Marketing Plans in the Digital Age – A workshop course to help your business

UPDATE: Unfortunately there are no further places available in our Marketing Plan Workshop at this stage, if you have an interest in participating please e-mail us at workshop@sitesuite.com.au and we will record your contact details and advise you when the next course is likely to get underway.

For many of us in the small business space we simply get started on the basis of a good idea, the need to do our own thing, or by accident when a hobby or interest goes well and expands into a business.

While there is normally always a wealth of life experience supporting a small business, the level of formal training or experience is often narrow rather than wide in scope. Against this backdrop, marketing activities can often be “hit and miss” or see long term goals surrendered at the first short term “stumbling block”.

While we all seem to be “time poor” these days, one of the activities we have been expanding at SiteSuite is the sharing of information and skills within our small business client community.

The next initiative we are launching is a Marketing Plan Workshop series for small business owners. This will take place over a nine week period and the number of places will be strictly limited to eight to ensure a strong interaction amongst the group. Only one person per company can attend and the group will be structured such that no direct competitors will be in the same group. So best to enroll early to ensure you don’t miss out!

The format will be as follows –

July 17^th – 12.15pm for a 12.30pm start at SiteSuite’s office in Broadway. Targeted finish time 2pm, light lunch available from 12.15. When you come to the first meeting you will need to bring a half page profile on yourself that you can circulate and share (9 copies please). The first meeting will focus on communication, and while there is an underlying milestone outline for the course to provide a commercially valuable outcome, the content will be strongly tailored to the group needs as they are revealed.

The next six meetings will run on the following Tuesdays at the same time ie. July 24 through to August 28. At each of these meetings SiteSuite will invite a keynote speaker, who has strong experience in marketing, to either open or close the meeting with a talk of around 15 minutes.

There will be homework, and you will need to allow for between one hour and two hours a week to complete this outside of the meeting. However this work will be strongly focused on your business, it will be practical and worthwhile, not academic.

There will be a two week break between the penultimate meeting and the last meeting which will be held on September 11th, and this is because the last meeting belongs to you. Each of you will have 10 to 15 minutes to present your marketing plan to your peers. The author of the plan judged best by their peers will receive a $500 Myers card.

If I want to attend, what do I need to bring to the table?

• An open mind, a willingness to start with “fresh eyes”, the intention to actively participate and communicate with your course members.
• A commitment to attend all meetings and do the homework
• The authority to implement what you learn and discover within your own company
• An acknowledgement that all commercial information you receive in relation to other businesses is confidential and potentially commercially sensitive. At some stage you may be requested to sign a generic group NDA (non disclosure agreement).
• An entry fee: it is commonly accepted that people often don’t normally appreciate what they receive for free; the cost of the course is either $500 plus GST upfront, or $200 plus GST for each of July, August, and September. If anyone at the end of the course doesn’t believe they have received value for money you can receive a full refund.
• PS. Don’t forget your half page profile for the first meeting

What can I expect from the course? You will…………..

• get to interact with senior business people who are running their own business, and get to share their “hit and miss” experiences, potentially saving you a lot of angst, as well as picking up hopefully more than the odd tip along the way
• learn some formal marketing skills in conjunction with the group
• get a sense of the variety of possible marketing approaches available from the guest keynote speakers
• get the opportunity to bring all you learn and experience together into a marketing plan and have its rigour tested by your peers
• meet a variety of people who will be able to help you develop your business in a relaxed and confidential environment

Who is going to champion this?

Grant Goodger, one of SiteSuite’s founding directors, will facilitate and guide you through the course. Grant’s research project for his Executive MBA was a 90 page Strategic Marketing Plan for a medium size business.

Since then he has added over 20 years of management experience as a CEO in New Zealand, Japan, and Australia, for both small and large companies. He understands marketing at both an academic and practical level, and at SiteSuite lives every day the challenges we face in this digital age.

Please register your interest with Grant directly at workshop@sitesuite.com.au and he will call to discuss your participation.