• Seasons - You can also tie in a press release with a holiday or special occasion. Could your business do something related to Valentines Day, Fathers Day or school holidays?
• Charity work - Do not hide your light under a bushel if your business is making a donation to charity. A press release is a great way to let people know about community service, whether you offer training or apprenticeships to students or sponsor a local sports team.
• New products - New services or products: focus on the benefits to your customers and the publication’s readers.
• Achievements - Issue a press release when you or your employees are recognised for outstanding achievements or gain qualifications. Focus the release on how the award or qualification will help customers or clients.
• Business launch - Launch of your business, or business expansion — of interest to local papers and trade and business publications. You could also mention the launch of a new or updated website.

Very shortly we are going to be launching our new course for Summer 2012. I’m telling you today so you can be prepared. Over the next few days we are going to give you a taste of the quality of information we’ll be providing on the course. As with all ACEInspire courses, our new course will include written and video material, with a combination of live workshops and work for you to do at your own pace. What’s new is that we will be covering a fresh topic and we are definitely taking things to the next level. This course is for you if you want to step up and see your business grow.

Sign up here if you want emails about this new course and some fab articles to help you improve your business

We know that LOTS of you are interested in improving your blogging skills, so we’re delighted to announce that our new book, Blogging – The Essential Guide is now out. We love blogging, and want as many people as possible to have fun with blogging, learn how to do it better, and make an income from their blog. This book is the culmination of lots of hard work to bring our best advice together for you to help you improve your blog.

In the book you’ll find practical advice based on experience. If you are a beginner it will guide you step by step through all you need to create a brilliant blog. If you have been blogging for some time, we guarantee there will still be tips and tricks that are new to you. And there is a whole chapter on making money from your blog if you want to take your blog to the next level.

Blogging: The Essential Guide chapters include:
• Blogging Basics
• Starting a Blog
• Basic Skills and Concepts
• Content for Your Blog
• Community and Blogging
• Style and Structure
• Blogging and the Law
• From Blogs to eBooks
• Social Media
• Writing a Blog for Profit

If you’re thinking about buying the book, we’d love it if you bought it today. Our mission is to help people to improve their blogging, and it would really help us if you bought the book today.
We’re asking as many people as possible to do this because we’d love to see the book shooting up the Amazon best seller charts: then it will become visible to even more Amazon browsers.
To say thank you for buying the book today, we have some great bonus training material.
Buy today and you will get access to 4 valuable videos that will help you improve your readership and even make money from your blog:
1. SEO Tips Video
2. 40 posts in 5 mins video
3. Monetise Your Blog video
4. Creating an eCourse video

Plus, you’ll be amongst the first people to get access to the ACEInspire Members Site, with BONUS training including:
1. Your Guide to Online Study Success – a workbook to help you make the most of online training
2. Your Guide to Online Promotion – a short eBook looking at some of the newest and hottest social media sites and how to use them for promotion. Find out about Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn
3. Pinterest: A video from Erica Douglas

We’ve had excelllent sales of the book since it launched just a couple of weeks ago. The publishers say, “The reviews, articles and feedback we’ve had on it is amazing. Blogging: The Essential Guide is definitely one of our most popular titles!”

In a recent review author and blogger Jane Alexander said:

“Seriously though, the book is really great – it’s got everything you need to start blogging and there are some nifty tips for old timers too. It’s clear, concise and beautifully presented. It’s not padding and waffle – it cuts to the chase and tells you just the important stuff”

If you want some fresh inspiration for your blogging. practical tips, a book to keep on hand AND valuable online training, buy Blogging The Essential guide today via Amazon. Once you have bought, send an email to antonia3-674311@autocontactor.com with your receipt number in the subject, and we’ll send you access to your bonus materials.

This planning technique is great and very versatile as it can be used to plan for a small period of time or a larger amount and will give you the insight into what you are trying to achieve, how you will achieve it and if you re on the right track.

