Imagine a menage a trois

of marketing strategy! 

     Growing up the son of a snail-mail lifer, and having had my first real job as a direct mail copywriter much longer ago than email even existed (and centuries before the dawn of texting), you can bet those exposures triggered a career full of direct mail. 

     Today, I do equal amounts of direct mail and email marketing.  I like the shorthand of text messaging, but not the aborted English that is its mainstay.  And I still believe the basic direct mail tenet that the more you tell, the more you sell! 

     BUT most people seem to me to be hellbent on trying to prove that there’s some colossal and magical difference between snail-mail and email marketing. 

     From my frame of reference, I see no difference strategically between the two.  Of course immediacy of delivery (and deletion) distinguishes email timelines from the historic trudging of mailmen and women through wind and rain and snow and dark of night on their appointed rounds up your walkway to your mailbox. 

     Much has also been made and can be said in favor of physically handling envelopes and contents.  And arguably the two dictate creative approaches to writing that are as diverse as those that seem to mesmerize our thumb-punching generation of teenagers. 

     So how could I possibly suggest there’s no strategic difference between snailmail and email?  To reach any significant measure of success in the use of ANY medium (yes, even thumb-punching), asking and answering the same three strategic principle questions is always and everywhere called for.  In other words, what is your thinking approach to implementing the tactics that will achieve your objectives?  Here’s the famous menage a trois of marketing strategy:

1.   Who, specifically and realistically, is your target?

2.  What, specifically and realistically, is your spiel?

3.  What, specifically and realistically, is your deal? 

     The bottom line is that regardless of whether you choose to use”traditional” (direct mail) advertising, or elect to zoom your message through cyberspace (and sophisticated marketers will often do both . . . remember: repetition sells!), you still must answer the one and only WIIFM (imaginary radio station) question in the recipient’s mind:

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

     If your message fails to produce the exact right response to that WIIFM question, it doesn’t matter what media you use . . . you lose!  It’s the only thing ANY of us care about when we are being “pitched.”

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Make today a GREAT day for someone!

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!”    [Thomas Jefferson]

Hal@Businessworks.US         931.854.0474

Guidance to 500+ Successful Business Startups

Creating Record-Sales for Clients Since 1981!

Go get your friends, family, neighbors and work associates! 

Everything You Always

                                                  

Wanted to Know

                                                                                           

About How to Manage

                                                                                  

Your SELF Under Stress,

                                                                                        

But Were Afraid to Ask.

     I see major seminar companies charging hundreds of dollars for the information presented here for FREE . . .  

     If you or someone you know has a “short fuse” or a tendancy to over-react at home or work, or be disorganized, put things off, be worried or anxious, or constantly feel guilty, do yourself or that other person you care about a favor by connecting to the blog posts found below on this page, and —especially– by clicking in the “Post Archive” section(under “Blogroll”and “Literary Agents”) about half-way down the righthand column (on this page).  

Then check out the following quick reads (from self-learning materials which produced the best results for over 20,000 students in 30 years of college teaching and management training seminars) :

JUGGLING CATS (Sep 21);     VICTIM OR RESCUER (Sep 19);     Dear Boss: Besides that they suck, meetings waste time (Sep 16);     Business Writing & Writer Writing Tip #1001: GETTING ORGANIZED (Sep 13);     PERFECTIONISM . . . (Sep 07);     MORE BUSINESS TO LEARN FROM SPORTS (Sep 06);     Calling All Corporate Types, Entrepreneurs, Homemakers . . . ((Sep 02);     DEALING WITH INDIFFERENCE (Aug 27);     ANGER IN THE WORKPLACE (Aug 26);     Thoughts While Driving . . . (Aug 22);     WATCH YOUR TONGUE . . . (Aug 20);     Surprise! Nobody MAKES you angry . . . (Aug 19);     REAL LEADERS . . . (Aug 15);     MANAGEMENT “THEORY A” (Aug 12);     HAVE YOU TAKEN A REALITY READING LATELY? (Aug 11);     THE POOL RULE (Aug 10);     EFFECTIVE JOURNALING (Aug 05);     DEALING WITH ANGER (Aug 02);     “CHANGE” IS NOT A LEADERSHIP WORD! (Jul 03);     ATTITUDE is the answer . . . (Jun 14);     REALITY THERAPY . . . (Jun 11);     LIFE IS JUST A BOWL OF WORRIES (May 29);     EVERY PROBLEM=AN OPPORTUNITY (May 21);     WHADDAYAWANT? . . . (May 07);     STRATEGIES MUST COME FROM INSIDE (May 02);     LIFE IS GOOD . . . (Apr 29) 

