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Are Developers OK With Their Work Being Stolen?
Short answer: No — not really.But the picture is more complicated than that. Across the UK tech sector, a growing debate is taking place around AI scraping, AI training data ethics, and developer copyright. Large language models and AI coding tools are trained on vast amounts of publicly available code, raising serious questions about consent, licensing, and intellectual property. Modern AI coding tools are trained on enormous datasets that include public GitHub repositories, open-source projects, coding forums and technical documentation. This process, often referred to as AI code scraping, allows models to learn patterns, syntax, and best practices. From a…
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Improving Marketing Performance: What’s Holding Your Strategy Back?
Marketing rarely fails because nothing is happening. It stalls because too many things are happening without direction.Campaigns are live. Content is being published. Paid ads are ticking along. Reports are circulated. Yet growth feels uneven. Leads fluctuate. Engagement dips. Results plateau.If you’re focusing on improving marketing performance, the issue sits inside the business rather than outside it. This article looks at the internal blockers that restrict momentum, even when activity is in full swing. Along the way, you’ll find practical marketing tips to help you diagnose the friction and regain control. The Illusion of Progress: When Activity Masks Stagnation Marketing…
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How to Bring Visitors Back to Your Website
Bringing visitors to your website is only half of the battle, getting them to return is where the real struggle happens. Often, customers can be bombarded with other content, distractions, and endless options, which opens the door for potential customers to click away before taking action. That’s where remarketing steps in. Remarketing isn’t just about chasing lost traffic; it’s about re-igniting interest, rebuilding connection, and guiding visitors back with perfectly timed reminders. Think about those emails that say, “You left something in your cart”. That’s remarketing in action. Subtle, helpful, and almost suspiciously good at remembering what you were interested…
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Why Businesses Hire Marketing Agencies (And Why It’s Usually About Gaps, Not Failure)
There is a persistent myth in marketing that businesses work with agencies because something has gone wrong. The reality is far less dramatic and far more practical. Most businesses hire a marketing agency because growth has outpaced internal capability. Not because the team is failing, but because the demands of modern marketing have become broader, deeper, and more technical than most in-house teams are built to handle alone. When people ask why hire a marketing agency, it starts with understanding where pressure points appear as a business grows and how internal capability evolves over time. Almost always, it comes down…
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Easy and Effective Ways to Make a Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines how a business will achieve its marketing goals with specific steps along the way. It serves as a roadmap for marketing activities, outlining the key strategies that your team must follow to meet all objectives. Marketing plans are a great way to identify potential challenges and explore ways to overcome them without interrupting business growth and opportunities. Whether you are doing your marketing in-house or outsourcing to an agency, you must have a solid plan in place that aligns with your overall business strategy. However, before you can create this plan,…
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SEO vs PPC: Which is best?
When you’re thinking about building your marketing strategy and researching the available options, you’ll encounter the terms SEO and PPC… but what do they mean? What are the differences? Which should you choose? In this blog, we will discuss the pros and cons of both, so you can make an informed decision when looking for marketing support. What is SEO? SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of optimising a website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords and phrases. SEO aims to increase organic traffic to a website by improving its…
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From Our Design Specialists: Top 5 Design Tools
As a leading design agency in Milton Keynes, our creative team know their stuff when it comes to which tools are worth learning to use. In this blog we’ll give you our top 5 recommendations for tools that will help you elevate your design process and wow your clients. Coolors Coolors is a fantastic design tool because it provides a quick and easy way to create beautiful, cohesive colour schemes. The platform is incredibly user-friendly, with a simple interface that allows anyone to create stunning colour palettes in just a few clicks, regardless of their design experience. Coolors offers a wide…
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The Importance of Site Speed for SEO Marketing
In the fast-moving digital environment, site speed is critical in determining online success. Not just because it impacts user experience, but it also plays an important role in search engine optimisation (SEO). In this blog, we’ll discover how site speed affects SEO marketing and explore its impact on search rankings, user engagement, and conversion rates. So, tighten your seatbelts and get set to turbocharge your site’s speed! User Experience With the increase and advancement of technology, users are becoming less patient – a fast-loading website will enhance their experience. When visiting your website, the site loading speed is often their…
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Defining Your Brand Vision, Mission and Values
If you run your own business, one of the first things you should do is define the fabric of your brand––what does it stand for? It’s pretty common for many businesses not to have already done this, but it is hugely important and valuable in defining your direction and every decision. When working out “what should we do?”, you need a brand barometer to evaluate your choices against, so you are considering “what would our brand do?”. Why we do what we do Many business owners overlook the above because they aren’t aware it’s something that needs doing. Most of…
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When it’s a race to the bottom, climb to the top.
Current market pressures on businesses are coming from all angles: Rising supply chain costs, increased labour costs due to short supply, and rocketing energy bills. These hikes drive competition in most markets, so you need to think about how you will adapt. Cutting your prices to retain or win business is not the answer; you should be increasing them. Read more to hear why! Leading on price will paint your business into a corner I recently read an article where someone, in several years, successfully grew a service business from zero to £3m by providing the cheapest price in the…
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Expert Website Designs That Win
Every business should have a website. No excuses. In contrast, there are one or two alternatives for those who do not want to put effort into a website, such as a Facebook page, nothing more essential nor better for your business than having a great website. It is something you have complete control over, that can be whatever you want it to be, but you can provide a substantially more informative, rich and engaging prospect experience and leverage the power of search engine traffic (e.g. from Google). You cannot do this with a Facebook or LinkedIn page. If it’s worth…
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Exposure that doesn’t cost a penny
Tricks of the trade to go viral on social media Going viral is the holy grail of marketing. What we mean by “viral” content is that you create something on social media that gets the public’s attention; people then share it to their network, and those people do too. Before you know it, and in the same way bacteria multiply in a dish, hundreds of thousands to millions of people have seen your content, and it hasn’t cost you anything! Viral content creates success Many successful businesses and careers have derived through viral content. Looking at your Facebook or Linkedin…
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Creating an E-Brochure to Win Customers
Why is an e-brochure vital if you have a website already? Websites are funny things. Depending on how someone reaches your site, i.e. the landing page they enter the site by and depending on their browsing device, each website visitor’s experience will be different. User journies are something you have limited control over. The user interface/menu system design typically enables the visitor to jump around from one page or content piece to the next in the order that most suits them; it is not a linear narrative. An e-brochure will give you something that you can email a prospect or…
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Brand Revolution, Evolution or Stagnation?
