Does anybody use the yellow pages anymore?

Stop the murder of innocent yellow trees!

As part of my marketing project, one campaign will be targeting businesses who still use the yellow pages as a source of advertising.


The yellow page adverts (in the Dundee & Perth edition 2012) have a starting price of £361(for a quarter column ad in plain black) and a maximum price of £6928 (for a double page ad with more than three colours).
In an effort to help Scottish businesses spend their hard earned money in the right place, I have been trying to find the hard facts on how many people do use the the yellow pages, so I can contact customers who truly will see a benefit from changing their marketing strategy to a much more cost effective campaign online. However, I have hit a massive road block - it seems statistics and hard facts on people who use the yellow pages in the UK are pretty much non-existent!


I have found some facts from the US - in places like San Francisco and Seattle, environment concious city leaders have enforced an opt-in programme where it is now people's choice as to whether they want the yellow business directory delivered to their doors - but the situation in the UK isn't as transparent. In fact, yellow pages current statistics have a huge focus on yell.com usage and the only statistic I could find from them on the directory was 'The Yellow Pages directory is used by 80% of UK adults**' where the the statistics are taken from 2006-2007.

One good use for your yellow pages!

I smell a cover up! I personally don't use the yellow pages - I'm not sure who does these days! I shall carry on trying to find the hard facts - it's starting to look as though I'll need to run my own market research this time though! As far as the most useful way to use the yellow pages these days - I offer up this bloggers list of uses - obviously wrapping your Christmas presents is a great way to recycle and save money! Anyone with any helpful links - please message me! 

Twitter

Over the past couple of weeks I have been given more and more responsibility at my fancy new internship, one such responsibility being the takeover of twitter! Unfortunately for me I was not yet an avid user of twitter but I have recently been trying to turn that all around.

I'm finding it all a bit mad, but absolutely addictive! Someone please pull me back into the real world! Reading about  what's going on just about anywhere is very exciting. I feel like most of us did after mobile phones started popping up - we didn't know we needed them until they were invented! I'm sure there must be a GREAT marketing lesson in there somewhere!

Along the lines of marketing, I'm wondering how twitter actually started up and became such a large company. I recently found out that the creator of plentyoffish.com created a multi-million pound empire (and currently runs said empire with just four employees in total) with a, probably over done (but badly done) idea of a dating website. It's success was largely due to the use of Search Engine Optimization. It is ever so exciting, I personally always thought Google just picked which websites were at the top of your search list through a magic wand (i.e. I never really thought about it) but it seems there are many, many factors involved (including relevant content and back links - not that I'm completely clued up on it all yet - it has only been three weeks)!

Although I may not be completely clued up on it all yet, I'm definitely ready to get involved in twitter more often. A smart phone will definitely be top of my Christmas list, I think. 

The Internship

I’ve been working at my shiny new internship for 3 weeks now (and quite obviously neglecting my poor blog)! Things are going suspiciously well…I’m still expecting some sort of hiccup to arise! The company are an ‘online marketing’ company – definitely the future for marketing, so I hear. The work has suited me really well – I’m coming up with a lot of ideas and getting to implement them instantly!

At the moment one large project of mine is planning a Christmas event. I’m excited to get involved – but I’m finding it’s going to be hard to keep costs down and Christmas cheer up! Time to call in a favour from the big man from up north…. 

P.S. Guys...BIG achievement.......I got a DESK!! 

Well, that WAS a long interview...

YAY!

As you may have guessed I was not at an interview for over a month. I do have to apologize for being unavailable to write about part of my journey into marketing, but between a chest infection and moving house it has not been easy to sit down and write/find the internet. However, good news everyone;I have had the honour in getting an internship! But before you all start the grieving over the loss of my joyful writing, don't worry, I'm in this for the long haul! I've started a career course prior to the internship which is going rather well! 

My biggest suggestion at the moment to anyone looking for ANY job and going to an interview would be - BE CONFIDENT! And that is all for now folks. I'll try and come up with some more dreadfully boring inspiration tomorrow! If anyone happens to have any questions, or just needs directions on how to avoid clicking on my page again, please feel free to ask!

The Plan

I've been preparing for my interview and drawing up my 'Marketing Myself' plan!

So, without further ado...

I May Have Gone A Bit Mad With The Felt Tips

As much as I am loving keeping the blog up to date, I think I'll be signing off for the weekend as I am off to a friends wedding! As I'm pretty sure that my HUGE audience will be tremendously depressed about not reading my insightful ideas for a few days (sorry mum) I'll sign off with an extremely worrying quote I came across -

 'Don't say anything online that you wouldn't want plastered on a billboard with your face on it.' - (Erin Bury)

With that in mind, I should probably delete this blog. Crap.

Genius

As I have been busy trying to prep for my interview (and digest an amazing steak) I haven't had much time to finish my second marketing plan! I shall try and get it done tonight. I have, however, come across a hilarious picture on reddit.com:

True Genius Is Even Better When Hilarious!

Also found out reddit has advertising opportunities...may need to investigate this as it might be a good advertising path to 'Social media'! Let's hope I'll make an ingenious breakthrough like this one! :D 

First Draft...

