Here’s the deal. It’s really simple.

You tell us about a marketing problem you’re having.

We publish an answer that:

• you can actually put into practice; and
• has a good chance of working. I would say “is 100% guaranteed to work” but I’m not a salesman and you’re not an idiot. Guarantees are for toasters.

Put a bit of meat on the bones of your problem. Tell us what your company does. Tell us what you’re trying to achieve. Tell us what resources you have at your disposal. If you’re not too embarrassed, tell us what’s failed to work before (we’ll certainly tell you about some of our failures – they’re the best way to learn)!

If you don’t want to publicise your name or your company’s name, that’s fine. We’ll keep them private. But remember to include your name, company name and website in your submission to us because we’ll need to look at these.

Marketing Troubleshooter advice

Let me tell you about the type of advice we give:

• The Marketing Troubleshooter is for SMEs. Our advice won’t require a huge budget. It won’t need a team of IT specialists. It won’t require a large staff.
• It’ll be comprehensive. It won’t talk about targets without telling you how to achieve them.
• It won’t be limited to digital marketing. Digital is just one part of marketing and marketing is just one part of a successful business. You can’t pay your bills with LinkedIn followers. We’ll be talking strategy, lead generation, events – and yes, some digital issues like SEO.
• You’ll be able to understand it.
• You’ll be able to put it into practice.
• You don’t have to pay for it.

Why do we do the Marketing Troubleshooter?

The Marketing Troubleshooter fills a gap. The advice we see (and there’s plenty of it) lacks relevance to SMEs. By “SME”, we mean any company under £50m or under 250 staff.

• We see social media plans being promoted that would occupy a full-time employee.
• We see software being promoted that costs hundreds of pounds a month.
• We see techniques being advocated that need a PhD in computer science.

The advice seems to forget that SMEs have hundreds of other tasks to do every day and limited staff, budget and skills. Marketing Troubleshooter knows that marketing has to fit in with everything else.

Our payback for the advice we give is that we get traffic and engagement through our social media channels and website. That’s the only ‘payment’ we’re looking for.

What we can’t promise

We can’t promise to respond to or provide a ‘Marketing Troubleshooter’ answer every problem we get. Treat this like the letters page in the back of a magazine. If the problem you pose raises some interesting issues that will be relevant to other people (and which we can answer) you get the advice you need for free.

Submission form

If you want to submit a question to be answered through the Marketing Troubleshooter, this is where you do it:

 

Thank you for Signing Up

Marketing Troubleshooter

Tell us a little bit about yourself and the marketing problem your business is facing. Most of the fields are optional but the more information you give us, the better we can answer.

  Please correct the marked field(s) below.

Email *

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First Name

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Last Name

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Job Title or Role

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Company Name

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Website address

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Turnover

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Employees

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Our Business

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Our Problem

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We Have Tried

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Marketing Staff

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Marketing Budget

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Marketing Tools

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*Required fields

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