Arrowsmith Marketing Business Book Competition - Free Entry!
Details of next competition available end of May.

May 08

Stuart Fawcett, IT Manager at hso wins the Spring Book Competition - "How to Win Friends and Influence People".

Provided a website workshop to our friends at T&T Training. Mark and Helen Hartley have ensured their site is at the top of Google for "customer services training" for several years. So it was a great privilige to be asked to help them with their thinking on how to maintain and extend their keyword ranking and look for new ways to compete.

VHQ Solutions website launched! VHQ are a partner company providing web-based business management tools plus ongoing business support for start-up and growing firms. Arrowsmith has taken VHQ Solutions through a website planning process and developed the content for the site. Peter Butterworth at Gate4 was responsible for technical build and design.

Arrowsmith MD, Gareth Edwards, has been in the spotlight filming a video for the GuruOnline website. Gareth is representing the B2B Centre for the shoot and providing his knowledge on eMarketing. We'll provide a link when the final clips are ready.

April 08

Our Young Enterprise company, Thingy-Ma-Jigz, missed out on the prizes at the Black Country finals held at Wolverhampton University Business School. The team donated their profits to the MacMillan Cancer charity which was a great gesture.

Weatherite Group, makers of industrial strength air conditioning systems and a Black Country success story, launched their new site. Arrowsmith, through the auspices of the B2B Centre. helped to plan the site and supported Robert Boswell the Marketing Manager as he put the finishing touches to optimising the site.

We have also been busy helping Viretec a specialist eBusiness strategy consultancy and e-adoption experts in optimising their site.

And finally the VHQ Solutions site was launched last week. Arrowsmith are users of the VHQ Solutions WebOffice and we were delighted to provide web planning and optimisation services to get the implemented and visible. VHQ Solutions provide web based software solutions to start up and growing businesses both direct and through business support programmes,

 

March 08

New eMarketing article for the B2B Centre. "More Measurement is Marvellous" looks at how eMarketing makes it easy to measure customer and prospect activity.

Latest Business Book Competition launched. Free entry to the draw for "How to Win Friends and Influence People".

Thingy-Ma-Jigz, the Young Enterprise, company that we provide business advisory support to, successfully conducted a trade fair at RAF Cosford on the 8th March. They managed to sell loads of their "Cream Egg Eating Kits" as well as some of Link Teacher Jeremy Panko's superb photos.

Just started some work for Staffordshire Crystal, part of the Brierley Hill Crystal Group, another opportunity to support Black Country business.

 

February 08

Continuing with National B2B Centre work. Some really interesting clients. Bradney Chain in Cradley Heath is one of the Black Country's original chain making companies, now working to establish a strong web presence to show off their skills and massive knowledge about customer use of their products. Chains have never been this interesting!

Also finalising a project with Weatherite who are a West Bromwich company making air conditioning and ventilation equipment. Before you think of the air con units on the wall of the last hotel room you stayed in - think again. Weatherite make massive units for people like M&S and BT. They don't get much media coverage even though they are growing and employing new staff. Their, soon to be launched, new website is the brainchild of Marketing Manager Robert Boswell (with a bit of help from Arrowsmith and the B2B Centre) and is going to show off the company in a new light.

Thingy-Ma-Jigz, the Stourbridge King Edward College YE company that we are providing business advice to, are preparing for trade shows at RAF Cosford and Stratford in March. Their Cream Egg Eating kit should be a smash hit.

December 07

And the winner of the Winter book competition is.....Bob Hunter from Birmingham University.

December saw the milestone of 70 assists completed or near completion for the B2B Centre!! This represents a massive body of knowledge of SME requirements qand solutions in the field of eMarketing including website assessments, SEO, usability, analytics, Pay per Click and email marketing.

Young Enterprise company Thingy-Ma-Jigz launch a range of "alternative" Christmas decorations that includes both Chav and Emo reindeer (ask your kids for an explanation).

 

October 07

CLM Training website gets page 1 Google listings across a range of keywords. Try a search for " ISO 28000 training " in Google.

Arrowsmith is supporting Young Enterprise again this year by providing "Business Advisor" support to a YE company at King Edward VI College in Stourbridge.

 

August 07

Check out AccountingWeb and Business Zone to see some of Arrowsmith's B2B articles online to a huge audience.

B2B work has been very intensive with successful eMarketing planning, website assessment and website planning assignments completed for the normal wide range of businesses.