     And most important of all:

See “ARE YOU BREATHING?” under the “Magazine Articles” tab at the top of the homepage.  Happy blog post anthology-skimming!     halalpiar

__________________________________________________________________________________

Who’s best to captain  

                                                 

the ship through storms? 

     Whether you’re an athlete, or writing a book, running a business, managing a household or delivering a professional practice service, do you periodically stop to take inventory of your resources and re-visit the reality (or fantasy) of where you’re headed? 

     Do you routinely make adjustments in your products, services and plans, in your approach, in your people and procedures?  Do you strive every day to ensure that your pursuits are realistic and your actions based on experience?  Or do you simply aim in the direction of your wish-list, close your eyes, and hope? 

     “If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway” is the rallying cry of successful entrepreneurs who know the only way to get a leg up in competitive industries and markets is to be making informed and reasonable adjustments consistently.  Note informed and reasonable . . . in a word, experienced.  

     If corporate giants (including the failing financial institutions we’re hearing about) and our incompetent overkill government would take (have taken) a more aggressive stance in questioning the ongoing viability of their policies, strategic plans and actions, they would (have) quickly realize(d) that this planet is not at a point in history where it’s physically/mentally/financially/emotionally affordable for any entity to stand still.   

     Refusing to constantly assess and reassess established directions and commitments constitutes investment in the status quo.  At this time in this world, there is no room for complacency or indifference or ambivalance because the rest of the planet continues to spin relentlessly.  The time for standstill thinking and behavior may in fact never come again. 

     Okay.  So who’s best to captain the ship through storms? 

     The team with management experience and proven abilities to reshape and scale back government, with the track-records of having overcome all odds, with the demonstrated abilities to improvise, innovate, and practice active leadership . . . the team that knows how to read the tides and stars to navigate, and that has the skill and experience to sustain resources, and energize others to honor, respect, and protect our country and our families first and foremost? 

     Or the team with no management experience, no proven abilities except to nurture its own charisma, and which has expended more energy criticizing our country than our enemies . . . the team that has admitted it believes in its hearts it can lead by raising taxes to increase a government that’s already nonproductive . . . the inexperienced team that’s convinced it can simply close it’s eyes and wish for the ship to sail itself?             halalpiar

_______________________________________________________________

You must define

                                               

—in writing,

                                                                                            

in one sentence!

                                             

— the problem!  

     One thing that both kinds of writing –business and literary– have in common is the need to organize first and write second.  Since I do both kinds of writing for a living, I have found a simple, low-tech system for getting organized that will minimize hi-tech, multiple-screen, cut ‘n paste operations later.

     The Green Way:

1) Get a paper-cutter.

2) Save all one-sided printouts that you would ordinarily disgard, and pile them with printed sides all facing one way.

3) Cut the sheets of paper (a few dozen) into quarters.

     The Non-Green Way:

     Buy a deck of 3×5 or 5×8 index cards (multi–color are often useful).

     Start scribbling one-word or one-sentence ideas onto individual pieces of your quartered papers (or cards) as each thought occurs to you (sometimes, with hours in between). 

