Paul Squires

Official Website of Paul Squires - Entrepreneur & Digital consultant at Finsbury Media

Welcome to my Website

I’m Paul Squires, Digital Consultant at Guildford's Google Premier Partner Agency, Finsbury Media.

Here I will write about things I’m involved in, upcoming events, and also what interests me.

I appreciate you spending your time checking it out.

Read More About Me

Success for Finsbury Media at B2B Expo at Excel, London

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We travelled to the Excel in March to attend Europe’s largest B2B Marketing event –The B2B Expo.

Over 2 days we saw hundreds of people and spoke about our groundbreaking tech and how we transform Google Ad Campaigns with our platform – and alongside drive increased organic results with our SEO tactics.

 

This was the first large event we have attended at it was a great success.

I was invited to speak on day 2 – and spoke about ‘Cutting The Agency Fluff!’ giving sensible and practical tips and advice on how to get the most from marketing budgets using proven strategies and techniques.

Thousands of delegates attended (I think last year it was over 15,000!) so it was an opportunity I did not want to miss.  My talk was taped and will be available on-line soon.

I’ll post updates when this is available. 🙂

If you missed the talk, or are just interested how Finsbury Media can help you with your lead generation just drop me a message.

 

Paulie x

 

It’s not all about impressions – exclusive talk ‘Cutting The Agency Fluff’ at B2B Marketing Expo

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Finsbury Media are attending as exhibitors the B2B Marketing Expo on 27 & 28 March.  I will be giving an exclusive talk ‘It’s not Just about Impressions – Cutting the Agency Fluff!’

I’ll break down what you should be doing, what you shouldn’t – and revealing the secret about MAGIC MARKETING BEANS.

Plus there will be freebies, cupcakes and several hundred pounds of marketing to the lucky winner of a competition at the end of my talk.

Places are limited – free tickets here 

 

Carlos Dasilva and Paul Squires from Finsbury Media collect SBS Award from Theo Paphitis

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Carlos and myself recently travelled to the International Convention centre in Birmingham to meet Theo Paphitis and collect our SBS Award.

Small Business Sunday, shortened to the hashtag #SBS on Twitter, was created by Theo Paphitis.

Theo is best known for his role in TV’s Dragons’ Den. As Chairman of Ryman Stationery  Boux Avenue and joint owner of Red Letter Days  he is a mentor and investor to many other business.

Each Sunday Theo rewards small businesses that tweet him @TheoPaphitis and describe their business in one tweet including the all-important hashtag #SBS. The tweets are reviewed and each week Theo chooses his favourite lucky 6 who are then re-tweeted. As he has nearly a quarter of a million followers, this provides a massive boost to the chosen lucky businesses.

The event was excellent – the event was opened by Kypros Kyprianou CEO of Theo Paphitis Retail Group who introduced the show sponsors Square, iLaw, HP and DHL.

The day included some great presentations from Raja Saggi from Google, and a very inspiring talk from Sir Tom Hunter – who went from trainer salesman to Scotland’s first homegrown billionaire.

The event was a fantastic networking day and thanks to all involved and everyone we met on the day. 🙂

 

 

 

2019 – Time for new beginnings?

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That famous quote ‘Insanity .. doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’

It’s a bit like marketing. Let’s put this in perspective.

What do people do that is nuts?

If you keep running ads in papers that never lead to sales – that’s insanity.

Keep contacting people that will never buy from you  – that’s insanity.

Keep sitting waiting for your ideal client to somehow contact you and transform your business – that’s insanity. 

Keep working with a marketing agency or in house team because ‘it’s always what we’ve done.’ – that’s insanity. 

Fail to embrace digital and technology to streamline your business – that’s insanity. 

It’s crazy – but I guarantee 99% of the people who read this are guilty of some of the above.

What am I suggesting can be done to overcome this madness?

Take a look at what you do, how you do it, and if there are better ways of achieving results.

I’ve done this in my business – made some changes and mixed some traditional things up. And I’m glad I did.

What can you do?

Well if you are responsible for marketing and generating leads – how about seeing what a Google Premier Partner like Finsbury Media do?

If nothing else you’ll see what is possible, and how we could transform your business.

Most of our clients come from other agencies and in house teams. It’s natural and I’m more than happy to demonstrate how our tech platform transforms the bottom line. I guarantee if you compare what we do, and our results, you wont look back.

Send me an email and I will schedule a chat or meeting. Now that’s not a crazy thing to do.

Thats Sanity!

Send me a mail at paul.squires@finsburymedia.com

 

 

What’s happening in December?

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Well we are fast approaching the end of the year, there’s lots of Christmas Parties and stuff going on. But there is still some networking to be done in the last few days.

This Thursday December 6th I will be attending representing Finsbury Media at the Guildford Silicon Drinkabout.

