Marketing, this was the class I was waiting for. For me this is the bread and butter of how to kick start & sell your business. We started out by looking at our products / services and seeing what makes us stand our from our competitors. The exercises were tough and although we all have great idea’s that sound fantastic in our own minds and to the immediate audience, it was time to cut to the chase:

Do people need it?

Due to the climate that we are in, it is not enough anymore to suggest that the people that want your product / service will make your business sustainable, want may or may not pay the bills, the people that need it will.

One thing more evident recently is that the service quality in general is on the increase, as people need the business. An important thing to note aswell is that you don’t have to have a ground breaking idea, you can always take an existing idea and put your own unique twist on it and do it better than the existing project. Do I hear you mentioning Apple Ipod?

Online marketing was impressed upon us as the key to successful promotion. Promoting yourself on Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogging, create your own website & other web based mediums gets yourself and your business well known. This is where I felt that the course lacked some detail.

How should you promote yourself on these mediums? Create a Facebook application? Launch a campaign in Bebo? Affiliate yourself with certain groups in LinkedIn? None of these were explained. If even to say that you should start a blog about your business would be putting people on the right track.

It was suggested that everyone look to Damien Mulley who is recogised as one of them most knowledgeable online marketers in Ireland . If I was to recommend anyone that I feel has the key to promoting themselves online and selling their service it would be Niall Harbison.

A couple of questions were posed about google ad words and increasing your hits in google and basically getting your business to the mecca of the top ranking site for certain keywords etc sadly the lecturer struggled a little with these questions…

There were more exercises to take home with us and hopefully the second talk on marketing will be more detailed.