Social Media: What is All the Fuss About? Stage 3 & 4

Stage Three: What are Your Social Media Objectives?

Once you have matched your customer persona/s to targeted social media platforms you need to be clear on your social media objectives, which should directly align with your core business objectives. Social media tends to achieve three marketing goals:

·         Lead generation

·         Customer retention

·         Brand awareness

You also need to consider the 3 Ms of: Management, Monitoring and Measurement. Generally, marketers dedicate an average of 1 hour a day to social media activities and according to research by EML Wildfire (May 2012), the following business benefits have been experienced from the on-going use of social media:

31%        Customer engagement

30%        Loyalty

25%        Traffic to website

21%        Sales turnover (due to active use of social media)

Stage Four: Plan Your Campaign

Once you have decided what channels to use and have clear objectives, it’s time to consider your overall strategy and tactics. Example strategies include:

·         Generate product awareness with solicitors who deal with ligation cases

·         Generate product awareness with new mums

·         Increase lead conversions from the company website

·         Develop and promote content to help facilitate a prospects’ decision-making process

·         Reduce customer service calls by dealing with enquires via social media channels

Ideas for tactics should be gained from: researching case studies, attending a course or employing a digital/ PR consultant to help you.  Four key questions to ask yourself at this stage are:

1.       Does the tactical idea deliver on the strategy?

2.       How likely is the customer persona likely to respond to this tactic, compared to others?

3.       Does my business have the resources to implement this tactic (in-house or outsourced)?

4.       What are the critical success factors and main barriers to achieving these?

Social Media: What is all the Fuss About? Final Stage

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester).

Social Media: What is All the Fuss About? Stage 2

Stage Two: Research Social Media Platforms

Firstly, it’s worth setting the scene – according to OFCOM (August 2011), it took social media just four years to achieve 50% penetration of the UK population (in comparison, mobile phones took fifteen years to achieve this level of penetration).

It is easy to make assumptions, when it comes to social media usage. However, if you have a bit of time to do some research, it’s amazing how easy it is to access information that can be used for marketing planning. To speed up your decision making process, here are some key statistics:

Facebook

Econsultancy research has found that Facebook accounts for 47.86% of all social networking traffic in the UK. There are more than 30m Facebook users in this country, reaching nearly half of the population (49.9%).

From a business perspective, in the last year Facebook has increased its downstream to online retail sites by 12%. On top of this, 33% of social network users agree that they trust what they read on sites such as Facebook.

Most people are surprised to learn that there is a fairly even split between the age and gender of users (source: Facebook Insights):

Men                                      48.66%

Women                                51.34%

Age Demographics:

13 – 17 years old               13%

18 – 24 years old               24.5%

25 – 34 years old               25.5%

35 – 44 years old               17.5%

45+ years old                     19.5%

According to ComScore (Feb 2013), the median age of a UK Facebook user is 37.5 years.

Interestingly, to continue our ‘Laura Ashley’ theme, they have a Facebook Fan Page which has over 61,000 ‘Likes’ (https://www.facebook.com/lauraashleyofficial).

YouTube

The second largest UK social media site is the Google-owned video sharing platform, YouTube. This website accounts for 24.84% of traffic to social network sites (source: Experian Hitwise, March 2013).

According to Google’s official blog, YouTube users upload more than 48 hours of video every minute and they have 3 billion views a day (50% more than last year). Although watching videos is mainly seen as an entertainment activity, don’t underestimate the business benefits this platform can bring. Video can help improve your search rankings (SEO) and increase ecommerce conversion rates. Two examples of this can be found on Econsultancy’s website - equestrian sports supplier Ariat said that visits where a product video had been viewed showed a conversation rate 160% higher than visits without video views and U.S. shoe e-tailer Zappos found that sales increased by between 6% and 30% for items that included video product demonstrations.

Although these are both B2C companies, the biggest B2B success story from the use of video is Blendtec (the ‘will it blend?’ campaign). The company uploaded home-made product demonstration videos in 2006 and increased blender sales by 700% between 2006 – 2008.

YouTube’s user demographics can be found on ‘YouTube Insights for Audience’ and the majority of UK users are male (72.7%), aged 18-24 years old (40%).

