04 March 2015
Take part in our survey and help shape our future!
As a valued user of the British Library Business & IP Centre and its services, we would like to hear from you about the difference we have made to you and your business – by taking part in our survey.
Your participation is crucial in helping to secure future funding and ensuring that we continue to meet your needs.
We would be extremely grateful if you would spend 5-7 minutes to complete this questionnaire, which aims to evaluate the Enterprising Libraries programme, jointly supported by the British Library, Arts Council England and Department for Communities & Local Government. The Enterprising Libraries Programme includes the Business & IP Centre national network and ten satellite library projects.
The findings will be analysed by Adroit Economics (an independent market research company) and used to demonstrate our economic and social impact and generate funding for future projects and services. Your responses and contact information will be treated in the strictest confidence and will not be shared in any form with anyone else without your permission.
As an incentive, your name will be entered into a prize draw and you could be one of 5 people to win an iPad Air 2.
Click here to complete the survey by 14 April 2015.
If you have any questions about the survey please contact Christina Murphy [email protected]
10 February 2015
10 tips to help you start a successful business blog
Emily Hill is the CEO of Write My Site, a digital copywriting agency based in Ealing, London. Her next workshop, ‘Blogging for Business’ takes place at the British Library Business & IP Centre on Thursday 12 February at 6pm. We asked her what advice she would give to small businesses wanting to start or develop their blog.
Blogging for Business
Ahead of my workshop about business blogging as part of this year’s Web in Feb, I thought it would be useful to outline a few tips for small business owners who are considering starting a blog – or indeed, those who have set up blogs on their websites but aren’t too sure what to do with them.
At my copywriting agency, we write content for all manner of business blogs, from start-up tech companies through to big fashion retailers, and while there’s a vast difference in the type of content that performs best for each client, there are some general principles that apply to everyone. Below is my shortlist of 10 considerations which I hope will help in deciding how to approach blogging for
1) Blogging is proven to increase traffic to your website
Let’s start with the question at the top of every small business owner’s mind: does blogging actually bring more traffic to your website? The answer, happily, is yes. Adding between 21 and 51 blog posts to your site boosts traffic by up to 30%, and when you’ve added at least 52 blog posts, your traffic increases by 77%.
A study of 2,000 businesses by HubSpot also revealed that blogging more than 15 times each month increases traffic by 55% and inbound links by 97%.
2) Blogging generates leads
Blogging sceptics think it’s not worth spending time or money on lots of content that doesn’t generate immediate sales. These people are missing the point. For small businesses, a blog is the most valuable digital asset they can curate. Blogging does generate leads – according to a Think Creative survey, small businesses that blog get 126% more lead growth than small businesses that do not blog. However, it’s important to take a long-term approach.
At Write My Site, we regularly sign new clients who have been following our blog and social channels for months – in some cases years. Blogging is about building your reputation as an expert in your field, and you can’t do that overnight. The payoff, however, is that the clients who’ve been following your blog are the best kind of clients: they’ve already learned something from you, they already trust your brand, and they are brilliant at generating repeat orders and referrals.
3) Small businesses get the most out of blogging
Small businesses with 1-10 employees receive the biggest benefit of frequent blogging: they can double their sales leads by increasing their number of blog posts from 3-5 to 6-8 per month (HubSpot).
That said, measuring the impact of a business blog purely by the amount of traffic or leads it generates is a limited approach because it excludes the value of developing a social media fan base, and obtaining PR opportunities (e.g. invitations to speak at industry conferences) – both of which are invaluable by-products of blogging for small businesses who must constantly find ways to compete with more well-known competitors.
4) Writing the company blog needs to be someone’s main job
Here’s the drawback to blogging: it’s labour-intensive. This means someone has to spend their time researching and creating the sort of high-quality, original content that will stand out from the thousands of generic articles that already exist on any given topic. Most business blogs are abandoned after fewer than 5 posts and my guess would be it’s because nobody has the time to keep it up to date.
