Archive for December, 2009

A Real Life Story
The Value of a Newsletter
Does this Newsletter Thing Really Work?

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Ok, we’ve have been talking about how printed newsletters are so great.  So tell me about somebody in Santa Rosa or Sebastopol who used newsletters and helped their business.  Does it really happen?

Newsletters do work.  I mentioned “By Referral Only” earlier.  Joe Stumpf does a marvelous job of training real estate professionals to use newsletters as part of their business growth and referral.  Following is a testimony of one of those agents recounting the impact of her newsletter:

Pam Sitterly, with RE/MAX, sends her newsletter to 225 clients a month.

“I attribute about 65% of my income to my Client Newsletter,” says Pam. “I invest $1.17 per client per mailing. I send it in a 6″ x 9″ envelope and pay for two-ounce postage. I mail 225 newsletters per month and it brings me a $29-to-$1 return.

“The newsletter is the single best investment that I know of for keeping in touch. My clients never wonder if I’m still in the business, because they have a monthly reminder that I’m still their Realtor, with my name and contact information easily at their fingertips.

“Preparing the newsletter gives me great pleasure, even though my assistant takes care of the bulk of it. I frequently receive compliments on it, which I love. Readers find it endearing, and it establishes a rapport that otherwise might not occur so quickly.

“I make the newsletter my own by including a monthly staging tip and real estate Q&A. Page eight is always a full-page flyer promoting one of my listings. Almost every month readers enter the trivia contest to win a pair of movie tickets.

“The newsletter is as much a part of my real estate business as buyers and sellers. It helps define who I am and how I run my business. It is extremely important to me and is one of the reasons I love what I do.”

So there you have it.  One business person who uses her newsletter and finds it very profitable. I would be willing to wager that those who don’t use a newsletter probably think that it doesn’t work.  Those who do probably have real life experience that it does.

You can see in Pam’s testimony the benefits that a newsletter has for any business, whether you are in Windsor or Petaluma or anywhere is the Wine Country.  Sending out a newsletter serves as a monthly reminder to your customers.  It establishes rapport and gets clients involved in your business and thinking of you.

Pam even sees it as creating part of her identity.  The professional who stays in touch.  Wouldn’t that be how we would like our customers to think of us?  She feels proud about using this valuable marketing piece and it gives her greater job satisfaction.  All things we love to hear.

Written by David Walrath

Ajalon Printing & Design

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5 Winning Newsletter Strategies
Keep in Touch and Improve Your Business

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

We have been talking about how businesses in Sonoma County have been printing newsletters and staying in touch with their customers from Healdsburg to Petaluma. We can think of no easier way to improving relations with your customers.  So here are more powerful strategies:

  • Include people in your newsletter. A strong connection with the reader can be including guest columns about company successes written by employees or customers is a great way to show readers that you are making a difference by producing quality products.
  • An easy way to impress readers is to include a section listing your business’s most recent statistics. Along with sell statistics, you can include customer satisfaction ratings. Let those you serve vouch for the quality of service your business provides.

For example: when wineries here in Sonoma County receive a gold metal in a wine competition or score over 90 in Wine Spectator or Wine Enthusiast, it’s time to send out a newsletter.

  • Include a “frequently asked questions” section. Identify at least five of the most asked questions about your business and/or the products and services it provides. Then provide both the questions and answers in your newsletter. This is a great way to not only provide information about your business but to solve questions about your business as a whole.
  • Consider featuring an advice column. People love to read about challenges that others have and hearing your solutions.  Dear Abby and all the other advice columns are evidence to this.
  • Humor is always entertaining. Some businesses send out send out newsletters that are 90% humor.  People become addicted to reading their monthly humor.  Some employees who have left one place call so that they can continue receiving their monthly fix at their new job.  Such loyalty we love.

Printed newsletters can’t be beat for keeping in touch with clients.  In these economic times it is important to stay in touch with those people who bring us business.  Those pesky sales associates from ‘other’ companies are more likely to be out there, getting in touch with your customers.  Keeping in touch is better than scrambling to repair damage already done.

Written by David Walrath

Ajalon Printing & Design

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Keeping in Touch Can Make You Money
Newsletters Can Increase Your Business
5 Strategies to Improving Your Newsletters

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Printing a newsletters can be an excellent marketing tool as it can be used to promote the products and services provided by your local business. A good business newsletter can help to increase business and to make a sale. It may seem strange to you to send your newsletter from Santa Rosa to Sebastopol, but the truth is that if you don’t tell your customers what you are doing, even if you are as close as Rohnert Park and Cotati, they will not likely know.