Twitter

Although Twitter has 10m UK users, it only accounts for 1.63% of traffic to a social networking site (source: Econsultancy and Experian Hitwise). Like Facebook, the demographic spilt tends to be fairly even – 49% are Male and 51% are Female. Twitter users tend to be more well off than the rest of the population and use smartphone and tablet devices regularly (source: Ipsos Mori, July 2012). Age demographics are as follows:

15 – 24 years old               16%

25 – 34 years old               16%

35 – 44 years old               17%

45 – 54 years old               17%

55+ years old                     34%

There are mixed reviews regarding sales conversion rates linked to Twitter activity. It seems to be a very good brand raising tool (and useful for positioning individuals as experts) but not everyone is convinced of its direct sales benefits. A number of small fashion consumer brands have seen a direct increase in sales when product photos and discounts have been promoted via the micro-blogging network and in the B2B arena Dell claimed that $6.5m of its sales were generated via Twitter.

According to a U.S. survey of small business owners, conducted by the Wall Street Journal and Vistage International, the social media networking site with the most potential is LinkedIn – gaining 41% of all votes. One user - Ken Lopez who runs a legal consulting firm - has used LinkedIn to increase traffic to his website more than ten-fold in a year. He's using Twitter, but he explained to the Wall Street Journal that there's a big difference between the ROI he receives from Twitter and LinkedIn. "We will tweet 10-plus times a day, and we will put roughly the same number of posts on LinkedIn per day, yet we get dramatically different results."

Other Networks

Although we do not have the space to cover every social media platform available, the other key sites to note are: LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. They all have very different audience demographics, which can easily be found via online research. It’s also worth finding business case studies for each of these channels.

Social Media: What is all the Fuss About? Stages 3 & 4

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester) @WSofManagement.

Social Media: What is All the Fuss About? Stage 1

The business world is changing fast and at the forefront of the change is technology. One of today’s marketing buzz words is ‘engagement’, which directly links to social media. However, a lot of business owners are wondering what all of the fuss is about and whether it actually delivers solid organisational benefits – particularly sales.

The world of social media is a potential minefield for the uninitiated and most business people have heard mixed reviews about the various channels available. It’s sometimes easy to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ when a marketing tool is free but this isn’t always the best route to take.  In this business article (the first in a series of expert comment pieces) we delve into the social media phenomenon and give a basic overview of where to start and what to think about.

Stage One: Who’s Your Target Audience?

The first stage of any marketing campaign is to consider your target audience. The majority of businesses skip this stage to jump straight into tactics, i.e. “Let’s set up a Facebook Page because all of our competitors have one”. This is a major downfall for most social media campaigns.

A successful way to think about your target audience is by creating a customer persona (or several, depending on your business). This is essentially a summary of the main characteristics of a customer/ client. For example, a Laura Ashley ‘soft furnishing’ customer is:

Likely to be called Dorothy, she lives in the Home Counties and is a housewife.  Her husband has a disposable income of about £60,000 a year.  She is very house proud and socialises mostly through coffee mornings and dinner parties with her neighbours and other mothers from school.  She listens to Radio 2 and watches costume dramas and murder mysteries on the television.

What social media do you think ‘Dorothy’ is likely to use, if any? You might be surprised to learn about the demographics of certain channels…

Social Media: What is all the Fuss About? Stage 2
 

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester).

 

What Disney World can Teach us about Customer Service

 

Martin Metcalfe, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Events Management at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester) explains what businesses can learn from Disney World to improve their customer service…

 Forty three square miles; that’s about the size of the city of Manchester…it’s also the area taken up by the Walt Disney World complex in Orlando, Florida. Consisting of four major theme parks (Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios), two water/swimming theme parks, over thirty resort hotels (with over 30,000 guest rooms to clean each day), two entertainment, shopping and eating areas, five golf courses, a sports complex, scores of restaurants, hundreds of shops, eight conference facilities and a transport system similar to that of a large city, it is no surprise that it takes a lot of employees for it to run smoothly (63,000 of them, in fact). The logistics alone are impressive: WDW sells over ten million burgers, six million hot dogs and 75 million soft drinks per year. It also sells three and a half million ‘Mouse Ear’ hats, holds over 10,000 firework displays and hosts over 1,500 weddings annually. Disney even has its own language, based on cinematic references:  employees are cast members who do not do a job, but undertake a role, wearing a costume, not a uniform. Customers/tourists are guests who stay in resorts, not hotels.