Writing the company blog needs to be someone’s main job or clearly-defined part-time role. It doesn’t matter if that someone is an employee, a contractor or an agency copywriter – what’s important is that they don’t have conflicting demands on their time.
5) Every business has something interesting to say
Many businesses fear they are too “boring” to be able to populate a blog with regular content that people will want to read, but there is a clear reason why this isn’t so: if your business has a customer base, then it is sitting on information and advice that will be of interest to those customers.
Take net curtains, for instance. This is not a topic that automatically gets my pulse racing, but I became a customer of a small textiles company that had taken the trouble to publish articles about how to measure, select and hang net curtains. Why did I buy from them? Quite simply, because they had taken the trouble to provide genuinely helpful information that was an exact match for my needs. This made me far more positively inclined towards them than towards the other companies that simply tried to sell me their products.
6) Longer articles are generally better than shorter ones
In recent years there’s been a shift from short and snappy blog pieces to longer, more detailed articles. This is partly because of Google’s increasingly strict quality guidelines (see point 8, below) and partly because responsive design has made it possible for long-form text to be easily read on mobile phones and tablets. Although there is no convincing evidence that the length of a blog piece has a noticeable impact on traffic, it does seem to affect links and social shares. If a blog post is greater than 1,500 words, on average it receives 68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes (Quick Sprout).
My view is that most blogs benefit from a mix of article lengths. I tend to write a combination of 1,000 words plus pieces (such as this one!) and shorter pieces of no more than 500 words as these can be more easily absorbed by the busy reader.
7) WordPress is awesome
I suggest to my clients that they get set up to an easy to use and SEO-friendly blogging platform such as WordPress. What I really like about WordPress (other than it being completely free) is the extent to which it can be customised – both on the front and back end. You can make it look and behave in just about any way you like.
8) Keywords have grown up
More precisely, Google has grown up. Blogging used to be so easy: all you needed to do was keep repeating a certain word or phrase as often as you could and wait for Google to put you on Page One of the search results for that term. Following a deluge of poorly constructed ‘spam’ articles from companies wanting a quick win, however, Google has raised its game and is becoming better at recognising keyword spam and other cheap tricks designed to manipulate its algorithm.
Following the Hummingbird update in 2013, Google’s key interest is figuring out what people mean rather than just what they say when they run a search. The semantics of search is a huge topic in and of itself, so for the purposes of this section I’ll skip straight to the conclusion: write articles targeted at the reader and don’t crowbar your keywords into them. If you’re using WordPress (see point 7!) you can install a plugin called Yoast which will help you tweak your articles for keywords in a natural way.
9) Your blog needs a voice
Generic content is the kiss of death in business blogging, especially for small companies that don’t already have an established readership. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to read your ‘me too’ version of an article that has already been widely circulated. You must develop a distinctive voice, and a distinctive view on whatever topic you are writing about.
10) Your analytics will tell you what’s working (and what’s not)
The only way you can tell whether or not your blog is doing well is by measuring it. As the saying goes “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Fortunately, this doesn’t need to cost you a penny. Make sure you install Google Analytics so that you can track visitors and page bounces (the number of people who leave your blog without interacting) for every article. Over time you should be able to spot patterns that tell you what kind of articles are most popular with your readers.
Blogging for your business can reap huge rewards, so I hope these tips have gone some way towards helping you develop and refine your strategy. Good luck!
28 January 2015
Top tips: Pinterest as a visual bookmark for your business
Pinterest thought leader Vivienne Neale gives us her top tips to master Pinterest for your business. Vivienne will give a workshop on the same topic on 18 February 2015 in the British Library, Business & IP Centre for which you can register here.
Using Pinterest for business
The world of social media is a crowded place. Many new social networking sites are popping up and trying to compete with giants like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Deciding which social media tools are right for your business can be a challenge. Thus, it is crucial to learn from experienced practitioners when delving into the social media sphere.
Once you take the plunge it is not enough to have a presence online, you must also stand out to make a worthy return on your time investment. Pinterest is a fast growing social media platform that is used as a visual search engine by businesses and consumers alike for inspiration, research and for shopping.
