Is your creative or digital company starting to think about winning larger accounts or pitching for business from multinationals or the Public Sector? How do you get on those Preferred Supplier Lists?

This session will help you understand what makes a ‘winning’ business and help you find the right strategy for success, including:

• The Drivers of Purchasing and how to use them
• Understanding ‘Why Us’ when approaching the client
• Using You Radar to Map the Market
• Why Relationships Count
• Procurement processes and how to navigate them
• Working with others to succeed

Garry Stone will be delivering this event on behalf of our partners, Transmit Consulting. As a dedicated Bids and Tender Specialist Garry understands the market, and why people and companies buy, including through contracts, tenders and preferred supplier lists. His hands-on experience and expertise has helped businesses of all types across the region secure tens of millions of pounds in contracts – from start-ups through to established businesses.

Please arrive by 9.15am for registration. Refreshments will be provided.

REGISTER HERE.

‘Digital Futures’, Generator’s business support programme, is designed to meet the business development needs of the North East’s creative and digital businesses. This programme is part-funded by England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. Places at this event are FREE OF CHARGE for creative and digital businesses from North East England, thanks to ERDF funding.*

*County Durham, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear

Digital Union, in association with Ward Hadaway, presents:

Plan it, Produce it, Protect it

A business workshop and networking event for Digital Union members and their Digital friends

What it’s about: When Digital Union conducted research last year, it became apparent that a crucial element of our helping to grow the national and international opportunities for member businesses, would be to assist them in adopting a range of measures to identify, create and derive value from new products while protecting the IP rights these products create.

We are currently seeing a growth in the number of agencies developing software and systems, initially as tools for their own productivity and efficiency, that are then spun out as products in their own right. The sale and licensing of these products can become businesses in themselves.

What will it cover: This event will explore the commercial and legal aspects of how:

• Businesses can go about identifying and planning a new product while getting on with day to day client briefs.
  •To focus time on building, testing and refining the product
  • To protect and monetise the product.
  • To tackle the legalities around entering into licensing deals with customers, re-sellers and other routes to    market
  • To make sure the product can’t be copied before scaling it to a national and international market place.

Who should attend: Creative and Digital businesses wanting to move away from simply providing a service for customers, and those Digital Agencies wanting to build value in their own products, licensing and selling directly to customers and re-sellers.

Speakers from:

• Blumilk & Iykaa.com
  • Dept of International Trade
  • Websand
  • Ward Hadaway

Date: Wednesday 5th July 2017

Venue:  Ward Hadaway, Sandgate House, 102 Quayside, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 3DX

Time: 5.30 – 7.30

Register: Free to Digital Union members and their guests

The Art Of Online Storytelling & Organic SEO

Discover how to improve your rankings with this Free Organic SEO Masterclass.

Do you want to dramatically improve your organic rankings? Have you ever wondered how other businesses appear so highly in the search engines? If the answer is yes, then Generator can help. You probably already know that one of the best marketing channels you can master is search. With the right organic SEO strategy, you can bring in hundreds or even thousands of targeted visitors looking for your product or service.

Build it and they will come!

What will the masterclass cover?

• Content Marketing Introduction
• Content Marketing Strategy
• What is organic SEO?
• Content Marketing Channels
• Content Creation
• Content Promotion
• Content Marketing Tools & Technology
• Measuring Success

Who is it for?

For anyone involved in the planning, implementation of content to improve their company’s search engine rankings and online profile.

Please register here.

‘Digital Futures’, Generator’s business support programme, is designed to meet the business development needs of the North East’s creative and digital businesses.

This programme is part-funded by England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020.

Places at this event are FREE OF CHARGE for creative and digital businesses from North East England, thanks to ERDF funding.*

*County Durham, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear

Are you under pressure to deliver more value for less or the same? Would you like insight into how to improve your personal and corporate productivity? Then join us in this interactive session playing some ‘serious games’ where you will learn real, useable techniques to improve your ‘flow’. Together you and the other attendees will have fun ‘simulating’ a product development process and measuring how ‘flow’ principles can produce key benefits such as ‘speed to market’, revenues and profitability.