It is the largest single-site employer in the USA, but what many may not realise is that at up to 7,000 of these employees are university students from all over the world, with a sizeable number from the UK. Many of these are registered through the Disney International Programs, providing around ten weeks of summer work in Orlando.  All cast members undergo an intensive period of training which is specifically designed to introduce them to the ‘Disney way’ – orientation: regarding how to look and act in (and out of) character, and traditions: the embedding the core organisational culture into the hearts and minds of cast members to enable them to deliver ‘Magical’ customer service experiences to Guests from all over the world.




Roles undertaken include: Fast Food and Beverage, Full Service Food and Beverage, Merchandise, 

Operations and Life Guard, amongst others. Some are lucky enough to be Disney Characters or Character Attendants. Regardless of role, the cornerstone to Disney’s training programme is ‘the Four Keys’ – an organisational approach to providing guests with the best possible experience. Training takes place at the purpose-built ‘Disney University’ and is delivered by a number of Disney experts. During the training process,  cast members must go through a period of in-role training when they wear an ‘Earning My Ears’ attachment to their normal name badge. This attachment is removed once ears have been earned (i.e. training is complete).

 

 

Safety represents one core value; dealing with millions of visitors each year (many of whom are young children) this covers everything from ride maintenance to tending to lost youngsters. All cast members are expected to be courteous (and smiling!) at all times, to stay ‘in character’ and to make sure the ‘Magic’ is always evident. Disney enables cast members to enact ‘Magical Moments’ to heighten perceptions of service quality and allow Guests to get the most out of their visit. It is not unusual to see cast members replacing a dropped ice cream or spilt drink, usually to the delight of the recipient.


Though clearly focussed towards providing excellent customer service delivery to visitors/tourists (in Disney’s parlance, Guests – and always with the capital G), this approach offers a useful template for any business to follow, particularly those in the service sector. The Four Keys has  links to the  SERVQAL concept of perceived customer service quality (suggested by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry as long ago as the early 1990’s) which identified five quality audit dimensions of Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy and Responsiveness as indicators for organisation’s to understand customer expectations and perceptions in order to improve levels of service quality.

Disney is recognised as one of the world leaders in customer service and training. Embedding such fundamental concepts as engagement, diligence and empowerment into training programmes and when cast members are ‘on stage’ (at work) enables the organisation to realise key outcomes (satisfied Guests) and allows cast members to add vital aspects on to their CV. Those lucky enough to undertake the Disney International Programme bring home with them a range of transferrable skills, knowledge and proficiencies that may be to the benefit of themselves, and the organisations that employ them.

And the name badge? All cast members wear one (along with a smile!), which states their name and where they are from. It provides a very useful introduction to those who work for Disney. If you visit WDW, when you come into contact with a cast member check out their badge – they might just be from your home town.

 To find out more about Warrington School of Management, visit our website and follow us on Twitter

Warrington is the location of choice for new start-ups

THE Chartered Accountants UHY Hacker Young recently reported that the WA1 postcode was one of only three places outside of London in the UK top 20, to start a business.

This is a remarkable achievement for the town which consistently punches above its weight in the commercial world.
 

WSM Business Centre, Warrington

There is a range of advice available to assist in business start-up from public bodies, professional services firms, chambers of commerce and financial institutions.



In addition there are many initiatives which can support new companies with business advice, training and development of their ideas, mostly free. 



Financial support may also be forthcoming too, directly in the form of supported loans or through resources such as business incubation.

If you are considering a start-up some basic knowledge is useful; finance, business planning, marketing and increasingly social media use, this can all be developed through education and training.

 

To succeed you need to have a good idea and the capability and determination to deliver it. If this sounds daunting then talk to the people that provide support, they will help you through this process.

Timing-wise now’s promising, a growing economy and strong sector recovery in the region. Warrington’s business environment is a growing success.

Professor Lawrence Bellamy is Associate Dean at the Warrington School of Management, University of Chester Warrington (Padgate) Campus.