Vivienne writes regularly about Pinterest, develops Pinterest strategies for companies in the UK, Europe and the US and beta-tests Pinterest-related products. We had the chance to ask her some key questions about Pinterest in anticipation of her workshop.
Hi Vivienne! Why do you think Pinterest has become so successful when Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can also manage images?
Pinterest is unique. It taps into our scrapbook passions. It allows us to collect ideas in a very easy to manage place, grouping pins into boards and creating a thing of beauty. Pinterest’s main advantage is a direct link to the image source the user can visit. Here lies the strength for marketing!
How can small businesses use Pinterest?
The key to using Pinterest as a business tool is to share images and content your customers love, related to your niche. If you are a florist, you may want to create an account about flowers with boards on wedding ideas styles, garlands, church decorations etc. Pinterest is about aspiration and inspiration - visualising the ideas and concepts behind your brand.
A bed retailer might have pins grouped under heading such as, “10 tips on getting a good night’s sleep”, “Bad Back Fixes” or “Foods to avoid before bedtime”. Use your creativity but ensure your pins are optimised to their full potential. With the introduction of Pinterest’s Smartfeed in 2014 you can enhance your account easily. You can also share content marketing on Pinterest by creating an infographic or a photo collage.
How can you measure the impact of Pinterest on your customers/business?
Analytics software can measure what is happening on your page. Pinterest offers some basic analytics, but there are many other existing software packages that provide more depth of information. For example, Tailwind and Ahalogy are great Pinterest analytic tools. Never underestimate talking to your customers either - ask them if they have been to your Pinterest site, what they thought, what they liked and what they hope to see in the future.
How can a services company, who does not have a product, use Pinterest?
Services firms can greatly benefit from Pinterest too. For example, an architecture firm can showcase their work and inspiration; a psychologist can create boards with stress busting images and inspirational quotes. Just consider “What would be useful, interesting, entertaining or educational for my customer?”
How much time should a business invest in Pinterest to make it a success?
For many, Pinterest is a joy and can find it difficult to log out! I post 100 pins per week spread over seven days and schedule them using a management tool. It is a time investment but it pays off. If it is in your budget you can pay experts to manage your social media account too.
How can I protect my copyrights and intellectual property (IP) rights on Pinterest?
There have been a couple of cases in the US where brands have made a complaint to Pinterest about the violation of intellectual property, but there have been no prosecutions. If a brand or business does not want its content being pinned then it must insert a line such as: ‘Content on this website is considered to be intellectual property of ********* and cannot be shared, published, printed without authorization’. To find out more about intellectual property you can also attend a Beginner’s guide to intellectual property workshop in the British Library, Business & IP Centre.
What are your top tips on using Pinterest for business?
- Put a ‘Pin it’ button on your website – making it quick and easy for anyone on your site to pin your images and information
- Use engaging board titles
- Use a business account and not a personal account. Verify it and ensure your profile and board details are completed in full
- Use good quality images, portrait orientation
- Get familiar with Rich Pins; they include extra information right on the Pin itself
- Come along to my workshop in the Business & IP Centre to find out more and ask any questions you may have. Register here.
23 January 2015
The Power of Partnerships in PR
There are many different business titles used to describe the coming together of two brands with the ultimate aim of reaching a new audience, improving their service or to create a new PR angle.
When we talk about partnerships we are referring to collaborating with like-minded brands which share a brand ethos and target market in order to reach a wider audience and create newsworthy PR angle.
One of the most common mistakes small and medium-sized businesses make is limiting their own potential by thinking too small. Partnering is absolutely key to growing any business. A small business does this by standing on the shoulders of bigger and more established brands for mutual benefit.
If you want to partner with big brands then you have to think like them - and be sure that you can cater to the increased demand that your partnership will likely deliver!
So, what do you have to offer as a small brand? The answer will be personal to you and your business, but it’s certainly not necessary to have deep pockets. Big brands will expect you to demonstrate your capability, so you’ll need tangible indicators of your company’s ability to create results. As we are talking PR, perhaps the most important element of your pitch should be how you intend to promote your partnership and the benefits it will deliver.