If you’re stumped on how to write an effective newsletter for your business, then consider utilizing the following strategies.

You should not include each one of these ideas in each newsletter.  Your newsletter needs to be short and readable, not a tome.

  • Before you produce the newsletter, you need to determine its purpose. Ask yourself who you’re writing the newsletter for. Since we’re talking about business newsletters, chances are that your readers are customers or potential customers. You want to cater your newsletter specifically to them.
  • Remember to always think of your newsletter from your reader’s point of view.  Answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”  You can fill a newsletter that really excites you and tells of all your latest accomplishments, but your readers may really be “ho hum” about all this.  They are likely to say, “What does all this mean for me?” Be sure you tell them how what you do can benefit them.
  • Consider writing each issue around a theme.  It helps to have a theme that holds each issue together.  It helps your readers and you.  When I focus down into one idea I find that I can write more easily rather than having the whole world to write about.
  • Include graphics and photos in the newsletter.  Don’t cram it full of text so that you have paragraph after paragraph with very little white space showing on the page.  It will actually influence your potential readers not to start.
  • Include information about your business. Include articles that emphasize company accomplishments and success stories of products sold. Articles such as these help lend credibility to your business. Don’t brag, but do highlight your achievements.

I can think of no better way to keep in touch with your clients and help prospects to remember you are waiting to serve them than by printing a newsletter and mailing it out.  We will continue with 5 more winning strategies on writing top notch newsletters in our next session.

Written by David Walrath

Ajalon Printing & Design

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How to Write Flyers and Emails that Make You Money

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Learn the secrets that top copy writers use to earn thousands of dollars.

What you need to know in order to write flyers and emails that get responses.

In today’s world we are all inundated with flyers or emails about this or that thing. How can you get your prospects to take the time to read your flyer and respond so that you can stay in business in beautiful Sonoma County?

The first place you need to start is to begin thinking about what your reader wants.  What benefits does your product or service provide?  Realize your reader is going to ask WIIIFM?  That is, “What’s in it for me?”  Our customers are basically selfish.  They don’t care how much you like your product or service.  They want you to answer the question, “What difference does this make for me?”

Until you take the time to really examine what you are offering from your reader’s point of view, you will only be blowing your own horn for your own ears.  You must tickle your reader’s ears.  Look at what the real life benefit of using your product or service is for your reader.

What is the unique benefit of working with you that can changes their lives, solve their problems or add to their pleasures?  That is what they are interested in.   They will read what you write and take action only if they are convinced this will meet a need they have.

Don’t skip over this step.  The clearer you are and the more finely tuned you get on this matter, the better success you will have in writing your copy.  If you know where you are going, you can find the best path to get there.  If you are unclear, you can waste time wandering around.

Get Their Attention!

Use a headline on your flyer or email.  You have bits of a second to get their attention and get them reading, before they decided they are not interested and toss you aside.  Grab their attention.

So how do you do that you ask?  Well if you have got clear what the benefits to your reader are, then you pick the most powerful one from your reader’s point of view and make it stand out.  Make it the biggest type on the page.

It’s the difference in saying a car will get you from one place to another (a function).  Or saying owning this car will save you money.  Which are you more interested in hearing about?

List all the benefits you want, but emphasize the most important by making it the biggest type size and then follow up with the remaining benefits.  Build a compelling list of reasons why what you are offering is the best thing since sliced bread.  Don’t exaggerate, but don’t be shy and artificially humble.

We have shown you how to get your readers attention and get them reading.  Next time we will cover how to avoid distracting your reader and get them to take action.  Following these guidelines will result in you getting better results from your flyers or emails.

Whether you are posting your flyers on a bulletin board in Sebastopol or distributing them throughout Santa Rosa, you will be able to get the right people to read your flyer.

Written by David Walrath

Ajalon Printing & Design

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Calendars

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

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Calendars

It’s not too late.  You still have time to promote your Sonoma County business with a calendar.

This is a time of year that we are always a little more aware of calendars, usually we are receiving calendars from various sources, our vendors, friends and family. Some of these calendars can have images from around the county with pictures of the Llano de Santa Rosa near Sebastopol or other cities from Windsor to Rohnert Park.