     Let’s say you’re going to write a business plan for a new venture (and, for brevity’s sake, using index cards).  One card might say “Narrative Section” and another, “Financial Projections.”  Then you add separate cards to the pile: “The Competition” and “The Management Team” and “The Mission Statement” and “Objectives” and “Strategies” and “Tactics.”  But then you think that there should be “CREATIVE Objectives, Strategies and Tactics” as well as “FINANCIAL Objectives, Strategies and Tactics” and you think of defining “Objectives” with the four criteria (Specific, Realistic, Flexible, and Due-Dated) in order to keep your Objectives out of fantasyland.  [Ahem; politicians please take note!]

     But before you even establish an objective, you must define –in writing, in one sentence!– the problem (or need) that your OST’s propose to address.

     So, now you also have cards that say “Define The Problem” and “Specific” and “Realistic” and “Flexible” and “Due-Dated.”

     Whatever you end up with (and that may mean a hundred cards or more!), spread them (the cards) out on a very large tabletop . . . or even better, the floor, so you can march around them pretending to be thinking harder, which will definitely impress those who wander into your room or office!

     Then start to move them (the cards) around, consolidate them, add new ones, organize them into an outline format.  Then, tape them all together-as-a-wall-hanging-style outline and hang the whole mess on the wall.  Or copy the whole enchilada onto one piece of paper and go from there.

     The same dynamics apply to all you literary types for organizing chapters and dialogues, even pieces of poems.  The bottom line is that when you’ve captured everything in your head and put it on paper and organized it, it’s no longer running around in your head.  Aaaaah, more room to create!                                 halalpiar

________________________________________________

Well, you must finally be happy to have less gas available, and be paying astronomical amounts at the pump to fill up your tank.  

Oh, yes, and it thrills you to be paying equally mind-boggling amounts to your local grocery store to fill up your refrigerator and kitchen cabinets, right?

Why, you might ask, would I say that? 

Because, of course, you still have spotted owls and views of nature that are unspoiled by wind farms, and polar bears (which you would surely love to cuddle with and invite into your home) running free across the Artic Circle.

And, no doubt, these are all creature survival things that matter intensly to struggling young families, and single parents, and senior citizens on fixed income, and handicapped people living on disability checks, and hurricane victims, right? 

I mean, just ask any of them how important the plight of spotted owls is when they’re scratching and clawing for their next meal.  See how utterly devoted they are to protecting the polar bears when they can’t afford needed medical care.  Yeah.  Go ahead and ask them. 

Get your environmentalist priorities straight!  If you think human beings come first on this planet while you’re busy protesting nuclear energy and hugging trees, you might want to consider rearranging your protest priorities.

Maybe Al Gore did invent the Internet. 

Who knows? 

Stranger things have happened. 

But he surely is as wrong as the sorely misguided (a generous adjective) Nobel Prize Committee when it comes to the subject of global warming. 

Ask any credible scientist. 

And contrary to Mr. Gore’s representations, YOU as an individual CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!  Get started.  This is grassroots stuff.  Set an example.  Teach others.  It’s all about stepping up to the plate!  It’s all about choosing the path of self-sufficiency for our own human species before worrying about other lower forms of existence. 

Regardless of endangered species contributions to our aesthetic senses, or the amount of tear-jerking endorsements and crusading that’s thrust in our faces by Hollywood’s finest, we need to remember that putting human preservation first is the only way we’ll ever be able to have positive impact on the preservation of other species.    

The bottom line is that more drilling is needed to relieve the oil/gas price crisis and related food price crisis because America has enough oil to allow us to completely eliminate dependency on greedy Arab nations. 

But, oh, hey, it might mean losing some endangered species!  Well, I love and subscribe to National Geographic too, but I like to believe that we as human beings are a slightly more important species to risk losing than some owls and bears, and some upturning of the balance of nature.  We’re smart enough to RE-balance whatever we might upset. 

Because we as humans have the ability to think, we have the ability to make changes in our environment that preserve and protect the human species in addition to balancing nature. 

But it has to start with our elected representatives in Congress having the foresight and integrity to initiate expanded oil drilling efforts and to stop bending over to the special interest groups that seek to preserve owls over humans (and human pocketbooks!).  Call your Representative.  Express yourself!        

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www.TheWriterWorks.com

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone!