Basingstoke and Business

Basingstoke and Deane is the home to many well known businesses. Businesses such as the Automobile Association(AA), Barclays, Sony, Winterthur Life, Linde, De La Rue and more recently Huawei Technologies. Other companies who are well known in the Basingstoke community include Centerprise International and The Game Group. Basingstoke is the place to do business with Talaris opening its new headquarters at Chineham Park in 2008.

An excellent location, coupled with competitive commercial property rental rates and a high quality of life, have attracted many companies to discover the benefits of Basingstoke.

Basingstoke is well located geographically and enjoys very cost effective commercial property rental rates. With a strong local economy supported by a highly-skilled workforce coupled with real support and commitment to future developments, Basingstoke provides many benefits for business.

Growth

Basingstoke has been described by Experian in its report to the South East Area Development Agency as one of the “Diamonds for Growth”. Of the eight areas in the South East described as Diamonds, Basingstoke is “Consistently among the top Performers in terms of competitive performance,” as reported by Experian. The same report goes on to say “The Basingstoke diamond may be small but its significance in the South East and UK is disproportionate to its size”.

Basingstoke is also being supported by the Government as one of the ‘New Growth Points’, which will further assist Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council to further develop Basingstoke’s local infrastructure.

Recognised nationally and regionally Basingstoke, sparkling like a Diamond is the place to do business.

Local Economy

Basingstoke has a strong economy with fairly recent significant improvement to its entertainment and retail sector. Festival Place opened in 2002 providing a multitude of additional shops, restaurants and facilities raising the statue of the town centre significantly. Ranked as one of the best town centre shopping centres in the country, festival place in Basingstoke is definitely worth a visit.

For leisure Basingstoke offers something for everyone from the Anvil concert hall to the leisure park providing swimming, ice skating and bowling facilities. Not to mention the Milestones family museum with its displays of Basingstoke in the “olden days”.

Property and the Workforce

Property values and location make Basingstoke a great place to live, encouraging professional and skilled people alike to settle in Basingstoke. Blessed with an above average skilled workforce as presented by the gross value added (GVA) of £21,000 compared to the UK average of just £17,000.

GVA as presented here, is a measure in economics of the value of goods and services produced in an area or sector of an economy presented as a figure per head of the population.

Basingstoke’s recruitment base and location has helped Barclays Asset and Sales Finance in its decision to consolidate one of its main UK centres in the borough of Basingstoke.

As explained by Chief Operating Officer Carla Stent: “Barclays believes Basingstoke is a fantastic location and one that will allow us to grow well. It has excellent access that allows us to reach our customers, largely due to the great road, rail and air links. We also believe we will be able to recruit the right people for our business both now and in the future.”

Your Small Business and the Internet

The major problem for your small businesses in Basingstoke is making potential customers aware of the existence of your business and your product. Combined with a web site as well, you now have a third element which you have to promote and market. So setting up your own website could simply increase your costs and increase the amount of effort which you need to put into marketing.

Potential customers will only visit your site if you give them good reason too, if it is not interesting they will leave quickly. Your site could interest customers if there is some free and useful information on it. But remember someone has to spend the time producing the information and to keep the site interesting and updated. This could present an extra cost to your business with any return not immediately apparent.

Promoting your website

If you are convinced that a website would be a crucial element in your business, you need to work out how to bring it to potential customers attention; you have to get it onto the popular search engines. Another way of promoting a web site is to establish links with other web sites. Remember that most sites owners would only agree to a link to you if there was a reasonable chance that some traffic would come through from your web site to theirs. So you are back to the problem of encouraging traffic to your site, either by promoting it or by offering something free and interesting to browsers. If you market your products or services locally, you might be able to establish a link from your local authority’s or tourist information centre’s website.

You could promote your website by putting a reference to it on all your literature, including your letter heads. However, a certain proportion of your potential customers would prefer to access information about your products and services on the internet and so a web site would appropriate to display your goods.

More internet marketing

You could consider advertising on a more interesting website and purchase a full webpage depicting your product, effectively having a website within website.

As an example, there are sites devoted to people wanting to buy second hand cars or organize travel arrangements. The owners of the site are faced with the problem of promoting and marketing the site and ensuring that there are enough visitors and you may pay for a page or an entry. If the site generates a good audience this could be your most cost effective way of marketing your business on the internet.

Activ Basingstoke fulfils these criteria as an interesting and popular website; it can help your business thrive in these turbulent economic times, in a very cost effective manner. Activ Basingstoke presents the browser with information on Business, Jobs, Cars, Property, Dating, News, Community, Hotels, Online shopping and a free discount section saving users money. Providing many reasons for the browser and therefore your potential customers to view your product through the Activ Basingstoke website.