gumption blog - drb
The UK government has announced the 14 cities eligible to bid for money to make themselves "super-connected" and help kickstart the economy.
This is to bring investment to create a 100Mbps fibre network to 10 urban areas and make it available to Bradford at a much reduced cost of current commercial levels. It would also bring free wifi to Bradford city centre and support inward investment and other regeneration intiatives.
The four UK capitals - London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast have already been announced and among cities eligible to bid are Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Bradford, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester and Sheffield.
Dave Melling of Bradford Council is spear-heading to bid and is seeking support from the Bradford community for:
- examples of how this could support and develop enterprises including business chains.
- ideas for education, information and demand building…
We continue to invest in Glyde House and have now opened a fully licenced bar to enable us to add value to our space and help re-model the business. We also hope to have a lot more fun with customers too!
The Library Bar is decorated with antiquarian books and we project old black & white silent movies onto the wall to add to the atmosphere.
…
Winning Moves, manufacturers of this version of the MONOPOLY game under license from Hasbro, say the new official MONOPOLY: Bradford Edition is coming about following the city recently being crowned the very first ‘UNESCO world City of Film' as well as officially becoming ‘England's curry capital'.
Winning Moves say Bradford, Ilkley, Saltaire and Haworth will all feature on the…
In this period of austerity measures and spending reviews, there's inevitably going to be further delays on developments such as the Odeon / New Victoria.
In a perfect world, we'd all love to see a ballroom, a 2000 seat auditorium for theatre, music and film. We'd all love to bring the romance and charm back into this centrally located building. But there are things that concern…
This project is now just subject to final planning permission.
"While the loss of the Odeon's turrets and façade would be regretted, we are satisfied that the benefits of the proposal would outweigh the harm which it would cause. English Heritage would therefore support the revised scheme."
Check out the PLANS. On balance, we think it has to happen.
Welcome to the "Westfield Shopping Experience"!
With their focus on opening Westfield Stratford in time for the London Olympics http://uk.westfield.com/stratfordcity, it's probably going to be some time before they're back in Bradford.
Yes, we also have the credit crunch, but whatever the reason(s), we believe they have a moral responsibility to carry out some interim landscaping to this central location in our city centre. The costs…
Post your tips on branding here to help others and we'll give a web link back to your site as a reward!
Here's a quicky... and a classic. A brand is not a logo or the colour of your web site.
A brand is the personality, tone, thought, feeling, character of the business - often about the business owner him/herself. Once you understand this, it can manifest itself into everything you do, the font you use, the choice of words, imagery, humour, promotional channels, etc, etc. Also, it usually takes a long, long time to develop a brand that can truely command the premium price you want for your service. And what's more, when you start out you'll never really know if you'll ever get there! One step at a time...
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Please give your general marketing tips here. Anything from branding, design, customers, selling, segmentation to PR. We may give you a free web link back to your site as a reward! Here's a quick one...
Most companies make the classic mistake of only outlining their services in their promotional materials. But that's about you. The customer wants to read about them and how they can benefit and without thinking too hard about it. If you can show typical/target customer types experiencing the benefits of your services, readers will engage more and you'll get a better response.
Gumption is no different. We're now in the process of gathering lots of testimonials from lots of happy customers. It's better for us that their story is told.
Give your Web Tips here and we'll give you a live link back to your own site as a reward!
External links to web sites that come from well ranked, relevant sites usually take a long time to build. But they are extremely important to help you to get higher up the Google rankings.
If you want a free web link from us, add your tip here!
At networking events, many people are reticent to engage because they are used to being sold too. Once you introduce yourself, give them all the focus and ask what you can do for them.
It will help the conversation flow much better and they will eventually want to know more about you.
There's nothing more off-putting than somebody launching into a sales pitch of their latest new widget.
Just be human!
Hot off the press!
We've been developing Teletracker for about 10 months out of frustration of not knowing which adverts or promotional activities brought us sales enquiries. And it has been a busy time!
The concept is very simple: Put a different Teletracker number on each advert (or just use one on your web site) and watch them compete, in real-time, for your continued spend. There are lots of graphs…
We love the park concept of making Bradford city centre more welcoming to families and our visitors. It's also Gumption's back garden too!
One plea - as a dad of 3, I just hope they include an enclosed playground for little kids too. We'll be shopping in Bradford much more (Westfield or no Westfield).
Click HERE to see the video and tell us what you…
Okay, we somehow gathered 130 people to the first www.bradfordnowhere.com event last month and expect 200 at the October event.
But what should we do to channel these fantastically positive-minded people into a trading unit, or should we just leave up to people to 'use their gumption' and get together?
Thoughts?
We're developing a national virtual office service and want to get it right. Please take a look at our virtual office pages and tell us what else you'd like us to build in.
The new virtual office site will be launched in the autumn and include other credible business addresses across the UK, book a meeting room & hotel, helpful toolkits, etc.
What's the one thing…
