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British Library Digital Marketing Strategy Sessions

Apply for a digital marketing strategy session with The British Library Business And IP Centre’s marketer in residence, Alasdair Inglis.

The current British Library entrepreneur in residence is Julie Deane of The Cambridge Satchel Company and Stephen Fear was previously an entrepreneur in residence.

The British Library Business And IP Centre runs hundreds of business workshops every year and many high-profile events with speakers ranging from Mary Portas to Jack Dorsey.

Every year thousands of entrepreneurs start and scale their businesses with The British Library Business And IP Centre.

Jack Dorsey speaks at The British Library:

Jack Dorsey British Library

Marketing Workshops
Ask an Expert sessions are delivered at The British Library Business & IP Centre which provides some of the best resources and training for small businesses in the UK.

Getting the right digital marketing advice can be a challenge for many business owners.

  • As an entrepreneur, digital marketing is a confusing and daunting area.
  • It’s challenging to find impartial advice from the endless supply of digital marketing experts, consultants and agencies.
  • If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you don’t have a background in digital marketing. With constant changes taking place in digital, finding a trusted advisor can be a game changer if you want to grow.
  • You may have already worked with marketing freelancers or agencies to help with your digital marketing and not got the results you expected.
  • Not using the latest digital marketing methods to bring you more sales and enquiries will quickly stunt your growth ambitions making it harder to beat your competitors.

Deborah Meaden speaks at The Inspiring Entrepreneurs Event at The British Library

Deborah Meaden British Library

What happens during a digital marketing strategy session with Alasdair?

  1. During the 1-hour session, Alasdair will work with you to solve the digital marketing challenges that keep you awake at night!
  2. Before your session, he will read your application and review your website to better understand your business.
  3. Alasdair uses giant poster size Post-It notes during sessions so you’ll get a visual representation of your digital marketing issues along with your action plan of what you need to do. You can photograph the giant Post-It notes or take them home with you.

Mary Portas gives her best piece of business advice at the BIPC Conference Centre

What areas of digital marketing are covered in sessions?

  • Whether it’s working out which marketing person to hire, paid Facebook Ads, paid Google Ads, email marketing, eCommerce, SEO, website design, social media, copywriting, analytics, messaging, conversion optimization, finding freelancers, marketing software, and everything else digital marketing strategy related, Alasdair can help.
  • His experience of working with over 200 scale-up entrepreneurs in the last decade and teaching digital marketing to over 5000 entrepreneurs means he has to be up to date on everything digital.

Mary Portas speaks at The Inspiring Entrepreneurs Event at The BIPC

Mary Portas British Library

Revenue up by 81% and profits up by 133%

James Mallinson profile photo

In the 1st full year working together revenue has grown 81%, profit by 133% and costs are down by 20%.

Within 20 minutes of our 1st session, Alasdair identified the root cause of the problem.
Over the next 2 sessions with him, we built a robust and actionable plan for growth, that we then implemented. Those actions had and continue to have an immediate effect.

Perhaps equally importantly, Alasdair has provided an understanding and framework which means that all future changes can be bench-marked against our goals.

He's an interesting guy and works at your pace. He also will push and prod you, which may be uncomfortable to experience in the moment and comes from a good place, as he wants to and does help you get good results.
Use him!

James Mallinson
www.fixmymind.co.uk

Alasdair's advice was inspiring, creative and absolutely vital

Naomi Marek

We first met Alasdair as a guest lecturer at the School for Social Entrepreneurs. Before we worked with Alasdair, we were doing good work and winning lots of awards but we really didn’t have a clue how to develop our financial sustainability within the online community.

At the British Library Business And IP Centre, we gathered our social media manager, web-team and CEO who worked closely with Alasdair to build our online funding and engagement strategies. His advice was inspiring, creative and absolutely vital. Now, one year on and we're only half way through his to-do list….and boy, is it working!

As a result of us working with Alasdair, we have completely restructured our funding and monetisation strategy, developed new pop ups, redesigned our communications and branding and most importantly, found a new energy going forward. We still have lots to do but I can be sure that no other expert has had more impact on our growth and sustainability.

Thanks to Alasdair, Sky Badger has just been named a finalist in the Tech4Good Awards. We now reach over 1,000 families every day and since 2012 have helped over 1 million families struggling to find help for their disabled children.

Thank you, Alasdair. You’re Sky Badger’s marketing genius!

Naomi Marek
skybadger.co.uk

Sky Badger are an award winning charity

Sky Badger have won numerous awards and accreditations to date including The School for Social Entrepreneurs Scale Up Award 2015, gold winners of The Milton Keynes Digital Awards 2015 and The Guardian Charity Awards 2014.

Apply For Your 1-1 Digital Marketing Strategy Session:

Click here to apply

*Digital marketing strategy sessions are for established business owners looking to scale.

