Welcome to all of you who have joined us since the first issue. You are now among the more than 1,300 business professionals who are actively increasing their marketing and advertising effectiveness by reading this letter.
If you know of anyone who might benefit from this newsletter, please pass it along.
Thanks!
Best regards,
-John Libonati, Editor
Cognitive Miserliness... Getting Scrooge to Buy By John Libonati
Cognitive miserliness is the process of sifting through the mass of information that bombards us everyday, ignoring anything unimportant to us, and retaining the information that is important.
Today's world is full of too many ads, advertising too many products. Instead of melting our brains by trying to see and remember everything, we ignore anything that doesn't interest us. Consumers have become like so many Ebeneezer Scrooges...holding very tightly to our mental purse-strings.
While this is great for our sanity, it means that getting your message through to your target audience is harder than ever. So, how do you catch Ebeneezer's attention and make him remember you?
When composing your message, correctly target and personalize it to those who you are trying to reach. Discover their needs. Be creative when designing your marketing pieces and copy. Explain benefits and how your product or service will meet their needs. Test, test, test your ads before running them. Then, show your ads where and when your audience will look for them. Show them over and over.
Recap: Know your target market. Speak to their needs. Be creative. Test your piece. Run it when your target market will be interested.
John is Partner at Ascension Design, a full service graphic design firm in Ambler, PA.
Contact John at 215-591-1010 or john@ascensiondesign.net
Understanding the Power of the Press
By Sue Furman
I once read an article that said McDonald's was right up there with Santa Claus as having 100% name recognition around the world. Wow! That is impressive. In your business, you need name recognition, too. When people see your name, or the name of your business in the media, it reinforces you as an expert in your field or your product or service as the best in the market.
Marketing promotion is made up of three elements: sales, advertising and public relations. Any one of those three elements can stand alone, but together, they form an image of your company that drives its success.
Sales is self-explanatory. But consider advertising for a moment. If you see an advertisement, whether it's in a newspaper or magazine, you can usually tell it's an advertisement. When you see an advertisement in print, it is usually located in a special section for advertisements, and if it is designed to look like an article (called an advertorial), it actually says "advertisement" at the top of it. We aren't fooled by advertisements; we know exactly what they are and who pays for them.
Public relations is somewhat more complex. Like most business activities, your PR campaign should start out with a plan, most often done by a public relations consultant or media relations specialist. It can involve print and electronic (radio and TV) media, but we will just discuss print for now.
The goal of PR is to get your business story told by writers in publications your audience will read. Editors and writers at magazines and newspapers can selectively choose what they want to write about. Getting them interested in your business is the trick - what is it that you do that will interest their audience?
One of the proven ways to get the media interested in "your" story is by sending a press release. Press releases are sent to newspapers and magazines all the time...but getting yours to stand out usually takes expertise and experience and is best left in the hands of professionals who do that for a living.
When the press releases you send out to the media turn into articles and stories in magazines and newspapers, readers get the impression of a third party endorsement of your person, product or service. Articles do not look like advertisements. They have built in credibility. They project the image that you have portrayed to the author of the article. This image, along with your advertising campaign and sales, will help to create the collective marketing program that will increase revenues and grow your business.
In future issues of this newsletter we will talk about writing news releases and talking to the media. There are many nuances to doing these things correctly, which we will investigate more thoroughly next time. For now, if you want more information about creating a professional public relations plan, visit www.furmancommunications.com, or call Sue Furman,
President of Furman Communications at (610) 278-4060.
Communication: Common Sense But Not Always Common Practice
By Aime M. Marshall
How many times has something gone wrong, gone bad, or not gone at all on the job? How often have we blamed communication? And why is communication to blame anyway? Isn't communication common sense? We do it all the time, so why then do we have such problems? Answer: Just because we have the ability to communicate doesn't mean we are good at it.
Ineffective communication tends to be the culprit, hidden under the guise of "poor", "mis-", or "no". In a world of constant messaging (count the emails, voicemails, instant messages, faxes, advertisements you received today), ineffective communication tends to blend into the background. Only effective communication gets through.
To successfully combat overload or entropy in the work place, one must become an effective communicator. How can you improve communication effectiveness? Begin with a personal assessment of the following:
1. Self-image: Who I am shapes how I communicate. Therefore take a good look at the image you project. Ultimately, how you present yourself influences the quality of your interactions with others. Be aware of your self-image
2. Listening: Effective communicators don't just speak, they listen. They decode what they hear in order to interpret the intended meaning. Through the listener's silence or intermittent prompting, he or she demonstrates attention. That attention validates the speaker. How would you rate your listening skills?
3. Non-verbals: More than two-thirds of our communication occurs via facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, appearance, posture, etc. We give non-verbals more credence because we've been interpreting them since infancy. If a someone's body language or tone contradicts the spoken word, we are more likely to discount what's being said and believe what's not. How do you use your body language? Are you using non-verbals advantageously? Are you aware of others' non-verbals?
4. Noise: Anything that prevents or hinders a message from being sent or received acts as noise. Environmental distractions, such as a loud office, are obvious. However, we tend to overlook psychological or emotional noise. Are your personal thoughts or feelings muddying interpretations, perceptions, etc?
5. Audience: Remember, your listener is evaluating the relevance of your message to his/her needs. This person is thinking "What's in this for me?" If you can preemptively answer this question, you will gain and maintain attention.
6. Message context: Each time we address another human being, we communicate on two levels: content and relationship. We speak tangible words while simultaneously expressing our intangible relationship to the receiver. It is important to be aware of both contexts.
As you see, effective communication involves both the speaker and the receiver. Just as good public speakers are not born, but rather are made, so too are good communicators. If we practice effective communication, then we will reduce frustration, errors, and problems in the workforce. After all, that's just common sense.
Aime is Associate Product Manager at Yves Rocher, North America. She holds a Masters in Communication.
You decide our next issueís topics! Choose from the below list or note topics you would like to see covered and e-mail us with the word 'topic' in the subject line at editor@ascensiondesign.net.
Subjects include anything related to advertising, graphic design, marketing strategy, website development, illustration, photography and media placement.
Your input determines how our newsletter evolves. We will adapt the newsletter to your needs. Please send your comments and suggestions to editor@ascensiondesign.net. Thanks!
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