“Email and Bacon – This car has everything.”

Anyone know if there’s a name for this poster format? Motivational poster?

Please comment below if you know.

Found this in my travels on Facebook this morning. Had to save it.

Is there room for improvement?

Could you possibly raise rates and increase profits while working less?

Are you open to discussions about new ways to book more consultations and appointments?

For the past 17 years, QualityWriter has been helping healthcare and technology companies build sales with better marketing (clients include Toshiba Medical, Hughes, D-Link, Panasonic and many other smaller companies and practices).

We’re right here in Southern California – Newport Beach. 

Please call us at (949) 244-9440 and ask for Phil Dunn.  We’ll go over your goals and talk strategy.

P.S. We’d also like to show you a new software application that automates and simplifies the advertising, patient acquisition and sales funnel process.

The program manages both online and offline ads, as well as email inquiries and phone calls that come to your office. It’s kind of like Hubspot, but it’s *much* easier to use – set it and forget it, really.

It’s designed specifically for medical, health/wellness, legal, and accounting practices.

P.P.S. We can also help with Radio and TV media buying and creative.

How to set up Hootsuite Twitter Stream or dashboard view. This one shows you how to quickly a twitter feed for companies you follow, individuals or news outlets. Great way to curate content and reduce the noise in your social networking feeds.

Here’s a quick tutorial for setting up a Facebook business page. Some call it a fan page.

The tips from this particular episode are great and very Web 2.0. For example, she recommends that presenters encourage attendees to take notes via Twitter so that their associates and followers can benefit (very viral). There are multiple benefits for all involved. The speaker enjoys more exposure. The audience gains improved retention (research supports that note taking improves retention). And, a collaborative environment is formed as everyone tweets and uses hash tags to follow along. Summaries and specific notes can be easily copied and pasted into other capture tools. Plus, the streams are searchable on search.twitter.com or organized via Twubs or Twitterfall.

I highly recommend you check this stuff out.

Do you use other tools when presenting? If so, please comment below about your tips and recommendations.

Some highlights.. “Step 1: Kaboom Them Into Waking Up!

Ever noticed how most presentations start with, “Welcome to this presentation…blah, blah, blah.” You don’t see too many TV ads do that. They slam into you at a zillion miles an hour and make sure you’re paying attention.

So How Do YOU Do That When You Don’t Have A Moving Picture?

The trick is to start with something that’s totally disconnected with the presentation. For instance, you could be selling cars yet you could start with, “One day in heaven…” That’s a good wake up call for an audience that’s half asleep.”

Step 2: Always Tell A Story

Step 3: Use Suspense, Not Mystery

Step 4: Don’t Bore Them with Your Solutions. Bring Up the Problem!

Paint a gory picture. You might want to read my article: Is your solution your biggest problem? Only after you have made them feel the pain, should you bring out the solution. The best TV commercials always make you feel the pain.”

There are 8 steps total.. enjoy.

1) Colin Wheildon’s Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes

2) Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery

Wheildon’s book is a frontal assault on the lame-o typography mistakes that continue to occur today (especially in the amateur design Web arena). His findings are backed up by in-depth research about comprehension and reader retention.

Reynolds’ book is a more elegant assault on similar miscues in the world of PowerPoint and Keynote… or just presentations in general.

My simple recommendation?

Buy these books. Dog-ear these books. Keep them near Strunk and White. Savor them, review them, revere them, spoon them.

They’re gold and will help you win projects and the hearts of your clients.

Here’s a taste from Presentation Zen that talks about the “picture superiority effect”:

“When information recall is measured just after exposure to a series of pictures or a series of words, the recall for pictures and words is about equal. However, the picture superiority effect applies when the time after exposure is more than 30 seconds, according to research cited in Universal Principles of Design (Rockport Publishers). ‘Use the picture superiority effect to improve the recognition and recall of key information. Use pictures and words together, and ensure that they reinforce the same information for optimal effect,’ say the authors… The effect is strongest when the pictures represent common, concrete things.”

And from Wheildon’s masterpiece:

“.. the average advertisement is read by only four percent of the people on their way through the publication it appears in. Most of the time this is the fault of the so-called “art director” who designs advertisements. If he is an aesthete at heart – and most of them are – he doesn’t care a damn if anybody reads the words. He regards them as mere elements in his pretty design. In many cases he blows away half the readers by choosing the wrong type. But he doesn’t care. He should be boiled in oil.” [my emphasis]

These two guys think deeply about design, and they offer lots of undeniable proof for their theses.

If you’re a copywriter, art director, Web designer, SEO monger, marketing director (or VP or CMO), or a layout/design guru, please pick these up and study them. Your job is not finished when you complete your piece of the creative puzzle. You need to understand the other disciplines to make sure you’ve created something that’s usable, appreciated, and understood by your consuming audiences.

Do you have any other book recommendations that are crucial for publishing/Web development creatives? Please comment below and share your favorites. Thanks – Phil.

“The punch line is that commercials make TV programs more enjoyable to watch. Even bad commercials,” said Leif Nelson, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author of the new research.

This is pretty fascinating stuff. Part of the thesis here is that pleasure recedes when routine sets in. Novelty and interruption break that up.

There are even more important implications for “experience marketing,” which is one of the fastest growing segments of the products and services world (people are more interested in gathering experiences these days, as opposed to “stuff”).

Good news for advertisers and marketers?

What are your thoughts?

The client was describing a bunch of projects they have lined up. A batch of case studies, a white paper, a data sheet for an upcoming trade show. . the typical round-up of persuasion projects.