Scaling a Business Always Involves Growing Pains

  • With advances in artificial intelligence, the pace of change in digital marketing will only increase. Entrepreneurs that consistently improve their digital marketing will win the game of business growth and beat the competition.
  • Keeping your head in the sand is an understandable response to the overwhelming world of digital marketing!
  • However, as every entrepreneur who tries to grow finds out, it’s crucial to have the right people to help – scaling a business always involves growing pains!

Read Alasdair’s in-depth blog: 10 scale-up marketing laws 

FAQ:

  1. How do I apply for a session?
  2. Please fill out your application form here

  3. How does the application process work?
  4. All applications are emailed to the British Library Business And IP Centre and are reviewed on a weekly basis. You will receive an email response within 5 working days or less.
    For successful applications, Laura Bizzle from Grow will liaise by email to book your session at a convenient time.

  5. If my application for a session is not successful, can I reapply at a later date?
  6. Yes. You may reapply 12 months after the date of your initial application.

  7. How do you decide which businesses to see?
  8. The 1-1 sessions are for established businesses that are genuinely looking to scale and are willing to undertake the hard work it takes to grow, as scaling always involves growing pains.
    Alasdair experience and success is mainly with scale-up businesses as opposed to startups.
    We try to see as many businesses as we can each month, however, we do not guarantee that every application for a 1-1 session will be successful.
    Applications are favoured where it’s clear there’s a good potential for growth through better digital marketing.

  9. What happens during the 1-1 session?
  10. Before your session, Alasdair will review your application and review your website to better understand your business.
    At the start of the session, he’ll ask questions to help gain a deeper understanding of your situation.
    Alasdair uses giant poster size Post-It notes during sessions so you’ll get a visual representation of your digital marketing issues along with your action plan of what you need to do. You can photograph the giant Post-It notes or take them home with you.

  11. This 1-1 session isn’t a sales pitch in disguise is it?
  12. Absolutely not. The one-hour session is 100% focused on helping you solve your toughest digital marketing challenges and leaving with practical actions that you can implement immediately.
    After your session, if you do want to find out more about working with Alasdair we can email you more info.

  13. Where do sessions take place?
  14. Sessions usually take place at the British Library Business and IP Centre which is five minutes walk from Kings Cross station.
    If you cannot make it to The British Library or if Alasdair is working internationally, sessions take place on Skype.
    Add in map link same as for other landing pages.

  15. I’m looking for a marketing expert with experience in my sector – can you still help?
  16. Good question!
    Through a decade of experience in working with over 200 scale-up businesses and teaching workshops to over 5,000 business owners, Alasdair has worked with almost every business sector and business type!
    His experience includes B2B and B2C businesses as well as significant eCommerce experience and work with social enterprises and tech startups.
    However, Alasdair has no experience with the music industry and doesn’t work with life coaches.
    Whilst having a sector specialist can be very valuable, at Grow we believe that having a very broad range of experience of working with all kinds of different businesses in different sectors gives a better perspective.

  17. Why are you offering these free sessions?
  18. It’s part of Grow’s ethic to help as many entrepreneurs as we can. Alasdair grew up in a family business run by his father and uncle with two restaurants, a hill farm with self-catering in the highlands of Scotland, sheep, beef cows, and some pet chickens.
    He saw first hand the trials and tribulations of his father and uncle’s restaurant business and the ups and downs they went through which included several near bankruptcies during recessions.
    We believe in giving upfront value at Grow. Until you sit in a room and work with someone and feel if there’s chemistry or not, you cannot really know if they are the right person or company to help your business.
    After your session, if you do want to find out more about working with Alasdair we can email you more info.

Apply For Your 1-1 Digital Marketing Strategy Session:

Click here to apply

*Digital marketing strategy sessions are for established business owners looking to scale.

Our revenue increased by 50% after 6 months of working with Grow

Greg Gillespie profile photo

Before working with Grow, we were facing a couple of issues:

- We needed clarity. We needed to understand who our customers were, what customer segments we wanted to target, how to target them and talk to them, and what it was that we were marketing exactly.
- We also wanted to understand what our best pricing options were.

The impact of our lack of clarity was that we didn’t know how to increase our profits. No clarity also meant that we had no direction. We didn’t know what we were trying to achieve, where to focus our resources, efforts, time and money which is really key when you’re a small business. It’s about economy and using resources wisely.

I went to a workshop at The British Library led by Alasdair. I had been to many workshops before but found that Alasdair’s workshop was by far the best. It was very practical. Alasdair had a very clear understanding of how small businesses operate and what they need. It wasn’t an academic workshop that was detached from the real world of small businesses.

I then had a chat with Alasdair and realised that we could really use his help.

Alasdair clarified things for us. He gave us a sense of direction and clear advice. We knew we had something to work with, a clear action plan.

It’s been a couple of years since we’ve worked with Alasdair and we still refer to his notes now.

We enjoyed working with Grow because Alasdair is very good at what he does. He really understands small businesses. He is practical, he practices what he preaches. He’s very clear, very supportive and he is a very nice guy.

I also liked that the fact that we could go to him and bounce ideas. Alasdair understands the big picture and his advice goes beyond marketing.

Greg Gillespie
The London Academy of Dance