Making the internet work for you

A wealth of online marketing knowledge and experience was shared by industry guest speakers at the athlone.ie and Westmeath County Enterprise Board seminar hosted by the Sheraton Athlone Hotel last week. Cllr Frankie Keena, Chairman of Athlone eCom Ltd, the project management company of athlone.ie, opened the seminar and welcomed almost 100 delegates comprising representatives of Athlone and Midland-based businesses across a broad range of sectors including manufacturing, tourism, professional services, retail, food, recruitment, leisure and many more. It was evident that all the delegates were keen to learn from industry professionals about using the internet to develop and promote their businesses. One of the two keynote speakers, Aileen O'Toole of internet consultancy company, AMAS, outlined reasons why companies in Ireland should make better use of the internet to improve their competitiveness. She referred to the fact that there are almost 1.6 million broadband subscriptions in Ireland and that people are spending more and more time on the internet via a smartphone. She recommended that all businesses starting an online campaign need "to plan, evaluate, manage and market their online channels" as they would with their offline marketing strategies. She gave practical examples of how companies are using multiple online channels to build brand awareness, transact business and manage their reputations. The second keynote speaker, John Teeling CEO of Cooley Distillery, who was recently selected as Ambassador of the Year at the Midlandsireland.ie Gateway to Innovation and Excellence Awards, outlined the various internet tools the Cooley Distillery marketing team use to create more brand awareness of the Cooley brand and their various whiskey products. Their online marketing activities include using websites, facebook, twitter, blogs, groupon deals and ezines. He said that email marketing works well for them and online blogging has been very influential in generating positive online pr for their brand. He concluded his case study on Cooley Distillery's online activities by saying that whilst "engaging in online activities is time consuming, particularly for small companies, it has become an essential element of the marketing mix of business today".