Skidmore layout 17/10/08 14:38 Page 1
The home
help
Half the world is running a business from
home. But how do you get your message
across? Marketing queen Karen
Skidmore has some top tips on web
promotion. Samantha Laurie logs on
With this insight
access her marketing expertise in myriad
comes the name of
ways, from teleconferencing forums and
Karen’s highly rated blog
email manuals to networking evenings and
site designer and a torrent of
one-to-one personal consultations. But
tips on what payment vehicle
what she’s really selling is herself: her
to choose (she rates
fresh-faced likeability and calm, common-
1shoppingcart.com), how to sense approach to digging out low-cost,
use social networking sites such web based marketing tools that require no
as linkedin.com and twitter.com technical knowledge or input.
as free web marketing, and how Her home on the Surrey-Hampshire
to make the most of email border, from where she works, is a
newsletters. She’s all for low-cost testament to the life of a working mother:
initiatives – “Don’t go spending kids’ pictures jostling for attention with
all your money on leaflets, whiteboards charting target earnings; dirty
advertising and logos” – and even breakfast dishes swept aside to make room
has a nifty idea for virtual for business briefs. It’s a familiar picture
Christmas presents: individually for many modern families, as more and
registering the family’s domain more women choose to work from home.
names for future use. With over half of all small medium
This is the kind of help her customers enterprises run by women, and one in
y interview with marketing
want. It’s certainly what attendees at this three new or expectant mums planning to
M
guru Karen Skidmore could
month’s Elmbridge Women in Business run their own business from home, the
not have come at a more
(EWIB) meeting will be hoping for, when kitchen table tycoon is an increasingly
fortuitous time. Struggling to
Karen addresses them at Silvermere Golf powerful force in the land.
create a web presence for my own small
Club, Cobham. Clear, simple marketing Pertinently for Karen, most surveys
guidebook publishing business, I am on advice with a technical edge.
suggest that less than a fifth of these
the point of signing up for a “There’s plenty of advice out there, but
women regularly invest in marketing or
Dreamweaver web design course. Karen’s not enough specific focus on how to apply
PR. Self-employed herself since 2004, it’s a
response is unequivocal: “Don’t!” I am, it marketing to a home business – especially
story she knows well.
seems, about to make the classic small one which focuses on selling your time as a
Working as senior director for
business mistake: reinventing the wheel. coach, consultant, therapist or self- recruitment giant Hays, Karen found
“It’s a false economy to teach yourself,” employed professional. I discovered for herself professionally blocked by the
explains Karen. “If something goes wrong myself that it’s hard to ride out the ‘feast or familiar brick wall of summer holiday
with the site you’ll never be able to fix it. famine’ effect when you sell your services childcare and working mother guilt. She
On the other hand, you don’t need to
by the hour. It’s much more efficient to became a lifecoach helping mums get back
spend a fortune either. A lot of sites are just
have products that ‘sell in your sleep’, as to work, but a difficult first few months
online brochures floating around gathering
those awful American marketing men say
made her realise how hard it is “to market
pixel dust. In fact, you’d be much better off
– a business format, books, audio tapes,
oneself when one is actually the product
with a blog. It performs all the same
DVDs.”
and services”. Then came a springboard: a
functions as a website, it’s cheap to set up
It’s advice that Karen has certainly
funding package from the University of
and it serves as fresh meat for the search
applied to her own flourishing business,
Surrey to devise a women’s enterprise
engines, so you’ll find yourself higher up
CanDoCanBe. Her target audience – the
course which would combine confidence
the rankings.”
burgeoning ‘mumtrepreneur’ market – can
building with practical marketing advice.
46
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