This is my first attempt at a basic marketing plan, I'll update tomorrow with my 'Marketing Myself' plan, using this as a guide. PLEASE bear in mind that it's a first draft and I am quite sleep deprived at the moment! Almost don't want to post this, but here goes!

Ok....you can stop laughing now! 


Here's hoping I didn't just lose all credibility... :D

So I get One Ball up in the Air....

...And Suddenly a Million Come flying at me!

I am wishing my real ham sandwich was this huge!

Just started this blog and suddenly quite a few opportunities have come to surface! Be careful what you wish for, I'm going to be a very busy bee for a while folks!
As you know, I had began my research into marketing plans when all of a sudden (with a ham sandwich in my  mouth) I get a call and... I've been invited to an interview! Being proactive about what you want seems to be paying off!

The interview is for an internship combined with a course, which has so far been my 1^st choice of everything I have applied for. This is because starts off with a month long preparation course where I hope there will be plenty of chance to get some great advice on furthering my career (as it is run by the career service, I’m pretty sure they are the people for the job!) and be free to ask any questions along the way that may worry me about the upcoming internship.

A little overview of the course...
I hope my marketing plan turns out this professional!

So, I am about to embark on the next step of my journey - an interview and a 5 minute presentation on ‘How I believe the internship will help me achieve my career goals’. The interview is supposed to be like any normal interview, so I will be preparing for it using my research skills on the internet (a skill you must develop as a poor student with an expensive shoe addiction) and by getting a few words of wisdom from the parental people (as they tend to, annoyingly, know just about everything). The presentation is a little harder though...I’m starting to worry about keeping to time and I haven’t even started writing it yet!

I’m thinking...my career goals are fairly simple. I want to be prime minister followed by queen on the universe. But before that, I really think a job such as a marketing account manager sounds like a lot of fun and it seems like it comes with a great sense of achievement. So how do I get there, and how will this internship help me on the way?

I guess its back to writing up my marketing plan....at least I know my product pretty well!

Marketing Myself

Passing the first post and jumping the first hurdle of finding a job: What job do I want? 

I'm sure this is EXACTLY my expression while writing this blog...

I have always approached career problems with a head over heart manner, looking first and foremost at the logical side of things. [I have recently discovered this could mean that marketing in the career sector could be best focused using an 'informational approach' rather than an 'emotional approach'] This time, I decided to go with my heart however, which has told me one thing (since I saw the film 'Picture Perfect' when I was 12)...MARKETING!

Since that first glimmer of my dream, my passion has been spurred on by a Media Studies course at school where we created advert's [both using film and journalistic medias] along with the inspiration of my parents (of which there are 3, so far!) who have all shown an incredible understanding of the business world, both my dad and step-dad have became more successful than most men and my mother (along with a multitude of creative talents) has even been nominated for a new business award. I am a lucky girl to have such amazing genes, and I do hope to follow in their very big footsteps!

I have struggled to try and fit everything I want to say in personal statements and it is hard to show you are passionate about something through your listed academic history so on the helpful advice of a lady within the business, I have begun this blog.

I may be new to this but I think the best thing to do when you start a blog may be to decide on what to write about. Using a blog, how do I present my employ-ability in a more interesting way, in order to grab the attention of a marketing company? Then it hit me...Market myself!

In the foreseeable future I am going to add to my experience by developing a marketing plan and putting it into place, where I, 'One Girl' am going to represent the product/service that I am marketing . 

To start with, I had a look at my competitors and why they may be chosen above me. The two main reasons I came up with were;

1)     More knowledge in the area, such as a Marketing Degree

and

2)     Work experience.

I have applied for a lot of internships to address the second issue, however, instead of just waiting by my laptop (which so far has proved only good in advancing my ability to waste time rather than my career)  I have taken this project upon myself to try and create my own 'work experience'. Why wait for someone to offer me work experience? I’m offering it to myself! Being my own boss I can say I’m well suited to this job, and my perfect candidate! But on a more serious note, I have started reading a textbook on marketing to educate myself, making me my own teacher. I’ve only had to be put on the naughty step twice!

Reading this textbook last night, I discovered some very exciting ideas on marketing plans (So exciting that they kept me up till 5am writing this blog!). My first plan of action is to write a marketing plan. This marketing plan is going to be planned as I might plan a journey. I'm going to draw a map starting with where I am, ending in where I want to be, and will try and fill in the paths that could lead me there. Now....if only I had some paper....

The first post

Maybe a BSc in Neuroscience looks impressive, but it has not served me well in getting my dream job. I followed a path to greater understanding, to learn more about the way we think, what makes us 'tick' and find out about who we all are. Although this is all well and good it seems it was possibly not the best path to go down to get into marketing.

 So I've been pondering what might make me stand out from the crowd and might lean future employers towards me instead of a marketing graduate. I don't think anyone can show passion through a CV, and I doubt people want to read your life story in a cover letter, but I think maybe a blog may do the trick! Maybe you can be just a little less formal and a little more crazy in a blog. 

Here goes!