How has your business brand changed over the last 5-10 years? Has it evolved, gone through significant changes or has it completely stagnated? How often and how much do successful brands change? It varies, but all brands change. You may say that brands like “Coca-Cola” never change, but they do much more than you might think. While their core values stay largely the same, their advertising is constantly evolving, and so are their image, logo, and recipe. Take a look at the logo evolutions below. Like many, you probably did not notice there were quite so many. If even big…
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Free Tools to Drive your Sales Leads
SaaS and how it has changed the way we pay for software. Largely, gone are the days when you paid for a software license; it came in a nice box with a manual, and you owned it forever. Most software developers now prefer a cloud-based “Software as a Service”, or “SaaS”, model, meaning you pay for the software monthly or annually, and what you pay is based on the features you choose and how many people use it. The downsides to this are that you never really own it, the costs can change at any time, there may be service…
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Who Am I? The process of branding
Every business needs its own ‘story’ or the brand has little true substance. There is a tendency for companies to talk far too much about what they do and to overlook that what customers really want is to buy from a company they believe can and will deliver. That may seem like a subtle difference but there is a big difference between what a company says it can do and what a customer has confidence and comfort they can do. I could hand you a brochure that tells you my company builds beautiful conservatories but without any pictures of my…
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Finding your Difference and Cutting Through the Advertising ‘Noise’
Look at what’s going on around you and ask yourself who you notice.I’m constantly following the way in which brands and companies market themselves, the trends in style and tone and what drives these variables. Something I’ve noticed is that the brands really standing out right now are the ones being frank, honest and as I was discussing last month, human. Taking big marketing risks pays off A quick scroll through social media, which is one of the least invested ways people absorb advertising, will give you a good feel for what companies are doing to stand out. There have…
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Ways To Advertise Your Business and Stand Out
With many businesses now feeling there’s light at the end of a long and dark tunnel, companies are (or certainly should be) thinking about what they are going to do to generate new business. Whatever action you plan to take, things are going to get very noisy out there, so what can you do to stand out from it all?
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Meaningful marketing that hits closer to home
In a world where businesses have been forced to adapt to so many sudden changes, it is not just people’s needs and behaviours that are changing, their beliefs and feelings are too. This is a time to focus not only on our methods (and how we communicate) but the substance, tone and style of what we communicate.
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Brand position and direction to maximise opportunity
The world doesn’t stand still and neither should a brand. Things change so fast nowadays that brands can’t simply do enough to keep up with the times and often miss major opportunities that can be exploited by a real shift in direction. This month’s article is about how your brand should evolve not only to survive but to prosper.
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Harnessing web-based advertising for sales and enquiries
Internet advertising, often aggregated together under the term “PPC”, can be a powerhouse opportunity for anyone wanting virtually instantaneous product sales or service enquiries. At the same, it is a minefield, so how you determine where your budget is best spent and avoid the common, beginners’ scenario of it disappearing down a plughole with nothing to show?
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How to Nurture and Win New Customers
This month’s article focusses on some winning ways to approach B2B (business-to-business) selling. There are so many different ways to find prospective customers but, when you have someone you would like to work with, how do you get them over the line?
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Coronavirus, Covid, and Carrying On in Business
During the pandemic, it is easy to lose sight of the way forward, with the worry of what your business’ future may hold. This article is all about positive guidance to get through the tougher times.
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How to Build Your Business Through Linkedin
This article gives you the basic knowledge you need to embrace LinkedIn as a networking platform, get going and see results quickly.
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Getting Back to Business with a Bang
Now is the time for some introspection and to think seriously about what you can do to improve the way you retain your existing customers and reach new ones in new ways.
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The Power of SEO – Part 2
In this article, we build upon the SEO basics I introduced previously, expanding on what you can do on-site and off-site, to make sure your SEO strategy a success.
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Understanding PPC Advertising – What It Is & How It Works
Drawing people to your business, is becoming more critical than ever. And one sure-fire route to getting you front and centre in front of your customer is through PPC advertising.
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The Power of SEO – Part 1
If you can dominate Google search results, you can dominate a market. This is the power of being found first and you should make it your goal.
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The Art of Selling – Part 3
How you can improve conversions once you get to the stage that you are asked for a price, a quotation or a proposal? Find out how
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The Art of Selling – Part 2
This month, I’m going to explore in more detail what to do when you find yourself in front of someone. This is more tailored to face-to-face selling but you can adapt and apply these techniques to all types of selling situations.
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The Art of Selling – Part 1
Today, this is useful for anyone selling something in person, rather than online, and even if you don’t have a business, you will find tips here you could apply when selling yourself to a prospective employer in your next job interview.
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How to Build a Strong Business Brand
Now your idea is off the ground, it’s now time to discuss the topic of “the brand” and how critical it is to getting a business off on the right foot.
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Start your own business – the right way
From the idea stage to bringing a product or service to market, a business launch encompasses myriad steps. Darren Isaac, the founder of TFA, offers his advice on starting the right way.
