There are now 500,000,000 active Facebook users – approx 1 in every 13 people on earth. Half of them are logged on every day, and in a recent survey social networking sites have overtaken entertainment as the most popular online activity in the UK. This is a stark illustration of the scale and impact on the everyday lives of both consumers and business people alike, that social media has had over the last few years.

Undoubtedly, exploiting the immense power of social media has become an integral and vital part of any online marketing strategy. The search engines value content from social media very highly, and if used correctly it can be a very valuable and cost-effective method of building and strengthening customer relationships.

At The Agency we are determined to help businesses take advantage social media. We have devised a simple package designed to get you up and running with the four most popular platforms:
1 Blog
2 Facebook
3 Twitter
4 LinkedIn

All the platforms will be customised and branded for your company so that your presence is professionally designed to enhance your brand. This simple approach is priced at a £1000 one-off fee – a straightforward and cost-effective way to ensure that you don’t miss out on all the benefits that social media will bring to your business.

There are also other platforms that we can set-up for you such as a YouTube or Flickr channels, so we can discuss those or any other type of social media that will work for your business.

If you would like to discuss our Social Media Start-up Package or any other aspect of online marketing just contact The Agency www.theagencylimited.com now for a no-obligation chat on 0121 772 0802 or email info@theagencylimited.com.

There are probably many business owners out there who are still asking whether the hype around Facebook is worth paying attention to, or whether it’s just the next fad.

Let’s turn that question around. Is having direct access to hundreds of millions of potential customers important to your business? If you answered yes, then yes, Facebook is important to your business. Obviously this comes with a caveat – there are certain types of B2B businesses that Facebook just won’t suit, so we would never recommend spending time or most importantly your hard earned cash on media that doesn’t deliver ROI.

In case you’ve missed the global phenomenon that is Facebook, let’s first define what it is. Facebook is a social networking platform. It’s an online software application that allows people from around the world to connect with each other, for free, and share information, photos, events, and ideas. Because it’s free to use, it’s also gained a huge global following in the few short years that it’s been around, and it’s become as important to advertisers and business people as it is to the people who use it for social networking!

The first step in using Facebook to market your business is to sign up for a free profile. This is recommended whether you’re new or whether you already have a free profile, and here’s why: many people share personal information, stories, or embarrassing photos on their personal Facebook profiles. If you’re using Facebook for business purposes, you don’t want your clients, colleagues and compatriots to see those less than flattering items, so it’s always best to have two profiles – one for work, and one for play!

Once you have a profile, you’re going to want to start using the networking potential of Facebook to your advantage. The first step will be to find and ‘add’ your existing customers, suppliers, colleagues and other business associates. That way, you can start posting information in your status updates.

Next, it’s a good idea to look for groups and pages that are related to, but not competing with, your core business. This will mean that you can post links and information from your website on the group or page’s ‘wall’ without being guilty of spam, or annoying your competitors. You might want to add friends that you find on those pages and groups too, that are interested in whatever it is you’re involved in making or selling.

By now, you should have a fairly substantial network of friends, colleagues, acquaintances and associates, and it’s time to set up your own pages and groups. Pages and groups are essentially a little like a mini site or blog for your company that appears within the main Facebook platform. You can post information on your business there, links to your site, interesting news stories, and anything else you want to share. You can also start discussions, run competitions, and do all kinds of other promotion. As the page and group administrator, you also have control over who is a member of your site, and whether they can comment on your news items, and you can remove any offensive members or comments.

I’m sure you’re starting to see the value of having a Facebook marketing plan already, and the best part is that all of this, up till now, is free. You won’t pay a penny to join Facebook, connect with people, groups and pages, or start your own.

There is, however, another advertising option on Facebook, and that is the paid advertising. Unlike pages and groups, this works on a pay per click basis – every time a Facebook member follows your link, you pay a small fee to Facebook for hosting your ad.

However, there are still benefits to this type of advertising. The first is that you can set your budget. If you’re just testing the water, this can be as little as a few pounds, and as you progress, you can increase the amount. The amount you pay will determine how often your advertisements come up every day.

The second, and more important benefit to pay per click advertising on Facebook is that unlike search engines, where you only control the geographic area and keywords that determine who sees your advertisements, with Facebook, you can target your ads to a particular city, gender, age group, marital status and other target markets. So, for instance, if you’re selling clothing aimed at young woman from a store in Birmingham, you can target your advertising so that only women aged between 15 and 35, in the Birmingham area, see it.

It’s this kind of specialised service that has made Facebook so popular, and it’s this type of targeting in terms of advertising that has allowed Facebook to become a multi billion dollar company.

Whether you opt for the free advertising and marketing methods that Facebook offers, or choose a paid for service, there is no doubt that Facebook connects your business with exactly the people you want to connect with, and every business owner should be paying attention to the social networking revolution!

Helping British business fight back!