Which brands can you partner with for mutual benefit, and in turn generate press coverage from? Ask yourself the following questions and you’ll emerge with a list of target partnership brands:
- Which brands share your target market but are not your competitors?
- Which brands share your company ethos?
- Which brands are vocal about wanting to cater to your target audience?
In this global market competitive advantage depends not only on what you can do but of equal importance, who you work with! Partnerships have become a critical part of any successful business strategy.
Lastly, remember that your currency could be a free product, access to your database, and of course the all-important benefit of free positive publicity for the big brand.
Everyone loves a story of David partnering with Goliath, and the media will too. It makes the big boys look good, so think big and get out there and capitalize on all of the partnership opportunities for your brand just waiting to happen!
If you are interested in hearing more watch this video on how to get your ideas to spread with marketing mogul and best selling author Seth Godin for TED Talks.
Jessica Huie, MBE founder of JH Public Relations previously hosted the event How to generate PR for your business on a limited budget on Thursday 26 February 2015 at the Business & IP Centre, British Library. Sign up for future workshops and events now, to receive valuable advice from experienced mentors and experts on Public Relation themes and more.
20 January 2015
And the award for Celebrating and Promoting Your Business goes to…
The much anticipated Hollywood awards season is in full swing with big events taking place, including the infamous Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. But there are many awards that you, and your business, can be included in without heading for the Hollywood hills. But why get involved? Jeremy O’Hare is a Relationship Manager for the British Library’s Innovating for Growth programme, which provides £10,000 of fully-funded and tailored advice for businesses looking to grow. Jeremy tells us why awards are a sure fire way of creating a buzz around your business and enhancing your brand.
A challenge for every business is how to distinguish themselves from their competitors, often on limited resources. This means maximising your marketing and PR impact through endorsements, social media and regular referrals. But you should also be considering using awards to boost your business.
Awards are one of the simplest ways of getting great PR and there’s a reason why it’s so effective. It’s endorsement from a judging panel of business ‘experts’ and having the title of ‘award winning’ is confirmation that consumers can trust you. And that’s a giant leap forward to closing sales and generating leads.
And the nominees are…
Meredith O’Shaughnessy of Meredith Bespoke is winner of Home Based Business of the Year, 2014 and of Event Magazine’s “50 Fab Newcomers”. She believes, “if you operate in a saturated market, such as ours, awards help differentiate you and put a ‘stamp of approval’ on the work that you do.”
Nicola Gammon of Shoot Gardening recently won the People’s Choice awards at the Good Web Guides Awards 2014 and gardening category best website and knows the importance of attracting customers to her website, “if you’re a start-up then customers will be trying to size you up as to whether your company is worthwhile dealing with. When you win an award they'll think to themselves, ‘I should really consider doing business with that company.’”
There are many other real benefits that come from winning an award. Meredith has also found that being an award winner is an important part of contributing to company culture. “We like to celebrate successes internally and having external recognition really helps with that. It encourages the whole team.” Another upside is that it’s easier to recruit the right people, as is Nicola’s experience, “winning an award shows you have a winning idea and team. People want to work with winners.”
Top tips from our award winners:
- Invest the time properly to apply for each award. Make sure you pitch your application to the specific judging criteria outlined for each one. Applications can be quite detailed, so make sure you gather all the information you require well in advance so you are not rushed as the deadline approaches.
- Try to think what the award is really celebrating and then highlight this aspect in your application.
- Have your application reviewed by a copywriter who knows how to sell the benefits of your product or service or at by at least two other people who can correct any mistakes.
- Have the passion of what you do shine through in the application. It’s not all about dry facts and figures, important that those are in supporting your application.
- And if you win, make sure to get a photo on award night to circulate on social media and to share with your customers!
Nicola and Meredith’s businesses are two recent award winners that the British Library has been able to help on our Innovating for Growth programme. Other award winner’s we’re proud to have helped are Today’s PA, Living the Dream and Lend Me Your Literacy, read more about them here.