Follow us on Twitter
@WSofManagement @ProfLawrenceB

Helping your staff cope with stress

The CIPD (2011) has identified stress as the number one cause of long-term sickness absence with poor management style being the top of work-related anxiety. Work related stress is also linked to lost productivity, low morale, high staff turnover and can result in a higher risk of accidents in the workplace. Here, Stephenie Hodge looks at some of the key drivers of stress in the workplace and how to manage them.

30% of SME decision makers admit workforce stress is hitting their business with stress related absence levels increasing by 27% over the last two years.Businesses could be losing in excess of £1 billion in direct costs as a result of staff taking time off due to work-related stress. One in five employees has taken time off work due to stress, with Monday accounting as the most stressful day of the week.

In a tough economic climate and ever increasing and demanding workloads, it’s hard not to feel the extra pressure at times.

Manage teams well and the individuals feel more able to cope and will rise to the challenge. However, managed incorrectly could have the opposite effect with the individual becoming unable to cope with the stress. The ability to cope with stress and balance workload has a direct correlation with a manager’s performance (ILM, 2013). Teams and managers could be at the heart of both the cause and solution or stress-related problems. Organisations need to foster the right conditions and provide the necessary training.

Addressing workforce challenges and risks is becoming an essential part of achieving better performance and greater growth for UK SMEs. If these issues are not addressed, then they could have serious long-term consequences for business stability and performance.

Most of us admit that we work better under pressure against deadlines and a degree of stress can aid performance. However, people have different ways of dealing with stress, a situation that could be motivating and challenging for one person could feel stressful to someone else. Stress can affect how we feel, think and behave. Work related stress develops because a person is unable to cope with the demands being placed on them, coupled with not being correctly supported.

Stephenie Hodge is Senior Lecturer in Marketing and HR at the Warrington School of Management.

 

It all starts with the Culture of the Organisation

Culture is driven from the top down so managers have the responsibility to nurture the well-being of the team, supporting positive beliefs and attitudes which will in turn help to set the tone for a workplace environment that champions open lines of communication. Organisations can slip into a culture where employees are expected to work all hours at any cost.

Occasionally it may be required to take work home; however, if this is on a regular long-term basis then it is usually a sign that something is wrong, another stress trigger. We need to get away from work at the end of the day, both for our mental and physical well-being. 21% of employees take work home at least twice a week. Addressing workforce challenges is an essential part of achieving better performance and greater growth for businesses.

Providing Support

The more managers know what makes their team tick, the greater the chance of noticing the signs and taking the appropriate action to support and elevate the cause. They need to understand how their management style and behaviour impacts on the people they manage.

Managers can either cause or exacerbate stress or help prevent and manage it. It is in employers’ interests to ensure managers have the necessary people management skills to manage and prevent stress.

Relieving stress in the workplace makes work a more positive place and delivers mutual benefits. Stress will not disappear, within organisations we just need to learn how to manage our teams.

Prevention is the best cure, create and nurture the appropriate sets of conditions. De-stress the working environment by:

 

Talking – small adjustments such as altering hours, even on a temporary basis may help to supress the issue
Training if applicable
Listening
Supporting
Motivation
Empowerment
Mentoring system
Effective and timely communication
Clear vision and understanding of value
Fare and consistent
Flexible approach
Knowing teams’ strengths and weaknesses

People are the lifeblood of any business and looking after them by ensuring that stress levels are balanced is vital if a company wants to attract the most skilled employees and retain existing talent. Companies that do this will be best positioned to take advantage for the future.

Stephenie Hodge is a Senior Lecturer at Warrington School of Management, University of Chester, Warrington (Padgate) Campus.

Follow us on Twitter @WSofManagement

60 seconds with......

 

Tanya Hemphill



Position: Senior Lecturer in Public Relations

Department: Business at the Warrington School of Management

Place of work before coming to the University: I was self employed for 10 years before joining the University last September. During this time I had set up and run three different businesses - a PR agency, a lifestyle magazine and an ecommerce company.

Biggest Career Achievement: Setting up my PR agency with a £3000 loan from the Prince's Trust and growing it in to an award-winning agency with clients such as John Lewis.

 

Favourite Place: Relaxing on a sandy beach.

Most memorable moment: Meeting Prince Charles after winning a 'Young Entrepreneur of the Year' award 18 months after setting up my first business.

Ultimate dream: To travel around the world with my family.