The Agency has had enough of the defeatist attitude that has engulfed Britain, and we’ve decided to do something about it. We’re starting a campaign to help business get up and fight for more business.

The only news you hear at the minute is bad. Its all gloom and doom and the government are doing what all politicians do: they jaw, jaw, jaw – they’re long on talk, but short on action. But wait; what are we all going to do? Its not time to turn off the lights and leave just yet, as Churchill once said: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP.

We can’t claim to be trying to drag the country out of the recession single-handed, or have a magic bullet to grow your business. But, it has been proven that when times are tough if you have the courage to invest in marketing you’ll reap the benefits, and that’s what we can help you with.

So you’re asking yourself “what are you going to do to help?”

1. We’ll start by giving you a free no-obligation consultation to see where marketing can help your business. Our aim is to show you how even in times as tough as these, attacking the right targets in the right way can generate new business and increase sales.

2. We’ll help you take full advantage of the latest online marketing techniques ideas from social media to e-blasts. We can suggest practical cost-effective ways that can make them work for you. The marketing landscape is constantly changing, so we continually do the legwork by researching and testing new ideas to keep you up to date and ahead of your competitors.

3. We’re going to provide you with as much free information as we can so that you can make informed decisions. For example you can download our new
e-book to online marketing and other helpful whitepapers right now. All our publications are totally jargon-free so you don’t have to call a consultant to translate them!

4. We have always worked in partnership with our clients, and now more than ever we will work together with you to support and encourage you every step of the way.

5. Last but not least, we’re going to talk-up to anyone who’s prepared to listen that there are many British companies doing great things and are flourishing – even in this tough environment. The more positivity we can spread about business, the more confidence we can generate, and as everyone in business knows, confidence is a vital factor in the recovery.

The Agency become a Recommended Agency

The Agency are proud to announce that we have achieved “Recommended Agency” status by the Recommended Agency Register (RAR). RAR are a renowned organisation who enable clients the chance to rate a creative agency on it’s service, value for money and technical ability. The Agency are delighted that we have been awarded this status, especially because we have received high ratings by our clients, and that’s the best form of advertising we can hope for.

We can now use the RAR logo which is recognised worldwide as an independent mark of a trusted supplier on our website and stationary.

We’d like to say a big thank you to all our clients who took the time to rate us.

We are currently in the process of updating the work on our website but in the meantime if you would like to see some recent examples of our work simply click here and fill in the blanks!

We have launched a new facet to our ever growing business. With all the experience that we have gained within the education sector, we have launched a new sub brand. The Agency For Education offers marketing, design and branding for schools, academies and colleges.

The first time you meet The Agency for Education, you might be surprised at how quiet we are – and its not down to nerves – we have a great deal of experience working with schools! The first thing we do is listen, not preach and blind you with marketing speak and meaningless buzzwords. We’re there to find out what your school is really about, and only by listening can we do great work for you that reflects why your school is different.

We understand fully how a school is part of a community both internally and externally, and all the stakeholder’s views need to be incorporated into any project we do. We always pride ourselves on working with you every step of the way, offering strong leadership on projects but also adopting a true partnership approach, so that there are no shocks, just everyone delighted at the final result.

?We also fully understand how much pressure your budgets are under, and make sure every penny you spend counts. We offer high quality, exceptional work extremely cost-effectively because you deal with the people who produce the work direct, there are no expensive middle men to increase your costs.

In short, we are passionate individuals who take pride in producing great work cost-effectively – with you, not just for you. Just visit www.theagencyforeducation.co.uk to find out how we could help you.

There is plenty in the news at the moment about our emergence from recession and there is some of good stuff on the web about what the reality actually means for us folks on the ground. I don’t  want to put a damper on what is good news, but just a precautionary ‘hold your horse’ moment. There are great opportunities out there to really capitalise on the growth of the market IF you adopt a more measured approach and think a little differently.

Here are 5 ways to strengthen your business proposition on the back of the recession…

1. Define your BIG Idea.
What are your selling this year?
What is you offering? What is the USP? Do you fully understand and effectively communicate your product, service or entire business? These are essential questions to ask yourself and the foundation for true progress. You can’t answer a problem without asking the right question.

2. Plan meticulously and execute relentlessly.
Fortune may favour the brave but there is difference between big ideas and big risks. To reduce the risk, at the top level, constructing a brand strategy gives your business focus and direction. It provides you with the basis to communicate and sell your brand to others. Rushing in without focus will waste time and resource, and most likely not deliver the results you require.

3. Focus on your key strengths.
Give yourself the competitive edge by doing what you do best. You know your business better than anyone (if you don’t, give us a call and we can help) – what works, what doesn’t, strengths and USP’s. Commit where you are strongest, over deliver and excel.

4. Be hungry, (really hungry) for new business.
This is where your investment, both time and financial should be. You need to get out there and communicate with your customers. Look laterally at how your customers are spending with you at the moment. Is there room to cross-sell other services? Do they know what additional services you could offer? Communication is always at the heart of the process.

