Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
March 5, 2010
Issue #5
- The 3 Types of Graphic Designers – And The ONLY One You Ever Want to Hire …
- How to Become A GREAT Designer In 3 Easy Steps …
- The 2 Simple Things A Designer Must Do To Create Bigger Winners, More Often …
- 4 Graphics Secrets for Generating Maximum Attention-Getting Power …
- 10 Design Strategies for Getting Your Promotions READ and responded to …
- And More!
Dear Business-Builder,
This issue of THE TOTAL PACKAGE will make everybody money – including you!
If you’re a business owner, marketing pro or copywriter, good graphic design is absolutely essential to producing peak response to your sales promotions. I’ve seen poor design cut sales by half or even more. Conversely, I’ve seen stronger graphic design bump response by 20% or even more.
If you’re a designer, reading this may be the most important fifteen minutes of your career. Because I’m going to tell you what’s what. If you can follow some simple guidelines, you’ll be booked solid. I’ll probably be the first in line to hire you!
First, a quick disclaimer …
I am NOT an “anti-artite!”
Please forgive me if anything I’m about to say offends you. Despite what you may think, I really like most of the graphics people I’ve worked with.
I helped put two kids through art school.
Some of my best friends – Ed Elliott, Rob Davis, Larry Owen and Brian Wilson, for example – are designers.
I even gave my blessing when my daughter married an artist.
But we’ve got to talk. Because sometimes, you guys drive me nuts. Much of what I see in first draft art – and a LOT of what I see on the Internet and in the mail – is abysmal.
And the fact is, if I get one more graphics draft with the same old blunders in it, my head’s going to explode.
So please – have a seat … you’re about to get your advanced degree – from The Makepeace School of Art and Design …
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Posted by:
Troy White
October 29, 2009
Issue #790
Fellow Business-Builder,
I am at a client event in Tampa this week and want to share some exciting news with you. The event I am at is for a very unique niche that targets the affluent buyers that you should be targeting. Why? Because they are the fastest demographic to recover from this economic mess we are all in. The trainers at the event are consistently sharing their success stories in the affluent market, and the rapid growth in demand they are seeing right now.
According to Pam Danzinger, the leading publication for affluent marketing, “At Parisian luxury fashion brand Hermes, best-known for its leather bags that start at US$7,000, sales are up 10%, while demand for Coach’s ubiquitous US$325 handbags has slumped. High-end New York City apartments may have seen their values plunge, but at Fifteen Central Park West, billed as the ultimate Manhattan luxury building, at least eight condos are reported to have sold for nearly 40% above what their owners paid for them in 2007. Now you’ve got to spell luxury with a ‘V’ and the ‘V’ is for value, and value doesn’t mean cheap." They want an experience, and are willing to pay for it”
One of the ways you can get your more affluent clients buying again is to give them what they want … a unique experience that no one else is giving them. What follows is aproven model for getting your affluent buyers buying again.
Even if you aren’t targeting a certain part of your business offerings to the affluent (which I think you should be), this STILL applies to you!
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
July 20, 2009
Issue #9
21 Tips, Tricks and Tactics:
Key Lessons Learned
from 37+ Years in the Trenches
(No “Rules,” Though – I Hate Rules!)
Dear Business-Builder,
Sometimes, I get flummoxed.
Like a few years back – when the president of Phillips Publishing asked me to answer questions his group publishers and marketing managers had about copywriting.
It was in the early 1990s, and Phillips’ president was the legendary Bob King – a truly great man, and one of the sharpest marketing minds I have ever known.
As I remember, the first question his people asked me was, “How do you know the difference between good sales copy and bad copy?”
Hence, my flummoxation: These were executives with degrees in marketing from major universities – marketing hot shots who hired copywriters every single day … critiqued our copy and dictated changes to us – and the one thing they wanted to know was …
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
May 14, 2009
Issue #59
Two real life case histories that prove
only savvy marketers are fit
to run growth-oriented companies
Dear Business-Builder,
It’s so predictable, you can set your watch by it …
Armed with only a skeleton staff, meager resources and big dreams, an eager young entrepreneur slaves 60, 80, and often 100 hours every week for years to grow his business.
He does everything right: He develops or acquires top-notch products. Watches overhead like a hawk. Reinvests every penny of profit. Becomes a student of great marketing and sales copy strategies – and a past master at implementing winning campaigns.
When it comes to sales copy, he never pulls a punch. He goes for the jugular – as far as the law and his ethics will allow – demonstrating the value his products bring to customers’ lives with edgy, can’t-put-‘em-down promotions:
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Posted by:
Daniel Levis
April 22, 2009
Issue #657
In this issue:
- Why almost everybody marketing online today has targeting wrong, wrong, wrong …
- An innocent little mistake that once corrected, instantly spikes the response to virtually any webpage …
- How to determine the intent of Web searchers who insist on using “ambiguous” keywords — so you can sharpen your message-to-market match and grow your business faster …
- And more!
Dear Web Business-Builder,
When Gene Schwartz wrote Breakthrough Advertising, back in the 60’s, the Internet was just a glimmer in some computer scientist’s eye.
Little could Gene have realized the massive implications this new media would have for the craft he loved so dearly and plied with such mastery.
Yet, most of what Gene wrote in that watershed book is just as applicable in today’s fast moving wired-world as it was then in the cumbersome days of typewriters and typesetting.
Some of what Gene had to say is even more applicable today than it was then. The chapters on market awareness and sophistication in particular …
Gene observed that different states of market awareness and sophistication required markedly different approaches to copywriting.
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