Other clients have continued to prosper. Helping Hands Home Care's website continues to perform very well in search engine ranking and they have even managed to get a slot on a Central News bulletin. CLM Training (experts in training and consultancy in highly regulated sectors) has successfully launched a brand new website with the help of Arrowsmith and Pete Butterworth at Gate4.

Arrowsmith provided support to a Management Interactive Conference at King Edward's College in Stourbridge chaired by CRAC (Careers Research Advisory Centre). This involved workshops and interactive exercises to help A level students identify career paths and understand their own skills and capabilities better. It seemed to be a very useful exercise for the participants - Arrowsmith's group managed to coe top in both of the conference presentations!

Congrats to Jay Wang and Fan Bai, 2 Warwick Uni MSc students that Arrowsmith staff have been providing supervision support to. Dissertations completed in time and to a good standard.

April 07

The past couple of months have just whizzed by. Arrowsmith has completed a huge variety of assists for the B2B Centre covering many different types of business. B2B work has included the development of a number of new articles on eBusiness including "How to Write Good Website Content". The B2B Centre received an email from China Executive magazine asking if the article can be translated and used in their journal for the Chinese audience. Very exciting.

Very important news! Hot Topz, the Young Enterprise group that Arrowsmith supports win the Best Presentation in the Black Country finals held at Old Swinford. Warmest congratulations to Emma and the team for this success.

January 07

Facilitated a website planning workshop with the B2B Centre. The tools to help you go through the process are available to download for free from the B2B website, along with loads of other good stuff including a few articles that I have written.

The "Airtime for Arrowsmith" blog started showing up as a link within 2 weeks and some traffic was enerated by it too. Just shows that it is worth using blogs to help with search engine ranking.

December 06

Another SEO webinar conducted succesfully. This one will be available as a podcast soon.

Arrowsmith kicks off a blog "Airtime for Arrowsmith" to provide comments and tips on marketing and eMarketing and to see what effect it has on Page Ranking.

New Arrowsmith eMarketing articles. "How to set up an Xmas eMail signature" and "Ding Dong Merrily On High At eBay the Tills are Ringing" now available on the B2B Centre website.

November 06

Arrowsmith participated in its first webinar on behalf of the B2B Centre. Gareth supported James Pennington and Mark Bonnett in delivering a session on SEO (search engine optimisation). Arrowsmith also provided an article for the centre on blogs - "blogging or blagging"

Hot Topz, the Young Enterprise West Midlands company that Arrowsmith is acting as Business Advisor to, produced their first T-Shirts and Hoodies this month. The Hot Topz logo looks great on the products and Arrowsmith has commissioned a hoodie to see what it looks like with our logo on it.

October 06

Young Enterprise has kicked off again. This year Arrowsmith Marketing is supporting King Edward VI 6th form college in Stourbridge again but with a new company called "Hot Topz" Hot Topz are creating several ranges of T-shirts and hoodies as well as providing a customised T-shirt service.

There is still lots of activity with the Business to Business Centre at the University of Warwick, including helping out at a breakfast briefing on using the web more effectively and attending one of the centre's excellent networking evenings. The networking evenings are well worth a try. They attract a very wide range of businesses and business people.

Finally thanks to Viretec, providers of Virtual Working Solutions, and Helping Hands Home Care, leading specialists in live-in care across England and Wales, for their business.

September 06

Oh wow! Big news for September. Arrowsmith Marketing has won the contract to provide eMarketing support to the National B2B Centre, based at Warwick University (just outside Coventry) for the next 18 months!

Completed eMarketing assessments for several B2B clients. Don't forget if you are in the Midlands you can get eMarketing support from the B2B Centre.

Started a project for CLM Training. CLM Training offer a range of specialist training services in the automotive, medical devices and EMC sectors covering quality standards such as ISO 13485, ISO/TS 16949 and CE marking.

August 06

Managed to fit in some business meetings a holiday in Vancouver. Geoff Huilton at Teligence is looking for opportunities to promote community-based telephony services while David Dunnison at Insider Trading has a great proposition around affinity marketing.

Met up with Stella James to find out more about her hectic round of county shows for LovedayJames selling the Proto-col range of health and beauty products..

July 06

Delighted to be appointed as an associate with the National Business to Business Centre (NB2BC) based at Warwick University. If you are in the West Midlands then they are worth contacting for free advice and consultancy. If you are outside of the objective 2 funding area you might even get me working with you.