5. Retention.
We all know that it is easier to retain clients than it is to win new business. Make sure your existing clients are delighted with the service or product they are receiving. Gaining loyality and thereby creating brand evangelists (people who sing your praises) is priceless.

The focus on strategy and execution is where The Agency Brand Consultancy may be able
to help you. We would love to see if our experience and expertise can help plan and deliver a well constructed marketing and communication strategy, so either call or email, and we would love to talk further.

The Agency Brand Consultancy are extremely excited to be branding and launching the website for the luxury homewares and interiors business, Natural History. The brand has come about from the extensive travels of it’s originator and founder, who has been a well established commentator on interior trends and design for some years.

The brand we have created aims to build on her passion for exploration and her personal quest to find artifacts that are as unique as they are desirable. To characterise this brand ethos we looked towards the Victorian era for inspiration. This point in history saw scientific discoveries and innovation really define Great Britain.

To visualise this we created a rich, layered, scrapbook visual style. Our starting point was, we didn’t want this to look out of place in Darwins study! The identity itself also has a hand crafted and printed feel that still manages to look modern and appealing despite the intended ‘printing’ imperfections. Entomological studies from the time were another key source of inspiration which we also used to build the texture through the graphics and will be used on some of the individual pieces in the Natural History collection, contributing to make this a very unique customer experience.

The Agency Brand Consultancy have worked with Natural History to define the brand, create the identity and bring the brand to life online with the store (still in development). As this projects draws enticingly to a close and the website is ready for release, we will run a further feature but for now we thought you may be interested to see how this exciting visual treat is shaping up. We are looking forward to a long relationship with Natural History as the brand moves from strength to strength. Watch this space…

If you want to know more about how we can boost the profile of your brand or help with marketing design and print, call Steve on 0121 772 0802 or email steve@theagencylimited.com

Integrated fm are the market leaders in facilities management software based in Warwickshire. We have worked closely with IFM for two years now, on a wide variety of brand and marketing activity from defining a corporate vocabulary to advertising on and off-line. IFM approached us to help them brand and market their cutting edge new sustainability software.

IFM have created a fully integrated sustainability and CSR management solution that has many unique features that sets it apart from its competitors.

An easy way to describe the functionality would be to say it is ‘like Sage’ in that it allows a business to audit their sustainability activity allowing them to publicise green credentials knowing that they are reinforced by fully audited, hard facts. It is a truly fantastic piece of software that really meets the needs of businesses and the environmental regulations being imposed by the government.

We named the software Sustainabilty iQ and, after researching the market and the visual language already in existence, we created the identity. The modern styling and clean approach sits comfortably in both the software and environmental sectors, playing on positive associations created by the colour scheme, font and web style icon.

After the naming, designing and defining of the brand, it was decided that the software experience itself then didn’t live up to either the technical excellence or the new identity. We are currently working with programmers to refresh the interface and improve the end user experience making it a more complete brand package.

If you want to know more about how we can boost the profile of your brand or help with marketing design and print, call Steve on 0121 772 0802 or email steve@theagencylimited.com

How much thought have you given to your website after it has ‘gone live’? Are you getting quality people visiting your website (people who actually want what you are selling)? Which page are they coming into and how long are they spending there? These are the questions (and many many more) that you should be asking of you website. Getting the brand messaging right, having a slick intuitive interface, obeying the scientific analysis that has been done on the principles of how people view pages are all absolutely essential but that really is only the start of the story in the life of a website.

When we build websites for our clients we do what we can during the build phase. We make sure all the pages are named and labeled correctly, keywords feature in the correct places, the programming structure isn’t complicating the search engines, register with the major search engines etc. etc… So what more needs to be done? Well two things: analytics and optimisation.

Most people use web analytics — you’d have to be crazy not to — especially with such powerful free solutions out there. However, for many people, analyzing their stats goes no further than rejoicing at having a few more visitors and repeating the figures to potential advertisers. But analytics, used properly, is so much more – it’s a marketing tool, an error checker, a usability tool, an ROI calculator, an eCommerce tracker, an ad tool and the list goes on. If this is something that you do not regularly review or that you need some advise in interpreting the results, why not give us a call? Web analytics give you the information required to make decisions about your web strategy based on fact and therefore are powerful tools which should not be under estimated.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a phrase that is widely used but rarely understood. It is not a black art that many companies would have you believe. Here at The Agency we can advise you on how to best position your online presence to suit your business needs. There are some basic things that you may not be doing to get you ‘noticed’ then it is all about constantly optimising your content to align with what people are searching for and ultimately position near the top of the search engine rankings.

If analytics or optimisation are subjects that you do not regularly review or that you need some advice in interpreting, why not give us a call on
0121 772 0802 or email info@theagencylimited.com