.....well and truly over!
We’ve come down to earth with a bump over this Easter period. I think as the euphoria of the launch has worn off and we’re into the hard slog of actually running a start-up.
There have been a couple of incidents of clashes of opinion, as we’ve been putting our points across and trying to make sure we’re on the same wavelength. I think the worst is over for now, as we’ve cleared the air on a few things. Hopefully things will run a bit smoother.
These problems wouldn’t occur if you didn’t have just a few people trying to do many different things, some of which they don’t actually enjoy and aren’t skilled in either. If you could afford to hire staff to be responsible for their own little bit of the business, it seems like it would be a lot easier. But that’s just not realistic with a start-up, and I guess we’d have other problems then anyway trying to manage more personalities! So it’s just a case of heads down, plough on and keep going until we’re in a position to recruit. Even the founder of Amazon packed his own boxes during the early days!
The TV documentary thing didn’t quite happen last week. We were only going to be a ‘bit part’ almost a ‘walk-on’ really! But we were hoping we’d get the business mentioned and along with it, some profile. A hotel we were going to review (Sparkles in Blackpool) is being featured in ‘The Hotel Inspector’ a sort of docu-soap to turn hotels around and solve whatever issues they had. There’s only been one series of it before, and it’s on Channel 5, so if you didn’t see it, if you think of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, you’d been along the right lines. However the film crew had finished their filming earlier than expected and so we missed them.
We did know that before we showed up, but went along anyway because I really wanted to have the chance to review this hotel. Normally there’s no chance of a press trip because the hotel will be fully booked straight through to September now, but she was closed for renovations just before Easter (as a result of the work Channel 5 had suggested) and so I got to have a good peep at all the bedrooms – and what an experience! Have a read of my review “Blackpool Bliss” and you’ll see what I mean, it was like walking into a film set. The great news is that we’ve got a family holiday from Sparkles Hotel to give away in May in our monthly members’ competition. So not a bad deal after all!
By the way, talking of press trips, we want to review accommodation in Isle of Wight, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, and Spain/France/Italy if anyone has any contacts who may like us review them in June – so we can get it on the site before the summer holidays. Just pass on my email address (kirsty@entertainthekids.com) if you know anyone who may be interested.
The company acquisition we’d been bidding for a few months ago raised it’s head again last week. The original purchasers had pulled out, after dragging their feet all this time, and so it was effectively back on the market again. We put in a (much lower) offer, because our big concern about the business was that it was in a specialist market and we didn’t have anyone to run it for us, as the former directors had decided they didn’t want to be involved in it at all any more. I’m not prepared to take my focus away from entertainthekids.com to start learning a new business sector. We weren’t successful, and the winning offer was nearly twice our bid. But that was fine with us because the timing’s just wrong for us to risk anything else at the moment.
We’ve been flattered in a sad kind of way! Our PR agency has found that many regional/local newspapers don’t want to feature us because they say we’re a threat to what they do already in their newspaper or on their website. This can really only be relating to the Days Out section, and it’s ridiculous in my opinion – but I guess I would say that. And if their websites do try to cover local days out, they’ve usually only got about 6 things on there! We’ve got well over 2,000 on our website. This even applies to my own local paper. So this week I’m going to pick up the phone to the editor myself and see if I can sort it out somehow. There’s got to be a way around this one.
More baby shows attended and booked. Most of them are very small, very local and not costing much at all. But very worth attending because I’m picking up all sorts of knowledge of one kind or another, even if we’re not getting much in the way of members joining at some of them, we’re not losing anything by attending.
This week starts with a catch-up after Easter, today. I’ve sent loads of emails for various things that haven’t been answered because many people were still on holiday last week. Followed by an extremely busy day on Tuesday with meetings with Fluid, Crush, a baby show near Hull (yes on a Tuesday – it will be interesting to see the turnout!) followed by a meeting in Leeds. Nothing fixed has been planned for the rest of the week, but that could change quickly, and it usually does!
Kirsty
entertainthekids.com
24 April 2006
06 April 2006
We’re attacking on all fronts
It’s been about marketing from all angles this week.
Last Saturday I attended another Baby Show, but this time we didn’t have a full stand because we found out about it too late to book a space. And what a massive difference it made – not a single member has joined, and I can guarantee that 99% of them received a card and a pack of crayons in their hands (from me, stood near the exit all day!)
