ready in the next few weeks so I can finally talk to you in detail about some of the things I’m doing.

I have also updated some details on MyWirralHub for one of its upcoming events in March.  Although this sounds relatively simple and mundane I’m excited because now I am able to log into the site and update anything or create anything that the site needs, which is great- another string to my bow sort of thing!

I have proofread a couple of client case studies, which I spent a couple of hours on , but I love proofreading and editing anything so was in my element for these two hours.  Koogar has now created two new pages on the website – one dedicated to client testimonials and the other case studies.  I have introduced these two subjects with a small blurb and the case studies page now has a case study from a client on there, which is great and should hopefully be posted on the website (as it’s only been saved at the moment) within the next couple of days.

The testimonials look quite exciting and I know I know…how exciting can they be??? Well from my point of view…very! I came across some different styles of presenting your client testimonials which Amanda saw me looking at and now she is designing our own Koogar style testimonials for our new page!

I have finally started to look at prospective client questionnaires, which I am going to be re-wording in the near future so future clients…watch out for this!

Although it’s been a hectic day, especially for Amanda, it’s been very interesting.  I am looking into Koogar becoming part of an online magazine in order to raise our profile, but everything looks promising and Amanda is excited too, which is a great sign!

Laura’s Diary: Day 4

Feb 17 | by Laura Allen | Student Work Placements
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The MyWirralHub meeting last night was great and everyone was so friendly and had some great ideas.  I really got to see exactly how dedicated Amanda, Ida and Lucy are and how hard they work to keep the events interesting and relevant for the businesses in the area.

When I got in this morning I listened to a CD by Chris Cardell on Internet Profit Strategies.  This was a great way to start the day as it really focused me on what I had to do during the day as well as giving me some great ideas which I can implement some time in March and hopefully enhance Koogar’s profile.  It also gave me some ideas for my marketing tips- yes I haven’t forgotten about them!  I’m still on track, but think it may be time to tidy them up a bit and type them up with some background knowledge and information to support them- so this is something I can do in my spare time.

What has taken up the main part of my day has been the ACME feature I’m working on at the moment.  I interviewed Amanda earlier and have now completed a couple of A4 pages all about Koogar; what the company does, its aims and philosophy.  I’ve even included some images of the logo, website and MyWirralHub.  Hopefully this will be ready to send off next week.

I am also pleased to say that it looks like one of the campaigns/ promotions I’ve been working on is almost complete.  I ran the wording past Amanda this afternoon and she liked it so all that’s left is the layout of the design, images and printing…but then I will finally be able to discuss it in more detail and you’ll be able to have a look at it yourselves.  As you can probably tell I’m very excited about this campaign.

I feel today as if I’ve actually accomplished my first official piece of marketing for Koogar.  Although it’s my fourth day I spent my first few days getting to grips with the company and marketing in general.  Most of my day was spent researching different topics and ideas so I could do these things quickly and comfortably.  Now though, I feel encouraged that I am on the right track for promoting Koogar and have completed two fairly big tasks today as well as a few smaller ones, which has helped build my confidence.

I’ve got several ideas I am going to be working on next week and I am really enthusiastic about them and am definitely looking forward to them!

Laura’s Diary: Day 3

Feb 16 | by Laura Allen | Student Work Placements
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Wow! I can’t believe that I was awake, dressed and functional at 06:30 this morning!  I was invited by Amanda to go along to a BNI meeting, whereby a group of local business men and woman go and talk about a new product/ service that they want to promote and who their target client is in 60 seconds!

The people were incredibly friendly and made me feel welcome immediately.  Once we had mingled and had breakfast the meeting began.  Once all the members had said their pieces (and I was asked twice if I wanted to promote Koogar, which I politely declined…heart racing) it was Amanda’s turn to give a 10 minute talk on her chosen subject as one person gets this 10 minute slot per week.  The subject was Social Media, focusing on Twitter.  It proved to be a very popular topic as the majority of people did not have or use this application and were amazed at how much interest in your business it can get you.

After the meeting everyone who had referrals (contacts that others had asked for) passed them onto each other. Amanda was passed a few and in turn handed out several!  Overall I was so impressed by how much efficient networking can be done and business created from a couple of hours every Tuesday morning.  This type of organised networking is definitely worth getting involved with if you are starting up your own business.

Throughout the rest of the day I worked on an interview for Amanda in order to create a report of Koogar to send to Merseyside ACME so they can put us on their website as a Featured Business.  This will hopefully be completed by tomorrow and ready to send off ASAP- I’ll be mentioning it in my blog when it’s on there so keep your eyes on the look out!

I also created the majority of the wording for a new campaign Amanda is looking to promote by the end of this month.  Unfortunately I can’t say too much about it, but you haven’t got much longer to wait and find out.  I’ve also been looking at a client questionnaire form to see if the wording can be changed to improve the quality, but I am still working on that so not a lot to comment on in regards to it…yet.

Although I have finished my work for the day I am off to a MyWirralHub meeting tonight to meet Ida and Lucy the other women involved in this business networking organisation for the Wirral.  I am excited as I will be able to see exactly how they organise an event, which will be extremely beneficial to me as I may be required to organise a new and upcoming event for Koogar in March- fingers crossed!

Laura’s Diary: Day 2

Feb 10 | by Laura Allen | Student Work Placements
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I started the day by making a detailed list of what I wanted to have completed by 17:00.  My small list consisted of looking into marketing plans and the process which precedes them such as questionnaires.  I wanted to see how the questionnaires used by Koogar could be improved or updated.

Within the first five minutes of being in the office my list began to grow.  As in most businesses, especially those that focus their majority of time and efforts on marketing, ideas flow constantly and as one cannot stop thinking it is important to make lists (as I have found out today).

Amanda had a PR meeting at 10:00 with Train 2000 (http://www.train2000.org.uk), a company supporting women across Liverpool and Manchester who are either running or wanting to set up their own business by helping to fund them, providing training and seminars and boosting confidence.

I was lucky enough to go along to the meeting, which was different to say the least.  Amanda first had to be interviewed and filmed for a podcast then she was taken through to have her photograph taken and finally she was interviewed again, but this time without the presence of a webcam! The aim of Train 2000 is to send Koogar the podcast and a copy of the chosen photograph to use for publicity purposes.  The podcast (which we were discussing only the other day as a useful marketing technique) will be really useful as it can go on the website.  Train 2000 will be putting Amanda’s interview on their website, hopefully within the next few weeks, which will definitely be worth checking out!

After lunch I was faced again with my list, but had a welcome distraction of Rachael – Amanda’s colleague, who very kindly brought me a coffee – a perfect booster in motivating me to approach the next bullet point.

Throughout the afternoon I worked on a couple of ideas such as trying to find out if I could make Koogar a featured business on a well known business innovation website.  I am pleased to say that I had a positive response back from the websites Marketing Director and will be working on the feature asap and will keep you all updated as to if and when it goes up on the website.

I have also started working on one of Amanda’s new campaigns which hopefully will be completed by the end of the month.  However, unfortunately I can’t and shouldn’t go into too much detail, but trust me- it will be of great interest to a lot of people and hopefully because of this a huge success.

It’s now 16:55 and I am extremely happy that I have completed my to do list, but in doing so have managed to create another lengthy list to start on next week…wish me luck!

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