You will learn how to:

• Optimise your processes to increase profitability
• Speed up product and/or service delivery without adding cost
• Save time and money by identifying and eliminating key areas of systemic waste
• (re)-Organise your enterprise structures to increase end-to-end delivery speed and improve quality
• Use visual management (Kanban) to measure and manage flow
• Recognise the dangers of having excessive ‘work in progress’ for individuals, teams and organisations
• Understand the neuroscience of becoming a high-performing individual.

Due to the high demand of this masterclass, please only two attendees from each business.

REGISTER HERE.

‘Digital Futures’, Generator’s business support programme, is designed to meet the business development needs of the North East’s creative and digital businesses. This programme is part-funded by England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. Places at this event are FREE OF CHARGE for creative and digital businesses from North East England, thanks to ERDF funding.*

*County Durham, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear (excluding Tees Valley)

Back by popular demand, Generator’s Digital Marketing Masterclass features insight and practical advice from special guest Darren Hemmings, founder of Motive Unknown. Between managing campaigns for artists such as  Alt-J, Run The Jewels, Blink-182, J Dilla, Richard Ashcroft, Leftfield, Jack Savoretti, James and DJ Shadow, and running the Daily Digest, there’s not much he doesn’t know about digital marketing.

Day One

Loft Music Studios | 17th July | 9am-5pm

Whatever type of music business or artist you are, social networking and direct-to-fan online tools are integral to your approach. Online marketing and promotion offers you easy access to your target audience, so getting to grips with your online presence is key.

Our Digital Marketing Masterclass will take a detailed look at the online tools available and offers practical, bespoke advice to you through expert tuition, case studies and practical tasks. Over the course of the day, we’ll cover key digital marketing and promotion tools, communicating effectively on Twitter, Youtube and Facebook making the most of video content, how to build your fan or customer base, managing mailing lists, how to analyse your Facebook and digital data, and take advantage of it.

Day Two

Campus North | 18th July | 9am-4pm

For those wishing to access further support and feedback, Darren will be offering hour long one to one sessions at Campus North the following day. To book your slot, sign up to the event.

To sign up to the event, click here.

Digital Futures’, Generator’s business support programme, is designed to meet the business development needs of the North East’s creative and digital businesses.

This programme is part-funded by England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020.

Places at this event are FREE OF CHARGE for creative and digital businesses from North East England, thanks to ERDF funding.*

*County Durham, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear (excluding Tees Valley)

Money Money Money – Funding Your Creative or Digital Business

Are you looking for business finance to help you start or grow your creative business ? What alternatives are there available to start up or scale up in the north east and nationally ? This session will help you understand the access to finance process and how to identify the right option for your business. This workshop will cover in plain and simple language :-

• Grants
• Traditional Finance vs Alternative Finance
• Business Loans
• Crowdfunding
• Peer to Peer
• Equity & Investment

It will also look at the best methods of packaging up your finance requirements and how to present or ‘pitch’ this to funders so the request is clear and you improve your chances of success. This session will be brought to you by representatives from Teal and Transmit Start Ups who have years of experience of helping creative businesses demystify this process and access finance .

Teal is a friendly and convenient signposting service that helps you find the right finance for your startup or early stage business. They have used their knowledge and expertise to compile a database of business finance providers so you don’t have to get into a flap about it and recently produced ‘The Plain and Simple Guide to Small Business Finance’ which is available to download as an e-book.

Transmit Start-Ups provides finance, business support and mentoring for new businesses throughout the UK. It is made up of a team of experienced creative entrepreneurs who understand what is involved in starting and growing businesses. Transmit Start-Ups is an official delivery partner of the Start-Up Loans Company, a Government initiative and have approved finance for over 1800 start ups to date.

Please register here.

Please arrive by 9.15am for registration, the session will start at 9.30am prompt. Refreshments will be provided.

‘Digital Futures’, Generator’s business support programme, is designed to meet the business development needs of the North East’s creative and digital businesses. This programme is part-funded by England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. Places at this event are FREE OF CHARGE for creative and digital businesses from North East England, thanks to ERDF funding.*

*County Durham, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear (excluding Tees Valley)