Most embarrassing moment: Forgetting to put on my car handbrake during a job interview and finding my car one inch away from hitting my (potential) boss' shiny new Ferrari. He was witness to the whole thing; and suffice to say, I didn't get the job!

Favourite song: It depends on my mood.

Favourite book: I belong to a book club, which means that I read a novel a month (on top of academic text books and journal articles for my MSc in Digital Marketing). Therefore, I've been lucky enough to read a few great new books that I wouldn't have normally chosen! My two (recent) favourite ones have been Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and Close My Eyes by Sophie McKenzie.

Favourite food: I love Italian food (which may be linked to the fact that my Grandfather was Italian!)

Describe your self in three words: Creative, inquisitive and focussed.

 

 

You can find out more about Warrington School of Management, our specialist courses and expert staff at our website , Twitter or contacting us by email.

 

 

 

Sport is not always the market for business

THE Rugby League World Cup contenders Samoa have arrived in Warrington and are using the university campus facilities in Warrington for training. Already their presence has been causing some excitement amongst students and staff and the photo opportunities and autographs are flowing.

 

The canteen takings have gone up too!

 

The events industry in the UK, which includes sports, conferences, exhibitions, trade fairs and festivals, is estimated to be worth over £35billion annually. As many as 500,000 people are employed in roles such as planning, security, logistics, catering, ticketing and car parking.

 

The Halliwell Jones Stadium was selected as a quality venue for the RLWC and it is quality venues, together with easy access which attract good events.



Warrington’s position; accessible from the motorway network and close to international airports make it ideally placed as an event-focused town. However sport and music festivals are not necessarily the market it should aim for.

 

Leading in logistics, the nuclear industry and with strengths in engineering the business of Warrington makes it ideal for strong trade shows and exhibitions.

However large capacity events venues, with heated auditoriums are required. In redeveloping areas such as the Stadium Quarter should such a venue be included?


Professor Lawrence Bellamy is Associate Dean at the Warrington School of Management, University of Chester, Warrington (Padgate) Campus. Follow @WSofManagement, @ProfLawrenceB

Warrington's New X-Factor

 Warrington’s Stadium Quarter is a priority development for the town.

A high quality mixed development of retail, offices, new homes and green spaces it is a proposal which will make the most of access opportunities to the railway station, bus interchange and by foot to the town centre.

It is an ambitious plan, but without this type of ambition Warrington will not gain the recognition it deserves as a great place to live and work.

As there are some green shoots of recovery for the economy now showing the chances of attracting investors to develop the area increases.

Since the economic downturn it has been the case that sites ripe for development, particularly those with retail and housing dimensions have been left without the financial backing to take them forward.

This is a matter of investor confidence and not necessarily an issue of affordability.

 

A bid has been submitted this week for a University Technical College (14-19 year old, specialist science, technology and engineering school) in the area, backed by more than 20 leading Warrington employers, all of them recognising the need for a future quality workforce. It would appear that the future is bright and it’s in Warrington.


Professor Lawrence Bellamy is Associate Dean at the Warrington School of Management, University of Chester, Warrington (Padgate) Campus. Follow @WSofManagement, @ProfLawrenceB

Manage Innovation, It Pays

Whilst controlling costs within your business and providing good value for your customers is important, your competitors over time can replicate your cost base and product offering -  leaving you without a competitive advantage. In other words, you have to find another way to get ahead and stay ahead. According to Professor Lawrence Bellamy, from the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester), innovation holds the answer…

People love Apple. The brand recognition, product sales, status and desirability or their products is global and transcends all levels of society. Apple has enormous research and development capability with hoards of workers on a quest to deliver outstanding products. However, do all of the products have unique features? Absolutely not; Apple products share technical and design features across the range including the’ look and feel’.  The company takes good ideas and use them time and time again to get the most out of them. After all, good ideas are expensive and need to be paid back.

Creativity & Innovation

When thinking about innovation, people sometimes confuse this with creativity. Whilst these areas may be related they have differing fundamental purposes. Creativity is about coming up with new ideas, whilst innovation is often more about taking ideas, which may be pre-existing, and applying them elsewhere.