Find details below:

Silicon Drinkabout Guildford

Thursday, Dec 6, 2018, 6:00 PM

The White House Pub
8 High St Guildford GU2 4AJ, GB

42 Members Attending

First timer? Don’t be shy! Come along and meet other like-minded tech and startup folk in a relaxed environment over drinks! Silicon Drinkabout Guildford is on the first Thursday of every month. Great news – Guildford Borough Council have kindly renewed their sponsorship of the event! We’re now sponsored for the rest of the year. The sponsorship he…

Check out this Meetup →

 

And the following week I will be donning my funny Christmas jumper (I’ll have to buy one?!) and attending on the Woking Winter Warmer with the Surrey Chambers at the HG Wells centre. Full details here:

https://www.surrey-chambers.co.uk/event-listing/event-detail/?eidQS=1CABD27E-64DC-4175-BA6A-BCAA35561047

 

This is probably the last chance to meet me this year – particularly useful if you want to chat about your marketing in 2019 and set a date for a formal meeting – I’ll show you how our tech platform can generate you leads that and make the most of your budget.

Cheers

Paulie x

The Guildford Innovation Awards 2018

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I will be representing Finsbury media at The Guildford Innovation Awards 2018 – designed to celebrate what Guildford does best – innovate! There are a number of business awards, but none focusing specifically on innovation in and around Guildford.

The awards are aimed at building upon the success of the 2017 Innovate Guildford programme, celebrating inspirational innovation across a spectrum of sectors in the borough and promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (‘STEM’) subjects.

Open to individuals, businesses and social enterprises located in the Guildford Borough, with eight categories and a ninth, special award for ‘Most outstanding innovation’ whose winner will be drawn from all categories.

Should be good night 🙂

 

Paulie x

SSL Certificates – what’s all the fuss about?

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What are they? 

What do they do?

And why should you have one?

You have a website, then you have probably heard all the fuss about SSL certificates. So whats the deal?

SSL is an acronym for ‘secure sockets layer.’ All sounds a bit techie?

Not really

Any business with an online presence should have one as it’s the key to protect your visitors data.

OK – how do they work?

When your visitors information is submitted it goes through a channel of computers before it reaches your website.

Information being compromised is much higher if SSL is not applied. Clever encrypted information technology (readable only to the party it is intended for with an encryption key) renders this information is useless to anyone who doesn’t have the key.

If you take payments on-line a SSL certificate is a requirement for any website that accepts payments with an encryption of at least 128-bit.

But to show your visitors you the value their data, you should have one on any site. I’m staggered how many professional service companies have not adopted SSL.Solicitors, Accountants, Tax Advisors, and so on.

Perhaps they don’t know. Or don’t care. Who knows?

They probably don’t realise Google flags website that doesn’t have SSL certification.

How to easily check if you use SSL on your site.

Open your website in a Chrome browser and see which of the following situations apply to you:

  • If you see a green lock icon to the left of the URL, then your site supports HTTPS.
  • If the lock does not appear, try re-entering your website URL with “https://” instead of “http://”.
  • If the page doesn’t load, then your site does not support HTTPS.

Why you should definitely have one

Privacy is a matter of the highest importance for Google. But there is another really important reason why you need SSL. If you use Google Ads then you definitely need it.

Google Ads recommend (and in some cases, requires) that all URLs use the HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP to protect customers’ personal and financial information. Not only that, Google Ads speed-enhancing parallel tracking feature requires that all click-measuring URLs (URLs contained in the “Tracking URL” field) use HTTPS.

From October 30, 2018, parallel tracking has become the method for click measurement. Because of this, all Tracking URLs need to use HTTPS.

Having a good presence on-line is tough at the best of times – you don’t have to be making it harder by getting your ads dis-allowed, or having a poor ranking for organic results just because your site is not secure.

I don’t use ads for this website – but I do have SSL on it.

After all, as I tell my clients they need it whether they transact on-line or not – so I practice what I preach!

In conclusion – if you want to get a SSL certificate on your site – Finsbury Media can help.*

*(We will need to host your site on our dedicated server – but we can definitely help.)

If you need your under performing ads to be fixed – we can help.

If you want to fix your appalling SEO, you guessed it – we can help.

We can’t help fix your broken office coffee machine or do the lawn.

That’s your call.

But the other stuff, sure we can help.

Drop me a line paul.squires@finsburymedia.com and let’s chat

Paulie x

 

 

Finsbury Media attending local events this September

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So summers over – and I’m back attending various local events.

First off I will be representing Finsbury Media at the Demisting Digital Marketing Seminar

The event on Wednesday 19th September features presentations from James Wright from Fruitful Marketing Ltd – James has a passion for marketing and believes in its benefits for all businesses, helping achieve increased enquiries, sales and importantly profits.

Living in a world of constant technological changes, it’s important you keep ahead of the game.

It’s all about progression and how to make business work for you using the most up-to-date, advantageous technological processes.

The event will be beneficial it will focus on the LATEST digital marketing techniques and explaining how to implement them in your business.

You will leave this event feeling more confident about digital marketing, enabling you to apply relevant, successful techniques to your business to increase leads, sales and profits.

Also speaking will be Michael Man  – covering how to make ground-breaking videos for your business.

Michael is an award nominated co-founder and Managing Director of ManMade Group Ltd, who provide high quality video production services to the UK and beyond.

He is passionate about telling stories through video and is a self-taught videographer and business owner who likes to share his insights.

Should be a good event – there may be some free tickets still available here

And I will also be representing Finsbury Media at The Surrey Chambers Of Commerce Networking Event at the beautiful Weybourne House in Guildford on Thursday 20th September.

 

 

Full details can be seen online here

I’ll post other events as and when I can – enjoy the rest of this beautiful Autumn wherever you are.

Paulie x