Best SME goes to…
So, where can you find out about awards? There are some well-known awards profiled on our COBRA database here at the Business & IP Centre and listed below are some of the major awards that SMEs enter, including:
- The British Chamber of Commerce Awards
- Federation of Small Business Awards
- Great British Entrepreneur Awards
- Start-up Awards
- Growing Business Awards
Keep an eye out for sector awards. For example, awards for Social Enterprise include:
Other specialist awards include those for young entrepreneurs:
There are dozens more! You could even aspire to the Queen’s Award for Enterprise. The best approach is to search for your particular industry and keep up to date with relevant e-newsletters and trade association news for award announcements. Trade associations love giving out awards and businesses/publications love to sponsor them too. So the selection is many and varied.
Most awards tend to be given out toward the end of the calendar year, so look out for applications opening from late Spring/Summer.
Don’t forget to plan your acceptance speech!
I should’ve added a word of warning at the beginning, once you start entering awards, you may find you can’t stop entering them! Persistence and celebrating success are two great traits key to running your own business. Good luck in carrying both!
Jeremy O’Hare is a Relationship Manager for the British Library’s Innovating for Growth programme, which provides £10,000 of fully-funded and tailored advice for businesses looking to grow. Since joining the British Library in 2005 he has worked with countless businesses, facilitating advice and research as well as providing workshops and information advice for start-ups and established businesses.
Innovating for Growth is run by the British Library and part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund
07 January 2015
Business & IP Centre webinars - learning wherever you are
Here at the Business & IP Centre we strive to assist businesses looking to start up and grow in a number of ways: they can explore the research resources in our reading room, attend our events or book in for a 121 session to discuss their idea. One of the most popular services we offer are our workshops - run by centre staff and expert partners, they help start-ups, inventors and entrepreneurs get to grips with a number of crucial business areas, from intellectual property to social media.
Most of our workshops are held onsite in our dedicated workshop rooms - however, we recognise that busy entrepreneurs aren't always able to make it into the Centre in person. So, like the businesses we see each day, we strive to be innovative, harness technology and adapt to our customers' needs, and therefore offer a programme of free online webinars accessible to anyone - in any location - from their computer. Alongside the National Network, the webinars are a way to reach beyond our presence in London; helping entrepreneurs across the country and even the world – we’ve had attendees from New York to Newcastle.
Attendees simply need to book online and log in on the day, and one of our team will talk you through an online presentation, with an opportunity to ask questions at the end.
Over the next few months, with funding from the Intellectual Property Office, we are running a series of intellectual property webinars, covering patents, designs and copyright. These webinars will introduce the different forms of intellectual property protection, guide attendees through searching for previous registrations, and show them how to protect their work. Wherever you are, if you've ever wanted to learn about IP while still in your PJs, these could be for you!
Webinars are displayed on our 'Workshops and Events' page - a taster of what's coming up online is below.
Introducing Patents
Friday 16 January 1pm – 2pm
A patent protects new inventions and covers how things work, what they do, how they do it, what they are made of and how they are made, and can be a key asset in business. This webinar will explain the basics behind patent protection and registration, and how to use internet databases and resources to search for patents. The session will include a live demonstration of a patent search to guide delegates through the process.
Introducing Registered Designs
Friday 13 February 1pm – 2pm
A registered design protects the appearance of a product. This webinar will explain the basics behind registered design protection and registration, and how to use internet databases and resources to search for designs. The session will include a live demonstration of a registered design search to guide delegates through the process.
Introducing Copyright
Friday 13 March 1pm – 2pm
Copyright protects original creations, from literary and artistic works to software. This webinar will explains the basics behind copyright protection, including eligible works, duration of protection, and an introduction to protecting and managing your copyright as well as using the work of others.
Sally Jennings on behalf of the Business & IP Centre
22 September 2014
Book review - Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz
As a start-up, you may ask yourself why data analysis is important your business. According to Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz, authors of Lean Analytics, taking a long, hard look at some statistics is for “anyone trying to make his or her organisation more effective”.