Creativity may require costly research and development or a dedicated creative staff team to deliver the new ideas. Innovation can be used throughout the organisation by all members of staff to deliver new or improved products, cost savings, better service or greater customer value. Innovation most of the time will be about incremental development, rather than breakthrough creation. It’s not just there for hi-tech companies with huge budgets, but for all organisations. However, to be successful it needs to be managed.

Dyson vacuum cleaners utilise a ‘cyclonic’ extraction system. Dyson did not invent this concept; it had been used within industrial dust-extraction applications for many years previously. Instead, they took the idea and used it in vacuum cleaners - a new product application. Other manufacturers now also produce ‘cyclonic’ or vortex extraction based vacuum cleaners. Dyson however has been so successful in developing and promoting the concept that far fewer people are now calling their vacuum cleaner a ‘Hoover’.

We all see things in our daily working lives which we think could be done better. The challenge for any business should be to ensure that those improvements, whether they are associated with products (which include all the things we sell i.e. physical goods, services or ideas or knowledge) or processes (the things we do) are nurtured, considered and put in place in a cost effective manner. Innovation can work for us not only on the big things but also importantly on the micro level. If we put together many small innovations within an organisation then cumulatively they add up to a large improvement and are difficult for other organisations to copy.

So how do we get our business to be more innovative? Key areas are:

·         Leadership of the innovation agenda

·         ‘Screening’ project proposals

·         Empowering people to act

·         Embedding innovation into the DNA of the organisation

Comparison sites such as Confused.com, GoCompare and Money Supermaket have been instrumental in changing the way we purchase insurance and other finance services. Direct Line pioneered the work which made this approach possible, by moving away from High Street insurance brokers to telephone applications and expert systems to process the data from insurance quotes. Comparison sites are a development of this early work and have been instrumental in helping to make shopping for financial service more visible and convenient. Now though new types of organisations are being formed which get consumers together and negotiate deals from insurance companies on behalf of groups of customers, for better premiums. The industry is gradually changing.

Leadership

Leadership throughout the organisation should recognise and encourage suggestions made for innovation projects, whether product or process focused. Leaders should clarify the most important areas of focus: product, service or cost? Though many projects may be small, any development is a step in the right direction. Whilst not all projects will be given the ’green light’ without a stream of innovation proposals the company will not generate sufficient opportunities for the future. Successes should be widely promoted as the way forward for the company.

Screening

Organisations should not blindly implement all suggestions, but should go through a supportive screening process.‘ Innovation Champions’ should work with employees to help them put together the project proposals. Large projects will need to be considered at a senior level; smaller projects within departments. Try to keep this process to a minimum level of bureaucracy.

Empowering

Some people will put proposals forward which have little or no expenditure and have limited impact outside of their area of working. If what they are proposing appears reasonable after a conversation with their manager then the answer should be ‘yes’. Why put barriers in the way of improvement?  For complex projects then some training may be needed to give people the skills they require in taking proposals forward, this may involve researching, writing and calculating and project management skills.

Embedding

Use staff appraisals, budget setting processes, staff awards and meeting agenda items to reinforce the need for innovation. Arrange for innovation events periodically to encourage employees to focus upon possible projects and make it part of the usual way of working across the organisation. Measure the successes being achieved and report back. Make it part of the culture of the organisation and an expectation that all will contribute at some level.

In summary, innovation should be at the heart of the culture of a company, as it gives the organisation the best chance of long-term success. It should be built-in and not bolted-on and encompass the whole of the organisation. Once the innovation culture develops then success will breed success - accelerating performance improvement. However, management needs to focus efforts to get this moving… innovation won’t just happen, it needs managing.

Professor LawrenceBellamy is Associate Dean at the Warrington School of Management, University ofChester.

www.chester.ac.uk\wsm

@WSofManagement

@ProfLawrenceB

Need help with Innovation?

The University of Chester has up to 15 Business Innovation Vouchers available, to provide a discount on business services. Each voucher entitles businesses to one of the following:

£1000 off a project valued at £5000 or more

£3000 off a project valued at £10000 or more

Vouchers will be allocated to successful applicants, usually for small consultancy or technical services projects; but they could also be used for small research and development contracts.

For more information please contact The Research & Knowledge Transfer (R&KT) Office

innovationvouchers@chester.ac.uk

01244 511481

www.chester.ac.uk/business/innovation-vouchers