Another year…another website!
In spite of the excellent feedback we received from the ‘Kids Saving Lives’ campaign I spoke about in my last blog that we piloted at my son’s school last year, we’ve had to temporarily put that project on hold. However, we’re hoping to relaunch as early as next month when we should have enough time to devote to it.
In preparation for the relaunch, we’ll be sending out our childcare catalogue to schools and childcare providers complete with ‘Kids Saving Lives’ flyers in the hope of spreading the word and getting as many schools involved as possible.
The reason for putting ‘Kids Saving Lives’ to one side was because a national company wanting us to develop modular training courses specific to their needs approached us. Over the past couple of months, our efforts have been centered around developing this proposal package. It looks set to be a huge project that will be launched initially in the North and, if successful, spread nationwide. In fact, much of our work of late has been centered around training and our courses are completely booked up this month, which is great news! On top of all this we’ve had to invest in a new website as it was no longer possible to book training courses etc via the previous site. After much consideration, we’ve decided to manage the content of the site ourselves which looks like it’s going to be very beneficial - we did take a lot of convincing though! The new site has made a dent of three and a half thousand pounds in our budget - we looked around locally for quotes and, to our surprise, this was one of the cheaper quotes to come in!
Compared to January last year our profits have increased ten fold. Now we’ve just got to look towards February and March and beyond. We’ve gone back to basics and are looking to kick start our marketing drive and approach contacts made this time last year. There looks to be a huge increase in the costs of both advertising and marketing this year which is something we weren’t necessarily expecting. The problem is that as we’re now in our second year in business we’re no longer considered a new business. Because of this, membership fees at the Chamber alone have gone up £200.00.
With advertising, we’ve doubled the size of our advert in the Yellow Pages and we’re currently designing our own brochures and getting somebody else to print them. This way probably takes longer but it is cheaper and it’s important that we economise and think of ways to balance the budget where we can. Despite the extra cost it’s all worthwhile. We rely heavily on networking and getting our name heard and ensuring that we’re known in the right circles. From a financial point of view, the costs of marketing and advertising always pay for themselves in the end anyway.
So…when we look back over our first year of trading, we’re amazed at how much the business has developed but also at the huge changes we can see in ourselves. We’ve got more direction and a better idea of what works and what doesn’t. Our Prince’s Trust mentor has reduced his visits to every two months (the need for less advice and support must mean that we’re heading in the right direction!) and all our projects are moving forward and developing nicely. What’s more, compared with last year we’ve now actually got some money in the bank and we’re still having lots of fun making it!!