A useful resource for anyone using the Lean Startup approach, the book offers insight into the fundamentals of why you need data to succeed, and what data that should be to help you get your product to market in an efficient and cost effective manner.
The book starts with the basics, builds up a scenario and then demonstrates a real-life example using case studies, for example, explaining the differences between quantitative and qualitative data, suggesting you need both statistics and user feedback to get a real sense of what’s working and what’s not, then how this was applied to an actual business.
Lean Analytics helps you to grasp not just what a metric is, but what a valuable metric is, and what this can do for your business. You may have a product for a group, but what niche are you attracting? How do you utilise that information? This book will help you make more informed decisions will could potentially save you time and money – and steer you towards a breakthrough moment. For example, did you know photo-sharing site Flickr started life as a chat? Remember, the Lean Startup listens to what its customers want!
From looking at how much a customer spends on an e-commerce platform to website design to software as a service, Lean Analytics helps you to develop the right questions to ask and what to do with those answers without getting lost in jargon or losing sight on what data actually represents – actual people – your customers.
Nadia Kuftinoff on behalf of the Business & IP Centre
11 September 2014
Healthcare Industry Market Research in the Business & IP Centre
With all of the great market research databases available in the Business & IP Centre there is a danger that the reports we have in printed format might get overlooked. This would be a mistake because there are some really useful publications to be found on the shelves.
If you are researching the healthcare industry, you may be interested to learn that we have quite a few reports from two of the major healthcare industry analysts, Laing Buisson and Espicom.
Laing Buisson is the UK’s foremost provider of market intelligence on the private healthcare sector. They also cover the community care and childcare sectors.
Among the reports you can find in the Centre is Laing’s Healthcare Market Review, which is widely regarded in the industry as the definitive analysis of the independent healthcare sector in the UK. This is an invaluable reference for decision makers in both the private and public sectors. We currently have the 2013/2014 edition in the Business & IP Centre at shelf reference (B)MKT 362.102541 Business.
Other recently published reports in the collection include: Children’s Nurseries 2013 – (B)MKT 338.47362712094105 Business; Health Cover UK Market Report 2013 – (B)MKT 338.473683820094105 Business; and Domiciliary Care 2013 – (B)MKT 338.47362140808460941 Business.
You can find full details of all the Laing Buisson reports we hold by entering the search terms (B)MKT Laing into our online catalogue.
Another highly respected analyst in the healthcare industry is Espicom. Like Laing Buisson, Espicom is a UK-based publisher. Their reports cover a wide range of healthcare related subjects such as the developments in the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular drugs, drug delivery methods, pharmaceutical generics, medical imaging, orthopaedics, cardiovascular devices, in vitro diagnostics and diabetes. They also publish country specific reports.
We have over 150 Espicom reports in the Business & IP Centre. Recently published titles include: Physician-based Point-of-care Diagnostics: Products, Players and Outlook to 2017 - (B)MKT 338.47616075 Business; Advances in Molecular Imaging 2013: a Market Coming of Age - (B)MKT 338.47681761 Business; and the regional volumes of the Medical Device Intelligence Report 2013 - (B)MKT 338.4761020943 Business.
You can find a full list of all of the Espicom reports held in the Business & IP Centre on our catalogue. Enter the search terms (B)MKT Espicom.
Michael Pattinson on behalf of the Business & IP Centre
10 September 2014
New database in the Business & IP Centre: Local Data Online
Adding to the extensive list of databases that we currently have, we have also now introduced a new database at the Business & IP Centre: Local Data Online (LDO).
LDO complements our existing market research and company databases by providing insights into the ever-changing UK retail and leisure landscape, allowing users to instantly understand the health and make-up of high streets, retail parks and shopping centres. Field researchers from the company spend over 2,000 hours a week in the field collecting and aggregating information for the database.
The database’s functionality allows you to search and extract information in a number of helpful ways. You can examine the retail make-up of a particular location – for instance a city, town or region – with the results displayed on a map. Retail units are then broken down by industry classification, so users would be able to pinpoint, for instance, the number of coffee shops in a certain area - and see what percentage of the whole this number represents.
