Online Business Marketing for the Non-Technical
Marketing Magician Draws in
Crowds
How to make the most of on-line marketing - at almost no
cost, was the general theme of an outstanding talk by the man the
BBC call “The Marketing Magician”
On the evening of 18 May, Stefan Drew pulled
in a crowd of nearly 200 to the Studio Theatre at Bedford College’s
South Bank Arts Centre. The event attracted every sort of
business from architects to aero-industries.
Stefan specialises in using low cost and free
marketing -much of it online - and has helped businesses win “more
customers, who spend more money, more often”.
Stefan agreed to share the secrets of his
magic ways with Bedford businesses and in the course of 45 minutes
demonstrated some free, or low cost, ways in which organisations
can market themselves without needing any technical
skills.
Bedford College computer lecturer, Sue
Brandreth, hosted the event and was as enthusiastic about Stefan’s
expertise as any among the audience - she pointed out that his work
was not about being a “techie” but about applying marketing common
sense to a free global resource.
Afterwards, Stefan said: “I was very pleased with the
numbers - not only did people ask questions during and after - but
people have been emailing me ever since.”
Stefan Drew commented: “10-20 years ago most
marketing was offline and consisted of adverts, brochures, leaflets
and direct mail. Today 600 million people have signed up on
Facebook and 50% of them visit the site every day. There are
5 billion mobile phones in the world, which means billions of
people have a “computer in their pocket” and most people regularly
Google for information on products and services.
“Being on Page One of Google is an essential
and yet, with this much competition, is very challenging for most
businesses. In this event we demonstrated how Bedfordshire
businesses can compete in this global online market and win”.
“Amazingly, most of what I demonstrate is
effectively free, so as the economy slowly comes out of recession,
cost isn’t a factor. It is more about knowing what to do and
getting on with it. My challenge to local businesses is to do
just one or two things online each week to grow their
businesses”.
"I just wanted to say that I thoroughly
enjoyed the above event on Wednesday. Stefan Drew was a great
speaker, with a lot of knowledge of the subject. Six
members from a business network group I attend
also came along and all remarked what a great event this
was. Very informative for those who already have websites.
Looking forward to ‘Clouding’ in October."
“It was a very
interesting and informative event. The content was well
presented and insightful.”
“I was amazed at how popular it was with
local employers.”
“100% - could not fault it.”
“Very useful insight into those little
extras.”
“Congrats on pulling such a big audience
in Bedford, and keep up the good work.”
This event was the second highly successful
event in a series of evening sessions aimed at local businesses and
hosted jointly by the local branch of the British Computer Society
and Bedford College..
The next event will take
place on Wednesday, October 5. The speaker, Ted Schultz
(Business Development Manager, Cloud Services, Microsoft) will talk
about the impact on businesses of Cloud Computing.
I expect that many of you will already have found your way to
Stefan Drew's websites and blogs. Here are a few links:
Stefan has kindly made available a
link to his PowerPoint presentation slides (6,949KB).which can
be downloaded from his website.
If you attended the
event on 18 May and would still like to give feedback please click
here