Limelight is hiring!

Are you a brilliant communicator, self-starter, creative problem solver, copy hero, or client confidante and looking for a new job to kick-off the New Year?

We are a fast-growing and award-winning, independent B2B PR agency, with two exciting opportunities for Account Executives / Account Managers to join our fantastic team in our Oxford Street office.

In return, we offer great career opportunities in a growth orientated agency, a competitive salary, profit related pay and fabulous benefits, including 27 days’ annual leave, a 3pm finish every other Friday, dental & healthcare cover, a £500 wellbeing allowance and a monthly incentive for brilliant work.

Our business has a 13-year track record of giving businesses and their leaders the recognition they deserve through strategic and creative media campaigns. We are growing by staying ahead of changes in the media and marketing landscape, and harnessing the power of digital as well as traditional channels.

As such, we are looking for an account executive with a passion for business communications to join us. You should:
• Have at least 12 months in a client-facing agency role, and be confident communicating with clients in person and via all channels
• Have achieved a high standard in education with a degree or excellent A-level results – or alternatively demonstrate great life and work experience. There are two routes to the top in this business!
• Possess excellent writing skills and an ability to demonstrate a clear understanding of clients’ businesses in all forms of copy
• Know the media on and off line inside-out
• Are utilizing your social media skills for business
• Be developing your commercial awareness and business insight
• You are Creative & Dynamic
• You are trustworthy and exude integrity
• You are organised, efficient and a have a flexible attitude towards your workload, supporting colleagues whenever necessary.

We are also looking for an account manager with a passion for b2b communications to join us. You should:

• Have over two years’ experience in a client-facing agency role, and be personable and confident communicating with clients via all channels
• Have achieved a high standard in education with a degree or excellent A-level results – or alternatively demonstrate great life and work experience. There are two routes to the top in this business!
• Possess excellent writing skills and an ability to demonstrate a clear understanding of clients’ businesses in all forms of copy
• Know the media inside-out on and off line
• Established and developing commercial awareness and business insight
• Creative and dynamic
• You are trustworthy and exude integrity
• You organise yourself and others seamlessly, and a have a flexible attitude towards your workload, supporting colleagues whenever necessary.

To learn more about this role, or to apply, please contact recruitment@limelightpr.co.uk or click here.

Using PR to help build your businesses credibility

The most valuable asset a business has is its credibility, so building and protecting that should be one of the most important things on any business agenda.

The public credibility of companies has never been under more scrutiny than in recent years. With crises such as the Tesco’s accounting saga, or the various tax avoidance scandals that have emerged over the past year, credibility is no longer an easy thing to maintain, whether you deserve it or not.

In a world of ‘Screens everywhere’ and ‘always on’, your audience has access to so much information, they no longer have to take businesses trustworthiness at face value. Access to the internet and media enables them to search out the truth themselves and form their own opinion of a business’s credibility.

It is no longer good enough to just be known as a key player in your industry sector, businesses must now work to enhance their businesses integrity in their audiences’ eye, be that with customers, stakeholders, investors, future employees or industry peers. Most importantly, potential clients, looking to award companies major contracts want to be confident that they are investing in a financially secure and robust business that can honour its obligations, both now and in the future.

So how can PR help build your businesses credibility?
The generation of media exposure around a business and its leadership story is crucial to building your credibility. Coverage across the business and management press – from the FT to Sunday Times Business section to leading business titles like Real Business and Management Today can help tell the story of your business, and build the profile of your management team to ensure your business has a human face. Being open and honest builds a culture of trustworthiness between you and your audience, vital to giving your business credibility, especially to those businesses trying to attract investment or exit opportunities at any stage.

Nowhere is more important to do this than in your target markets. Allowing potential clients to see your business as open, honest, human and successful will establish credibility and open up opportunities for growth in new areas.

The placing of content in key titles is a far more valuable tool to use to achieve this credibility than advertising. Whilst advertising is paid for, the placing of content on or offline retains the neutrality of the publications editors which adds that critical third party endorsement everyone desires.

To make a business credible, you need to build a relationship with your audience, and to do that you must be known to them, and for great things. There is no better way to do that than through the media they engage with, and trust on a daily basis. Build the relationships with that media through your PR activity and you will build trust and more importantly your business credibility.

What would you have added to the Autumn Statement?

As the dust settles following the last Autumn Statement address before the 2015 general election, business owners across the UK, myself included, reflect on what the announcement means for our respective businesses having anxiously waited to see what changes were going to be delivered last week.
The Statement included a surprising amount of good news for us, such as:

• Business rate review
• Infrastructure investment
• £900m for SMEs
• Increased R&D reliefs
• Apprenticeship national insurance contribution relief
• Peer-to-peer aid
• First time exporters access to £45 million funding package

As a small business owner, the above was welcome. However, as the build up to the announcement heightened – I had had my own thoughts about what I would personally introduce in the Statement, my favourite of which evolved into an idea I’ve coined the ‘Business Allowance’.

Although, sadly this wasn’t touched on by the Chancellor, I’m sure many fellow business owners would agree that a Business Allowance, like it’s sister ‘The Personal Allowance’ which lets people earn £10,000 without paying tax, would be a welcomed addition. The idea being that it would let every business in the UK make a tax free profit of £100,000 each and every year.

Designed to both help small business owners keep or reinvest what they have worked so hard on, and risked so much for, as well the more mature business that wants to grow – the Business Allowance would be a radical tax change that would shake both the business and political world.

The clever bit is that the Business Allowance would be almost tax neutral. This is because the savings that will be made will either be spent on new staff (who will pay tax), or on more marketing (which will generate VAT) or for owner/management bonuses (who will pay tax).

The new Business Allowance would be a tax relief that will accelerate business instantly, produce massive good will, and cost virtually nothing.

What do you think? Would this have been something you would have liked to see in the Autumn Statement?

If you had any of your own ideas on what should have been included, we would love to hear them!

To read the Statement’s key announcements for SMEs, head over to Real Business where they’ve summed it all up perfectly in under 500 words.