They can also download location summaries, and lists of companies along with addresses and contact details. Key statistics include the number of vacant units, opening and closure rates, and the mix of independent and chain businesses.
A second method of searching is by industry classification. Type in your industry sector – for instance ‘cafés & fast food’ - and your region, and the database will show you the top 20 companies in this industry/area, the growth or decline rates by units or net change, and distribution between high street, shopping centres, retail parks, and other.
Finally, you can choose to look at the ‘retailer overview’, which gives location coverage details for specific companies, and percentage change over the last year. This feature allows you to compare up to 5 companies, so you could examine the retail presence across the country for Costa Coffee versus Starbucks, for example.
Local Data Online is useful for a number of reasons – to examine geographical trends, research local opportunities or competition, assess the suitability of a particular location for your business, or to create marketing lists. For instance, an entrepreneur opening a new coffee shop may wish to examine the make-up of an area to see if there are already lots of similar businesses already operating, or look at the mix of independents and chains to see how their business would fit in.
They could also look at the number of vacant units and openings and closures to examine the general retail health of the area. Suppliers of coffee beans, on the other hand, may wish to use the map functions to create a list of coffee shops in their locality that they could then market their product to. Or, if they want to research a particular B2B customer, the retailer profile would illustrate the company’s coverage across the country and the growth/decline rates of their outlets.
To access Local Data Online you need to visit the Business & IP Centre reading room. Find out more.
Sally Jennings on behalf of Business & IP Centre
09 September 2014
Using Netmums to find local business listings
Recently I found myself talking to a reader who was intending to set up a small business in Orpington. One of the questions she asked me was: How can I do some basic market research? Well, there are plenty of sources that can give an overview of how the market in her particular business is doing in the UK as a whole, but she was chiefly interested in her local area.
One obvious question she needed to research was: What similar businesses are already operating in my area? Looking in the Yellow Pages would be helpful, but I found another source that slightly surprised me, but nonetheless I can highly recommend: Netmums. (Not to be confused with Mumsnet, which is similar, but different.)
Founded in 2000, Netmums is the UK's fastest-growing online parenting organisation with over 1.7 million members and 8 million unique users each month. It is a family of local sites that cover the UK, each site offering information to mothers on everything from where to find playgroups and how to eat healthily to where to meet other mothers.
Among many other things, Netmums gives local listings of small businesses that they could find useful – and that means a very broad range of businesses, indeed.
Under four broad headings:
1. Household Help
2. Other Local Services
3. Women and Holistic
4. Business Help
It has some three dozen categories, ranging all the way from Garden Services to Website Design and PC Repairs, by way of Hair, Nails, Beauty and Tanning, Food Banks, Driving Instructors, and much more.
What I particularly like is how it lists businesses not only in the town I ask for (when I typed in Orpington, it suggested Bromley to me, so I went with that), but also ranged further afield into neighbouring towns, within I estimated about 20 minutes’ driving time. This is just the sort of information that a hopeful start-up will need: if I want to start up in business as, say, a kitchen-fitter in Harpenden, I will want to know what other kitchen- fitters are already operating in nearby towns such as Luton or Welwyn Garden City – and Netmums will give me a list.
However, it may be fair to say that Netmums is not the clearest of websites to navigate.
Here are quick instructions on how to get to the local business listings:
- Starting at the home page, click on Choose Location (at the top of the page), which leads you to a page with an interactive map and a Search box – you can use either.
- If you type the name of your town in the Search-box, it gives you the regions that this name maps onto.
- Click on one, and you will be given the options Join (wherever) or Log In as a guest.
- Once you have chosen one of these, you get to your region’s local page. Now click on Local Services – a rather inconspicuous link near the top of the page, towards the right-hand side.
I don’t know how many hard-pressed parents find this slightly hidden corner of the Netmums site, but for a would-be start-up it is well worth exploring.
Rupert Lee on behalf of the Business & IP Centre
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