They riffed for a bit on how the brochure/data sheet needs to be brief, because no one has time to read these days and it’s really difficult to compete for attention.

Then they said something really interesting. “We need to work on custom intros for the RFPs we’re working on. This is the one document that really has to sell – they have to read it, so the lead-in has to be really compelling. It directly impacts the sale.”

Um, yeah. This makes a lot of sense to me. People are bombarded with email newsletters, tantalizing links to content in Twitter and Facebook, magazines on their tables, and countless other “media interruptions.”

But.. they have to read closely when it counts – in an RFP. Their job depends on it, so companies throw a lot of resources and thought at RFP writing – especially on the front-end executive summary and positioning copy.

I’ve done this type of work before. I worked on a 100+pp RFP for Pitney Bowes a few years ago. They were bidding for the big law firm Latham & Watkins’ business. It was exactly this type of drill. They wanted a marketing writer to help write several sections and edit the entire document for persuasiveness, attention to detail, and consistency.

What do you think? Have you been seeing more of this kind of work? Please share your thoughts below.

Are you familiar with the “inbound marketing” concept?

If not, here’s my quick explanation. If so, please scroll down to the bottom of this post to see if we’re on the same page and could possibly work on a project together.

Ok – inbound marketing is easy to describe if you compare it to traditional or conventional marketing/advertising methods.

Conventional marketing seeks to interrupt and pitch to people.

• It’s the unsolicited junk mail in your actual mailbox and the spam in your email inbox.
• It’s the car salesman that asks about your kid’s soccer team but has no interest or intention of getting to know the details of your son’s 8-2-1 season.
• It’s the 10,000 address Hoover’s mailing that seeks a 1-2% conversion via reply card.
• It’s the out-of-context XM radio ads that drone on and on about re-financing when you have no intention of re-financing your home. . or going bankrupt. . or rehabilitating your credit or whatever.

In short, interruption marketing is the old school approach that throws $10 million in ad budget at every method under the sun in order to bludgeon the market into coughing up a slim margin of return.

An Alternative to Annoyance

Inbound marketing is the modern, Web-connected alternative – although it integrates off-line advertising, direct mail, billboards, text messages, magazine ads and so forth. It’s really not about offline/online. It’s more about integration, conversion and accountable measurement.

Inbound marketing seeks to generate leads by offering content, value, conversation and education up front. It’s like “working the room” at a networking mixer. You ask about the other person first and try to understand what they’re up to before you lean in with your needs analysis. You don’t just foist out the business card and recite your elevator pitch. It’s about thought leadership, too. Inbound marketing might generate an email list by offering an in-depth, educational white paper.

Ideally, the best inbound marketing strategy should just offer up that white paper without any strings attached (no email capture or sign up form). Your content should educate and position you as the advisor resource right off the bat. That alone generates email leads, phone calls and qualified conversations about how your products and services can help.

Inbound marketing is also about measurement. How are your leads converting to real business? Can you measure that? Which landing pages are successful? . . which headline? Subheads? Photos? Calls to action?

All that stuff is easily measured with simple Web tools.

Have You Been in These Types of “Creative Meetings?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve suffered through meetings where marketing teams deliberate endlessly about subjective content treatments without having a clue about testing and conversion results (A/B tests or multivariate testing).

Inbound marketing strategies, systems and tools help you manage all this.

So . . do you agree with any of this? Are we on the same page? Are you ready to implement some real strategies and solutions for generating leads, improving your messaging, and cultivating enthusiastic product evangelists and “hub customers” that Tweet about your products, blog about your services, and promote you to their friends on Facebook.

Here are just a few general areas that you’ll want to consider.

Content Creation: Is your current Web site set up as a blog or do you have some other Content Management System (CMS)? Are you pumping out relevant, useful, well-written content on a consistent schedule? If not, why not? Your competitors probably are.

Optimization: Are you using tools to grade keywords, landing pages and inbound links? Do this right, and you’ll make some significant SEO strides.

Promotion: How are you using social media “channels” to connect with customers and leverage the exponential reach of friend networks? Do you have an efficient system for communicating with prospects via email and measuring the results of those interactions? Again, do this well and you’ll smoke your competition.

Conversion: What’s do your lead-gen process and pipeline/nurturing practices look like? Do you have simple, clean yet powerful ways to manage prospect lists and leads?

Analysis: Who are you reaching? When are they most receptive to your messages? Are they weighing you against competitive offerings? Are they asking their social networks about your solutions or products? Do you have a way to track all this and “listen” to the market?

Ok – enough with the questions. You get the point. Inbound marketing is an integrated, accountable approach to lead-generation and conversion. It’s about creating great content, making promises, having conversations, delivering value and converting interest to revenue.

Are you at the point where you want to do some these things and start making a measurable difference?

Call (949-244-9440) or email, and let’s talk. We recently gained partner status at Hubspot, so we can get you into that system. Or, we can pick up a few small projects and take it slowly.

This is one area of your business that you don’t want to ignore. There’s a big shift going out there in sales/advertising/marketing/lead-gen-land, and you don’t want to get caught behind the curve. Your competitors will just beat you up at every turn.

And please don’t get suckered into green, newbie “social media” and SEO outfits that promise to solve all your problems by setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts. (This is the part about burning your as$.) Inbound marketing programs are about reasoned, focused marketing campaigns. You don’t want to keyword stuff, pump out useless blog posts, or spam your press releases every 1/2 hour on Twitter. Content development is the key. You need writers, designers, creative input and cohesive strategies to make progress.

Contact us today, and let’s talk inbound marketing and meaningful content development.

949-244-9440

service@qualitywriter.com