Marketing Magician, Stefan Drew, Wins National Recognition for Emarketing August 2009

Leamington Spa, United Kingdom, August 26, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Marketing Magician, Stefan Drew, has been recognised nationally for what he is best at - marketing a businesses without a budget. The recognition comes from E-skills UK, the employer led, government supported, national sector skills council, in their latest edition of Business IT Skills. It reports the results of a national competition to find the businesses making best use of IT in growing their business.

Stefan Drew, who the BBC regularly introduce as the Marketing Magician, was just one of the many businesses that entered the competition and, was judged the winner based on his innovative use of both IT and PR to market a series of seminars in Portugal. E-skills focused on the challenge that setting up an event in a foreign country posed, how Stefan solved this problem and the difference it made to his business.

Commenting from his UK offices Stefan said, "This award recognises the way I was able to use IT and PR to market a series of seminars in Portugal earlier in the year without spending any money on marketing. In these uncertain times I'm delighted that a national organisation is letting people now that you don't need to spend a fortune on marketing even when trying set up and run a seminar in a foreign country. So many people think that expensive marketing is essential to sell any product or service and this proves that is not the case.
Secondly, I'm in the middle of writing and circulating a series called PR Secrets in which I demonstrate how even the smallest business can obtain local or even national recognition for their business by working closely with the media. Being the focus of attention in a nationally distributed magazine and on a website that thousands of people visit every day proves that my PR Secrets work for small businesses like mine and can work for businesses of any size."

He continued, "The coverage E-skills gave me on their website has already been indexed by search engines like Google and is therefore available to anyone making a search for relevant advice and evidences the value of good PR.

A relevant factor not covered in the award is that the outcome of all the work put into the marketing campaign that won this award is that I am now going back to Portugal to run a series of four marketing masterclasses in October, two of which will focus on PR and low cost marketing respectively. These will be featured in the regular business marketing column I now write for Algarve based media group "get real". "

Further details from Stefan Drew on 07904 897 929.

Notes to editors

Having advised businesses on both sides of the Atlantic Stefan’s work has been published in over 50 countries and he has subscribers to his regular Marketing Newsletter in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Africa.

Stefan’s clients range from sole traders and SMEs to corporates and include household names in the public and private sector.

Stefan recommends businesses use the hundreds of free and low cost marketing methods available to businesses of all sizes; these include free advertising, Google Maps, search engines, free directories, subscription newsletters and SEO etc.

Stefan's website can be found at www.StefanDrew.com

Previously Head of Press, Publicity and Marketing at the Contributions Agency Stefan directed marketing for a number of large colleges before setting opening Stefan Drew Associates in 2005. Despite spending little on marketing the business has grown rapidly year on year; a fact Stefan puts down to implementing his own advice.

Stefan Drew, who is based in the UK at Marton in Warwickshire, is a member of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce where he is a Council Member and their SME Ambassador.

Stefan is also a Fellow of the Institute of Business Consultants.

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