Seriously DIY is not a good idea.

In advertising, you do not score any points by doing it yourself.

All you demonstrate in doing so is that you do not have the confidence in your own products and services to invest in promoting them.

When advertising, you are not pleasing yourself, nor are you talking to your existing customers. Rather you are talking to your rival's customers. People who have already looked at your marketing and rejected it in favour of another's.

This is why it is often for the best to seek outside help and professional guidance, if you cannot afford to go to the expense of hiring a commercial advertising agency.

The aim is to get a dispassionate outside view of your business. From people who are not invested in your business as either staff or customers. People who can look at your business with fresh eyes and as a potential new customer.

In advertising, the impression counts as much as the message you are promoting. The more it looks like you have invested, shows the more confidence that you have in your business.

In short, if you don't have the confidence to invest in your business, why should anyone else?

How much does it cost to advertise? Ask instead how much will it cost if you do not.

Good advertising pays for itself... Not least that you can currently claim it all back from your tax and that there may be grants and loans available.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley

Vid-FX+ Advertising

Is communication an illusion?

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw. 

"The biggest single problem in social media marketing is the illusion that communication has actually taken place."

How do you judge the success of your communications? 

Clicks, hits, views, likes, etc. Do not indicate that communication has taken place. The whole purpose of social media is to build a dialogue. For that dialogue to happen there must be someone there to respond to enquiries and most importantly make the sale.

Too often I see ad's vlog's blog's or even hear a podcast that piques my interest, I need to know more. I make further enquiries to find a website that is down and no one to answer my enquiries. By then I am talking to someone else who can answer my questions and convinces me that I really do need what they are offering and can negotiate a good deal. 

So, your advertising and marketing has worked, congratulations. Yet without someone there who can take the calls, field the enquiries, to make the sales. You have just given business away to your competitors.

Before embarking on an advertising or marketing campaign you MUST ensure that you have the infrastructure in place to handle the enquiries and sales that it will generate. If you don't someone else will.

Without effective communication, you have no sales. Without sales, you don't have a business.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley

VidFX+ Advertising.