• Thursday, March 26th, 2009
You can see a lot of information on web about recession and how to fight with it. Yesterdays Business Advice Show supported by Bank of Ireland was everything about stopping to look down (because of recession) and start to do something with your business. I completely agree with everyone who said that January was the biggest peak of recession. People was so afraid that they actually didn’t even went out of their offices. It started to pick up on February and I’m amazed how much people actually attended this event.
I therefor regret a lot that I didn’t came there with my stand. So much people starting their own businesses and expanding them - they would need to do something with web. They would have some great ideas of expending over it. Well, I was rather unfortunate to not thinking through this beforehand.
Event was part of the Enterprise week and as most of them took part in Stillorgan Park Hotel. My benefit from the event:
- 21 business cards, 2 leads, 10 existing contacts
- 2 free tickets on business coaching event next week
- Information about:
- Patent search & registration
- Selling Services in Northern Ireland
- SFA, IIA, ISME, Enterprise Boards joining, networking, events
- Investment for Redundant people who are starting business
- Business Coaches
- Translations
- Online Banking (event was organised by BoI)
- Solicitors, Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement
- Franchising
- Accounting software
- Brochures about Managing Business Finances from Enterprise boards & ROS
- Brochure about Marketing business
We heard great presentations from both Krishna De (marketing specialist) and Gavin Duffy (from “Dragons Den”) about actually starting to do something not just feeling depressing.
Krishna De presentation
Have you heard of Harry Potter site launching before? I keep hearing it on every networking event related to marketing. It seems that it was such a great success that people keep babbling about it. The marketing person of the site decided to tell only 7 people about site they are going to launch. Those 7 people were a big influencers in their area. They were all invited on the website on midnight for a talk. It made World Wide Rave after. Everyone blogged about it and they got enormous popularity in very short time and with a low cost budget.
So how do we find our customers in this recession scenario? First we talk with our existing / old customers and ask what they have been going through. What are those decisions they have to make now? Creating survey over Google Docs doesn’t cost us anything. Why not to see what our customers are doing? Second we look at your concurrents and analyse how they are trying to target customers.
After creating marketing plan you have to do it. Every day think - what have I done today for my business marketing? And even if it is small step, it will move forward your plan.
Think about how to make marketing more engaging. How to get people come back to you? Promising them free quote, documents or prizes? Make your site interactive. Make your business card interactive. Make people talk about you and keep in touch with them.
Gavin Duffys presentation
He was one of the “Dragon’s Den” dragons, so he kept talking about business, but it was so funny. For example, he talked about applications that didn’t went through. One farmer called them and said that he invented rat catcher, because you are always about 3m from some rat. And those rats, they have electrical charge, so when you take them in hand you can be hit by electricity. The “rat catcher” was actually a land mine. Dogs and cats can walk over it, humans can walk over it and there isn’t a problem. But if rat go over it, it goes boom. Hilarious.
Recession is father of innovation. For those who live through recession are more likely to grow multinational that those who don’t. However, setting up business might be very, very lonely. You are alone with all those problems which you have no clue how to solve. This is where enterprise boards and networking is a great help for everyone starting up.
Apparently “Dragon’s Den” might start second season from September or October. So if you are interested go online and try to apply for it. And remember - that investors do not invest in business, they invest on people.
Awards
BoI together with enterprise boards were giving away 5000eur in cash and 5000eur in mentoring & training to one of the applications for Bright Ideas Challenge. There were 4 of them. Each had great idea, very nice business plan and future growth planned.
- Asimil8 is an e-learning venture that provides immerse education for languages and other subjects through virtual world and gaming technology. I was amazed by they idea. It might be quite similar to the MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft but with learning purposes
- iFoods owns and operates the website lookandtaste.com. The website features over 230 professionally produced video recipes raging from scrambled eggs to the daunting soufflé. I actually have to check that website out. It looked very tasty.
- Trezur is an online music recommendations service. It provides listeners with a widely distributed mechanism to find new music. Its recommendation engine combines the best of people-generated and automated musicology analysis to provide listeners with relevant recommendations
- Vellocity Couriers provides an environmentally friendly bicycle courier service within Dublin’s city center. Using specially designed cargo bikes, it carries small to medium loads more quickly, cheaply and with no emissions.
Asimil8 won the first prize, but I didn’t got enough time to take picture. Congratulations!
Would I go to this event next year? Definitely, with my own stand!