A big thanks to Denis Pelych at Viretec for the introduction. Viretec provides knowledge working and collaboration solutions, to help project teams, business networks and organisations exploit the internet and adopt effective virtual working practices.

It was good to work with John Savage at 4sight on a project again.

June 06

Police work continued at a pace right through to June, which explains why there were no updates to the news page for so long. My team; Neil Powell, Michelle Bell, Stella James, Georgina Mason and Vaughan Jones were absolutely fantastic. Vaughan was appointed as the UNISON representative and moved away from the project slightly earlier than the others. Stella eventually left to concentrate on her own business, Loveday James, George has gone off to have another baby, while Neil and Michelle are lined up to keep up the good work maintaing the process documentation and helping to train Comms Room staff.

Bob Boyd was great at the launch of UKITA (UK IT Association) at RAF Cosford. Bob has pushed WMITA (West Midlands IT Association) forward since he took over as chief executive and now he has signed up Oracle as a major pertner. It is great to be able to help the organisation in its growth plans.

March 06

Four appear at the Stratford-on-Avon trade fair. Much stiffer competition this time with YE companies from all over Central and Southern England in attendance. The quality of some of the products that have been designed and developed has to be seen to be believed. Four did well with their Daffs and Tulips though.

February 06

Four appear at the Wolverhampton and Dudley trade fair at West Bromwich. They did pretty well despite having to pull together a set of products at the last moment.

January 06

Four sells a massive amount of advertising for their magazine. Thanks to Books Unlimited, Subway et al for their support. The 1400 recipients of the free magazine seem pretty happy with the results - especially the money off vouchers for food.

November/December 05

The King Edward's team are now progressing well. Four, as they have named the company, are doing all sorts of fundraising activities and getting ready for the launch of their first product - a magazine for the college students funded by advertising from local companies. For more information on Four and the Young Enterprise organisation click here.

Work with Police continues to be exciting and challenging. I need to pay tribute to the people who work in the Comms Room at the Leek Wootton HQ. Any of you live in Warwickshire should know that they have a dedicated and highly professional group looking after them.

October 05

Continuing to support Young Enterprise at King Edward's. Current focus on providing management framweworks to help the team plan and implement their product ideas.

Warwickshire Police project continues to be really interesting. I get to spend time inside the 'nick' without doing anything wrong!

Congratulations to both Carol Downing Communications and Boyd Networks for excellent recent business wins.

September 05

First session as a Young Enterprise adviser at King Edward VI College in Stourbridge, near Dudley. Excellent group of students with a real grip on moving their business forward and bags of enthusiasm.

Warwickshire Police project continues.......

August 05

Managed to meet up with Garland Coulson the "E-Business Tutor" in his home town of Nanaimo, British Columbia while on holiday. For anybody conducting business on the web or just thinking about it Garland's website is an absolute must visit!

July 05

Latest and biggest customer sign-up...Warwickshire Police Force, based at Leek Wooton near Kenilworth! More business consultancy than marketing. Thanks to Helen and Mark Hartley at T&T Training, based in Kenilworth for the introduction.

Got to see the Chocolate Monday trio at Birmingham NEC. Lovely ladies and a great performance.

June 05

Business development work for Carol Downing Communication comes up trumps. CDC sign Pyrex as a latest client. Stop Press CDC also sign Britannia.

Attended Young Enterprise West Midlands Final, in Wolverhampton. Astounding level of ability from the students. All businesses could learn something from the fresh thinking and innovation displayed. For my sins I have signed up as an adviser to start in September.

Mount Arrowsmith photos to view here..

May 05

Kicked off support for Chocolate Monday - Scottish pop group. Soon to tour with Blue (ask your kids). They needed someone to keep their website up to date and plan how to use it more effectively in the future.

Beermat Ecademy networking event kicked off in Birmingham courtesy of Beermat Entrepreneur Mike Southon and friends. Good opportunity to meet Midlands networkers.

April 05

Boyd Networks signed up for "Fresh Pair of Eyes" review. The firm has some great customers, such as West Midlands Ambulance Service, but owner Bob Boyd wants to get bigger and better.

March 05

Major project signed off with T&K Engineering for a review of the award winning Waterfoil product. Big thanks to Carol Downing for the referral.

February 05

Provided business development support for Anthony Dent at Dynistics over at Warwick Ventures, Blythe Valley in Solihull

First customer. Carol Downing Communications based in Kinver South Staffordshire

Arrowsmith Marketing formally established!

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