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Business in Berkshire
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Keeping Up With the Joneses!
For as long as I can remember I have been leading the way. I don’t mean to sound arrogant - and anyway, any business guru would tell you it’s not the best place in the food chain unless you have mates with big pockets! (Google buying Youtube!)
In my early career I was responsible for launching Acuvue contact lenses into the optical market. As a sales rep I changed the mind set of the opticians and along the way was responsible for producing a co-operative advert that saw the ad sales person win an award across the United Newspapers Group that year approx 1987-88. I turned my patch from zero into £1.7m during the 7 years I was there. Won sales competitions in years 1 and 3, could have won year 2 but let someone else win as they had worked hard. This didn’t go down well with the senior management as my gentlemanly conduct was seen as a sign of weakness! Year 4 I’d had my fill of corporate politics but enjoyed 3 or 4 holidays a year and worked my own hours, so I stuck around until I was heading for 31 and I knew I needed to get out and allow my spirit to grow and prosper, rather than die a tormented death!!
I recognised email marketing 6 years ago and set out on a mission to find resellers. These loyal clients have ensured I have been able to spend a great percentage of my time building Business in Berkshire. This started as a way to connect with other businesses, being a northerner abroad, I needed to make business connections for my email marketing business and the logical way was to create an email that people would want to receive… one that told them what was going on around them so they could find business opportunities.
WIIFM is what drives people to open BinB in the early days… our style and quality is what keeps them clicking for more longer term as they get busy and have less time / need to search for more networking.
Four years ago, with my FSB hat on, we started running networking events. At this time there were a handful of organisations making the effort to run seminars. Today, you could go to 3 events a day and still be missing opportunities!!
Over the last two weeks I have been involved in a couple of exhibitions which have taken me out of the office, pressing the flesh! And it’s been great. Many people have said what a great newsletter we produce and to keep up the good work… thank you for your feedback.
The reality is that for us to continue the good work, BinB now has to generate revenue to pay its own way. Up until the start of this year I was happy to subsidise our service for the benefit of the community. Today we have a full time designer and copy writer on board, plus we use the services of other fine, talented individuals on an ad hoc basis. The income generated from membership covers this overhead and provides a small profit.
I have been approached by investors and many people saying that BinB should be a franchise. Perhaps it is a way forward but to get into such a position the business model needs to be sound and therefore we need to run a tight ship. I do have an allergy towards franchises as they seem to be purely about profit and not about community. But then many people do need to be led or nothing happens.
Whatever approach we take moving forward, we need to throw out all the dead wood from our directory. Many applied for Profile accounts 2 years ago and 50% have never bothered to use them. These make the directory look busy on the surface but are of no depth when prospective members are looking through. We have sent out an email to those who haven’t used their space and our telemarketers, RKRM, have been knocking on the doors asking for feedback. Update your space if you have some.
Next week we will be giving you the option to opt-in to receive more communications from us that will be industry specific. Business in Berkshire will also be “changing its clothes” in the next few months, becoming increasing accessible and offering other media channels for our members to get their news out to businesses across Berkshire and the globe.
Hold on to your hats and enjoy the ride…
And for those who have read this far we are offering a Super Special Offer… join us before Christmas and we will provide 3 months Silver Crusader Royale membership for only £999 + Vat.
This will include:
- The creation of your account within BinB based on your existing website.
- We’ll take up to 20 pages of your content and add it to your own Silver Crusader account.
- You and yours can add more content. In fact, you could have a few hundred pages should you choose!
- We will add an email form to gather opt-in for your own email newsletter.
- Our team of dedicated professionals will run 2 BinB Special Features each month. This is where our journalist knocks on your door, has a 20 minute chat, writes 250 words, passes it to our designer and they create one of our quality PDF’s.
- The BinB Special Feature PDF is sent over for you to use internally and loaded into your account on BinB. This news is then despatched to our 3500 readers and many will read it and some will click through for more.
- The two special features plus other articles you’d like included are put together to make your own newsletter which is despatched to your own readers. (You may not have a database today but you soon will have with a little coaching from the BinB team.)
- We will send your bespoke email to up to 1000 people each month within fee. Obviously more can be despatch for a small additional charge.
- This will give you a jolly good taster of what BinB can do for your business. Much of what we do is not apparent at first and is better experienced than discussed endlessly!!
- For this experience we would normally charge £1800 + Vat
- For the next 3 months we are happy to offer this service for £999 + Vat
My recommendation - grab this opportunity while you can, failure to do so will only lead to disappointment later!
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