It is essential that you keep checking in on your plan to see that you are going in the right direction and where you may need to alter the plan to fit in with any changes that have occurred in your life or business.

ACEinspire wants to wish you all a happy Easter and thank you for your support. So as an egg-stra special gift to you, we are offering 50% off Antonia Chitty’s A Guide To Promoting Your Business.

Promoting your business is a big part of making your business a success and this book will help you learn the skills to maximise your business promotion

A Guide To Promoting Your Business  is for you if you are:

• Already have a business and are trying to grow 
• Starting a new business and would like to do your own PR
• Creating a PR plan
• Looking for ideas on how to get coverage for you business
• Trying to increase business sales
• Looking for more clients.

So don’t miss out on this egg-citing offer, visit ACE Business Training and enter AGTPYB to get your 50% off.

All this week we’ve been looking at the elements of an effective marketing mix

An effective marketing mix is one where all elements (product, place, price, promotion) are sending the same message and where the message fits with what what the customer desires. Knowing your target market and what they desire is imperative to being able to meet their needs.

Think about your target market, what are their needs?

Does your offering fulfil your customers needs?

Now consider your competition. Think about their marketing mix. Is it fulfilling customer needs? Is there a way you can gain competitive advantage by improving one of the p’s?

Finally, the marketing mix should fit with the resources and budget available to you. You may have to adjust your marketing mix to take into consideration your budget, don’t forget your marketing mix can be adjusted when more budget is available.

In business, time is money – and so is press coverage. A mention in a magazine can be worth thousands of pounds: just read some media packs and check out the ad rates to discover just how much. What’s more, media coverage can enable you to reach people who wouldn’t discover your business. Some magazine or newspaper readers don’t check Facebook or browse the web: you can’t capture everyone via social media. You probably know a business owner yourself who regularly gets great media coverage and is reaping the rewards in increased sales and business profile… and you probably also wish that this was you!

If you want to discover why press releases don’t work and what you can do to make sure your releases DO generate coverage AND bring in business join a webinar with PR expert and author of A Guide to Promoting Your Business Antonia Chitty. You’ll discover the 5 reasons your press release isn’t getting coverage or bringing in business – and what YOU can do to change all that.

Join Antonia on Tuesday 13th March at 8pm GMT for a free webinar. 

Sign up below.

How does place fit into your marketing mix? Read on to find out why you need to consider place, and how it can help your business.

4. Place

Place relates to distribution channels for example retail outlets, transportation and I’d argue online that it relates to websites, sales pages, digital delivery of goods and even email lists.

Do all your distribution channels communicate your marketing message effectively? Are they all appropriately branded so the customer can immediately recognise when it’s you? This is as important online as it is offline. Online it may mean extending your brand to include a certain avatar or username for social media accounts.

This blog aims to bring you hundreds of low cost promotion ideas, just right for microbusinesses. Today, you can learn how promotion fits into the marketing mix.

3. Promotion

Promotions include advertising, direct selling, pr and all online forms of promotion. When considering promotions it’s about finding the right channels, those where your potential customers hear your message the loudest.

Think about where your potential customers congregate and make a list of the promotional opportunities available to you. Trial different promotional opportunities and monitor their efficiency and effectiveness.

This week we’re looking at the 4 Ps of marketing. Price is critical to how your product sells, and how it is perceived. Read more about how pricing strategies can boost your business.
2. Price

Price is not merely about how much you get for an item sold, price can be used as a mechanism to get the market to do what you want and different pricing strategies will send different messages resulting in a variety of outcomes.

From a consumers point of view the price paid for a product will have a direct impact on the satisfaction and enjoyment gleaned from a product. If you’re selling a ‘luxury’ product with lots of features and are charging ?10 for it you may think that consumers would be falling over themselves to buy. On the contrary what is likely to happen is that there will be a level of scepticism as to whether the product does what it says on the tin as the price is at odds with the marketing message the product delivers.

Think about the prices of your own products and services. Are your prices reflective of the service or quality you deliver?