South East Business gets early start on New Year Plans

Wednesday, 9th January 2008

Marketing was the theme of the new year networking session by the South East Business Innovation Centre's (SEBIC) Coffee Club morning last week with start-ups, SME practitioners and groups attending the event to learn from presentations and the open forum for 2008.

Much of the representation at the informal setting in the IDA centre was from start-up SME's but there was representation from the South East Enterprise Platform Programme (SEEPP) and the New Ross Chamber of Commerce.

Among the sectors represented were the Agri-business and thorough-bred industry, the support systems industry and the energy sector with many of the businesses in an early stage.

After an introduction by SEBIC Chief Executive Michael Maddock, the central presentation was given by the Centre's Client Account Executive in Marketing, Rosemary Ward on the essential guides for businesses to the right marketing strategy for their own businesses.

In Ms. Ward's presentation, those in attendance were taken through the marketing mix from identifying target markets, niche markets, low-budget marketing and the diverse and plentiful arrays of marketing faux paus which were given in the SME and start-up business context.

The discussion was thrown out for all to voice the views, questions and inputs on getting it right with the marketing mix in terms of finding client bases and customers to having the right distribution lines.

After the talk, Michael Maddock talked to Waterford Today Newspaper on the reasons of being for the Coffee Club when he said: "What we are trying to do is to grow the network by moving it around to different locations and that will encourage networks to join in because the diversity of the businesses was fantastic. The entrepreneurial spirit coupled with the age profile, with people there who were in their early twenties to people in their sixties. The common denominator was that we want to run our own business. We want to do some different. We are doing something different".

Mr Maddock added: "They all face the same type of problems and all similar types of problems and by creating an open coffee network like that you have safety and integrity and trust in within the meeting itself to allow them to explore ideas and say how to get on with that".

On the marketing presentation that she gave to those who attended the meeting, Rosemary Ward commented: "It was elements of all parts of my experience that prompted that. My issue, and as I said at the end of the meeting, it is very hard to condense weeks and weeks of marketing knowledge into a ten or fifteen minutes of the presentation but the idea was to give a flavour for how to present a marketing plan. You are also talking to people of different industries. Marketing is very specific. You have to sit down with each person in each company to work through marketing plan. But the core of the detail in a marketing plan is the same no matter if the company is big or small. You just have to tailor it to fit within whatever organisation, sector or industry you are working in."

According to Rosemary Ward of SEBIC, the next Open Coffee Club meeting will be held on the 1st February in the Arclabs Building, Carriganore Campus.