So that proves something for us, that we’re going to have to exhibit properly in future, and show our website, to get the same reaction we had at Bambinos, the first baby show we attended. Of course, it may be that it’s a slow burn, but like for like, we’ve just not made the same impression. We’re still getting new members from Bambinos now, but we also had lots on the days we actually exhibited and in the few days immediately after. An interesting experiment, and very useful information. Thankfully it didn’t cost us much to find this out!
One of the best things about the day was meeting up with other business owners, swapping contacts and bouncing ideas off each other. In particular Lara from Babytastic (antenatal classes for pregnant couples in Hertfordshire) and I, spent most of the day talking because we were stood opposite each other. There was a lot of banter and it was great to see that we could both help each other out because we’d had experience of different things. There’s sometimes a lot of hesitation when business owners talk about their strategies, ideas and plans. When there’s no commercial risk (ie you’re not talking directly to a competitor), I can’t see what the problem is and the secrecy often does more harm than good. And let’s face it, if I was nervous about giving away private commercial information, I wouldn’t be writing this and broadcasting it to the world, would I?
I’m regularly emailed by an anonymous website business owner, who is generally criticising my approach or strategy. Not enough information to be helpful, just critical. It’s a shame that he doesn’t feel he can be open enough to disclose his email address directly to me so that I can actually reply to his emails, and then maybe something constructive will come out of this.
We finally got ourselves a mention in Alison Cork’s Really Useful Column in the Evening Standard on Wednesday evening, after us expecting it for the last couple of weeks. A cracking review, and she’s finished it by calling us ‘Pure Genius!’ Well we can’t ask for more than that, but I was really surprised to find that the number of members joining, stating the ES as their ‘heard from’ reason, was really low. It’s only Thursday evening as I write this, so maybe they’ll trickle in, but still…
We’re still waiting for our feature in the local paper, and I’m expecting quite a lot of interest from that, we shall see!
Crush Communications have been sending out our press releases this week, giving details of our competition - a luxury spa weekend courtesy of spabreak (see our website for full details!). I'm expecting some feedback tomorrow about how successful they've been with that.
Plus we’ve been busily printing, sticking and posting in our direct mail campaign. Very targeted and over quite a small area, but this is proving quite successful already. Maybe there’s a message here for us. Of course, the advantage with getting editorial press coverage is that it doesn’t cost anything, apart from a lot of time (assuming you don’t have a PR agent charging you for their service), and the costs of a direct mail campaign can be significant. But we’ve managed our costs really carefully, so this one should pay off. However I’m certainly looking forward to the day when we can afford to pay administrative staff to do our mailshots! You wouldn’t believe how much of a workout you get stuffing envelopes and sticking labels and stamps all day!
Wendy has been busy arranging the family travel reviews for the holiday pages. We’ve got 6 reviews to be posted in April, 4 lined up for May and 3 already in place for June. So those pages are going to be quite impressive soon, and quite varied. But it’s going to get more difficult to get any agreement for press trips in July/August as all the best family resorts are fully booked anyway, so I guess it will go pretty quiet after that until September.
We’re also now working on going further a-field for some European holidays, but we needed to wait until the pages were more substantial before we approached companies for these more expensive press trips. Let’s see how we get on, I expect many will have to be booked well in advance and we won’t be offered any reviews until 2007 – something that didn’t occur to me to do last year before we launched! That would have been impressive planning ahead! We need to tackle various modes of transport too – travelling with kids on a plane, boat/ferry, train and by car will all have different elements for the feature. We’ve got to provide as many useful tips as we can!
I’m looking at getting some partnerships for some of the other content too, more about those later if I get anywhere. And contact me if you have any ideas!
Talking of ideas, I’ve had a brilliant one from another business owner, Louise Parr who makes handmade wedding stationery - www.somethingbeautiful.biz, she suggested we should offer a gift option for anyone who wants to purchase a membership for someone else, she said it’d make a novel gift for a new mum in particular. What a fabulous idea and why didn’t I think of it before? Anyway, it’s in the pipeline now, so I’m very grateful to Louise (who received a complimentary membership for her sister-in-law as a thank you from us!) for telling us this. Aren’t there some nice people around?
There’s a possibility that we may be featured on a TV documentary on channel 5, for which I’m being interviewed next week. Not sure if it will go ahead, but a nice opportunity and one that I’m not going to turn down!
So more about that next week too!
Kirsty
Last Saturday I attended another Baby Show, but this time we didn’t have a full stand because we found out about it too late to book a space. And what a massive difference it made – not a single member has joined, and I can guarantee that 99% of them received a card and a pack of crayons in their hands (from me, stood near the exit all day!)
