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    Marketing tips with Emma D’Arcy, founder of The Marketing Success Summit

    Bernard MacBenliBy MLM Success Tips No Comments8 Mins Read

    By @SimonCocking interview with marketing expert Emma D’Arcy. Mumpreneur; Owner of Emma D Marketing Agency; Innovative Marketing Strategist; Entrepreneur; Founder of International Online Marketing Success Summit; Marketing Consultant; Speaker & horse love

    What’s your background?

    When I first left school, I took that infamous year out and subsequently did not begin college as planned the following year! I am afraid the lure of a wage outweighed my desire to attend college. My first couple of jobs were in the equine industry, I worked in a couple of racing yards, an eventing yard, in a veterinary surgery as an equine veterinary nurse, throughout all this time I was heavily involved with buying and selling horses. In fact, I once bought a horse for £60 & was also involved with selling high end thoroughbreds for one million plus in Newmarket, Goff’s, Tattersalls & Kentucky.

    Buying and selling became a running theme throughout my entire life. During this time I attended night classes in Dublin to learn about marketing. I then transitioned out of the horse industry and into the retail industry and began working for Lidl Ireland GmbH in their headquarters in the sales department, I quickly got promoted to supervisor and then on to the buying department as a stock controller and buyer, with this I was responsible for ordering stock for ALL Lidl stores in Ireland at the time, no mean feat!

    After a couple of years, I got a little burned out and decided to take a couple of months off to travel which I did, doing the usual round the world trip, which I thoroughly enjoyed. When I came home I was very unsettled and looked into a variety of opportunities, including importing wine into Ireland. In the end I worked for a warehouse company as a manager for a year, as there were few opportunities to be promoted, I took the decision to leave and went back to University and did a business & marketing degree, I followed this up with a masters in marketing. All the while juggling jobs as an area sales manager, a market researcher, I even marketed the universities courses for quite a while.

    Once I finished my masters in marketing I started working for myself as a marketing consultant and was lucky to get several clients before even having the chance to create a website or the usual marketing materials!

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    In fact the university of Limerick where I had attended college were my first clients, which was a big win for me. In particular I helped them with their MBA programme and was a key player in increasing their market share for this course by over €1 million within a year.
    I currently serve clients in Ireland, UK, US, Australia and Canada to name but a few, with the advent of skype and zoom a fantastic online meeting software I now have the ability to work with clients all over the world, helping them to create innovative marketing strategies and more importantly implement them

    How did you end up doing what you do now?

    After leaving University I was still keen to keep up skilling in particular on digital marketing topics, with this in mind I have done a variety of online courses. Through these courses I have been able to network with other entrepreneurs all over the world, many of these people have turned into clients, which has been most fortuitous.

    In terms of The Marketing Success Summit, I wanted to provide an online portal where small to medium business owners can log in and listen and learn from speakers all over the world, all teaching about a specific marketing topic which they are expert in. I see so many entrepreneurs struggling to make sense of marketing and really falling down, simply because they are not sure what to focus on.

    How did the week of marketing interviews go? What was the idea behind it?

    The marketing success summit is about educating business owners about different areas of marketing from true professionals. I see so many charlatans, who have learnt the three steps to six figures (or so they think!) and are taking money from good people who believe they can help them. I chose all the speakers based on their success, their ability, their education and experience. I also wanted to open the eyes of some entrepreneurs to focus not just on digital marketing, but on traditional forms such as PR, Radio and such like. Depending on your industry, product / service, marketing needs to be innovative if you want to be heard above the din of noise in the media, that means as business owners we must be creative in order to get OUR message across to prospective customers.

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    The interviews went really well, I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing marketing professionals from all over the globe. On the summit there were speakers from Switzerland,many were from the States, Canada and the UK, as well as Ireland of course. It was terrific to interview all of these professionals who willingly gave of their time, many of the speakers are very well known in the online marketing world and I was delighted to have them on board, it was quite a coup really

    What will you be doing next with it?

    I have run the event twice this year, it has already doubled in size which is great. Going forward I plan to run it on an annual basis. Next year I hope to run it at the end of September and of course make it bigger and better

    What tips do you find yourself giving most often in relation to marketing?

    I am a firm believer in common sense and I encourage clients to take a step back and look at how they can best reach their prospective customers, with this in mind I typically advise on an integrated marketing campaign which combines the best of digital marketing with traditional marketing. In my experience one reinforces the other.

    Who do you follow for inspiration?

    I follow Gary Vaynerchuk of Vayner Media, Grand Cardone who is a sales genius and Marie Forleo who is an influential online marketer in the US

    Why do you think some Irish businesses have been slow to go digital in their marketing?

    I think many business owners thought digital marketing was a fad to begin with. They saw Facebook, twitter and social media in general as just a means to connect with friends, many failed to see the opportunities for their business and took quite a bit of convincing to try it, even when some did try, their efforts were luke warm and this reflected in their marketing & sales results

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    Once they ‘get it’ how quick can the turn around be? I feel once an entrepreneur gets it and then puts in the work consistently they should start to see results from three months in, this is assuming their content is good, their digital is interesting and is relevant and most of all it is consistent with definite calls to action.

    Anything we should have asked / you’d like to add?

    An area I feel that is often neglected is understanding consumer buying behaviour. In my experience many entrepreneurs assume they know their customers without doing any or very little marketing research. Unless you do some market research all you really have is an opinion that can be right or wrong! Understanding your customers, their needs, what they aspire to and how best to connect with them is key to any successful marketing campaign. Most business owners do it in reverse and lose money as a result. In fact BEFORE a business begins to even think about a website, its copy and any other marketing material, they really should understand their customers. Why? If you understand your customers, you will know what social media platforms they favour and can focus your attention there as opposed to an ad hoc approach. You will also learn about the language a customer uses when describing your product or service, this can be key as often industries have jargon customers simply do not understand, if they don’t understand they simply won’t buy, so it is worth spending time and money on understanding your customers so you can leverage your marketing strategy as much as possible. The result will be increased sales.

    Where can people find out more about you?

    www.emmadmarketing.ie
    email: [email protected]
    @emmadmarketing
    087 2395058

    If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking


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