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Green Shoots, Fax Machines & Digital Marketing

BY SIMON GERAGHTY

Written by Simon Geraghty.

Green Shoots in March

At last March brought some economic news showing signs of green shoots in the Irish Economy, although in the broadsheets you still have to wade through waves of pessimism to find these nuggets:

As the saying goes ‘when March blows its horn, your barn will be filled with hay and corn’, and hopefully your start up will be filled with orders and sales!

Cornucopia of Start Up Events

To help drive these sales there is a groundswell of activity and some great events out there for businesses, and start ups in particular, to showcase themselves. There are plenty of events out there currently run by everyone from Bord Bia, DCU and other academic institutions, events such as the Dublin Start Up Weekend. Some that have caught my attention are:

  1. Archie Talks: Archipelago is a thriving community of young entrepreneurs in Ireland. They run the Archie talks events, e-zine, Podcasts and TV. Their Kickstarter programme has really added new impetus to the events. The 5th Archie Talk was held in the Factory on Barrow Street on the 16th of April and kick-started the launch of Sandbox. The event was topped off with a fine talk from Archipelago’s own John Egan.  Photographer Gavin Kilduff created this nice timelapse video from the event: #ArchieTalks5 Timelapse
  2. Dublin Web Summit: The 2012 event held a great launch night on the 17th of April in the Edmund Burke Theatre, followed by Start Up alley hosted in Cafe En Seine. With queues around the corner at one point the doormen must have thought we were partying like it was 2007 all over again, thankfully Bollinger was most notable by its absence and pints of ‘plain predominated.
  3. Irish Angel Meet-Up: Their first event in Dublin, on the 18th of April, sees four start-up companies pitching to raise finance in a competition. The Meet-Up brings 100 angel investors and entrepreneurs together.
  4. And the recently launched Start Up awards, who will be will be publishing their shortlist sometime the week of 30th April 2012.

Fax Machine Marketing

However, there was one piece of news that left us at DotDash feeling slightly dismayed, research carried out by The DG Group in March and April 2012 showed that Irish SMEs are at sea when it comes to marketing themselves. It showed many still use outdated and traditional methods of communication such as telephone calls, daily email and in some cases even faxes to promote their businesses! Faxes … FAXES? Good. Grief.

The research found that 66% of SME’s want to put digital marketing campaigns in place but are held back by a lack of knowledge and time.

It also found that 59% do not dedicate specific time or budget to promote their business.

Some other key findings were

  • 40% never use Facebook
  • 48% never use Twitter
  • 46% never use LinkedIn
  • 76% do not have a mobile version of their website
  • 71% do not have a promotional video for their company

The DotDash 4 Step Marketing Strategy:

In today’s market content is the life blood of the Internet, the days of the static brochure website are over. At DotDash we advise all our customers to follow the following basic 4 steps in developing a marketing strategy:

  • Step 1. Establish your basecamp
  • Step 2. Choose the appropriate channels
  • Step 3. Develop a plan of content
  • Step 4. Analyse & Optimise

If time is your greatest barrier then we are here to help. We help our clients optimise their content, keep their website fresh, and making sure their website is easy to find and will generate leads.

At DotDash we can help you develop a marketing strategy or help you out with your website, email marketing, social media, or blogging; mail us today [email protected]

Who are we? A dynamic collective of sole private traders who work from home offices, hot desks, on-site with clients or in cafe’s, you name it. Our low overheads mean we pass these saving directly to our clients.