So that proves something for us, that we’re going to have to exhibit properly in future, and show our website, to get the same reaction we had at Bambinos, the first baby show we attended. Of course, it may be that it’s a slow burn, but like for like, we’ve just not made the same impression. We’re still getting new members from Bambinos now, but we also had lots on the days we actually exhibited and in the few days immediately after. An interesting experiment, and very useful information. Thankfully it didn’t cost us much to find this out!
One of the best things about the day was meeting up with other business owners, swapping contacts and bouncing ideas off each other. In particular Lara from Babytastic (antenatal classes for pregnant couples in Hertfordshire) and I, spent most of the day talking because we were stood opposite each other. There was a lot of banter and it was great to see that we could both help each other out because we’d had experience of different things. There’s sometimes a lot of hesitation when business owners talk about their strategies, ideas and plans. When there’s no commercial risk (ie you’re not talking directly to a competitor), I can’t see what the problem is and the secrecy often does more harm than good. And let’s face it, if I was nervous about giving away private commercial information, I wouldn’t be writing this and broadcasting it to the world, would I?
I’m regularly emailed by an anonymous website business owner, who is generally criticising my approach or strategy. Not enough information to be helpful, just critical. It’s a shame that he doesn’t feel he can be open enough to disclose his email address directly to me so that I can actually reply to his emails, and then maybe something constructive will come out of this.
We finally got ourselves a mention in Alison Cork’s Really Useful Column in the Evening Standard on Wednesday evening, after us expecting it for the last couple of weeks. A cracking review, and she’s finished it by calling us ‘Pure Genius!’ Well we can’t ask for more than that, but I was really surprised to find that the number of members joining, stating the ES as their ‘heard from’ reason, was really low. It’s only Thursday evening as I write this, so maybe they’ll trickle in, but still…
We’re still waiting for our feature in the local paper, and I’m expecting quite a lot of interest from that, we shall see!
Crush Communications have been sending out our press releases this week, giving details of our competition - a luxury spa weekend courtesy of spabreak (see our website for full details!). I'm expecting some feedback tomorrow about how successful they've been with that.
Plus we’ve been busily printing, sticking and posting in our direct mail campaign. Very targeted and over quite a small area, but this is proving quite successful already. Maybe there’s a message here for us. Of course, the advantage with getting editorial press coverage is that it doesn’t cost anything, apart from a lot of time (assuming you don’t have a PR agent charging you for their service), and the costs of a direct mail campaign can be significant. But we’ve managed our costs really carefully, so this one should pay off. However I’m certainly looking forward to the day when we can afford to pay administrative staff to do our mailshots! You wouldn’t believe how much of a workout you get stuffing envelopes and sticking labels and stamps all day!
Wendy has been busy arranging the family travel reviews for the holiday pages. We’ve got 6 reviews to be posted in April, 4 lined up for May and 3 already in place for June. So those pages are going to be quite impressive soon, and quite varied. But it’s going to get more difficult to get any agreement for press trips in July/August as all the best family resorts are fully booked anyway, so I guess it will go pretty quiet after that until September.
We’re also now working on going further a-field for some European holidays, but we needed to wait until the pages were more substantial before we approached companies for these more expensive press trips. Let’s see how we get on, I expect many will have to be booked well in advance and we won’t be offered any reviews until 2007 – something that didn’t occur to me to do last year before we launched! That would have been impressive planning ahead! We need to tackle various modes of transport too – travelling with kids on a plane, boat/ferry, train and by car will all have different elements for the feature. We’ve got to provide as many useful tips as we can!
I’m looking at getting some partnerships for some of the other content too, more about those later if I get anywhere. And contact me if you have any ideas!
Talking of ideas, I’ve had a brilliant one from another business owner, Louise Parr who makes handmade wedding stationery - www.somethingbeautiful.biz, she suggested we should offer a gift option for anyone who wants to purchase a membership for someone else, she said it’d make a novel gift for a new mum in particular. What a fabulous idea and why didn’t I think of it before? Anyway, it’s in the pipeline now, so I’m very grateful to Louise (who received a complimentary membership for her sister-in-law as a thank you from us!) for telling us this. Aren’t there some nice people around?
There’s a possibility that we may be featured on a TV documentary on channel 5, for which I’m being interviewed next week. Not sure if it will go ahead, but a nice opportunity and one that I’m not going to turn down!
So more about that next week too!
Kirsty
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