We usually receive these with smiles and put them up on our walls or desks.  As I look around in the office I am working in right now there are two calendars on the wall and one small calendar on a desk.

Often that is as far as we go with calendars.  While we use calendars and appreciate them as gifts, we don’t really consider them as part of our own marketing effort promoting our Sonoma business.  Yet if you consider the fact that one of the goals you have in any marketing message that you send out is that the prospect would keep and remember the piece, you can see the value of a calendar.

What do people do with calendars?  They keep them and refer to them regularly.

When you are thinking about calendars you want to focus on beautiful, unique, and useful.  People are likely to keep and use a calendar if it appeals to them, will make their surroundings more attractive and helps them in their day. What a great opportunity to include one of your favorites photographs from around Santa Rosa.

Your customers will keep a calendar that they like, even if they don’t like you.  Can’t say that about many other marketing pieces.

So calendars are a good way to keep a constant presence before your customer.  In today’s throw away, electronic world an appealing calendar with eye catching pictures is still considered a great give away to customers.  And with digital printing it is easy to create custom calendars in short runs to make calendar giving affordable.

Size doesn’t matter.

Calendars can be big or small.  Starting out with calendars can be very easy with business card size calendars that people can carry in their wallets and purses.  We have customers ask us if we are going to be giving away those small calendars about this time each year. People look forward to using these calendars on a routine basis.

Postcard size calendars can work also.  They can be for the entire year or only have a few months, giving you the opportunity to send out postcards regularly to your clients, keeping in touch with them.

There are a large number of choices with wall calendars.  A calendar can be a single, beautiful picture of some wine country scene, for example,  that would be appealing, with the pages for individual months, that can be easily taken off, attached below.

We are all familiar with the more traditional calendar that has a picture for each month and the pages flip out of the way.  These calendars are a bit more expensive to produce but offer the possibility of a wider variety of images that can make the prospect of hanging the calendar more likely.

Large poster size calendars, often call planning calendars, are also popular and functional.  Many businesses use these calendars in scheduling days off and vacations and they are referred to frequently.  Wouldn’t it be nice if your company logo and contact information were always there reminding them of your services?

And don’t forget that on any calendar you can have reasons for your customers to return to you each month.  You can create a calendar that offers a tear-away coupon or deal that they can use each month.  This can acquaint them with your local Sonoma County services that they may not know you offer or provide you with a chance to promote a new or highly profitable niche in your business.

It’s still not too late to think of calendars even for this year.  Consider the rewards to your business if your clients were given the opportunity to have your company name and contact information available to them because you had given them something they liked and wanted to have around.

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Nine Networking Tips for Every Business person

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Networking is important to the career of every successful business person.  It builds rapport with prospects and customers that will hopefully lead to a greater number of referrals and a more successful closing rate.  Pam Murray of Many Waters Publishing offers these tips to help you improve your networking skills:

  • Make at least three networking calls a day.  Okay, maybe you won’t do this every day, but realize that if you are to be successful at this you must practice and make an effort to keep reaching out.
  • Give. Give. Give.  Help people as much as you can.  Remember, you will receive only as much as you give.  Givers gain.
  • When at an event, always sit with someone new.  You can’t gain new prospects by constantly socializing with old acquaintances.
  • Call a colleague and ask what kind of leads he or she is looking for.  He or she will be pleasantly surprised and will think of you the next time he or she is handing out leads.
  • At the beginning of each week, write down your networking goals and action plan for the upcoming week.  It will make your networking much more valuable because you’ll know exactly why you’re taking each specific step.
  • Call at least one person on your list whom you may be nervous about calling.
  • Actively seek new ways to give leads to others.
  • Join a networking group.  This seems obvious but may be overlooked.  Here is a place that you can practice and learn new skills in an on-going, regular endeavor.
  • Have fun.  Networking is the easiest, most enjoyable way to build not only a client base, but a support foundation that will see you through both good and bad times.

I have endeavored to give you a brief introduction to the powerful practice of business networking.  The above mentioned Pam Murray has written a book on it.  Ivan Misner and Virginia Devine have written extensively on the subject.  There are many excellent books available.

Building your business through a concerted effort of business networking is certainly a practice that gives high return on investment.  It really only requires that you make a commitment to it and follow through.   Or you can spend unlimited amounts of money hiring a marketing firm to build a program and spend a lot of money on all the available public media, like radio, TV, newspapers and magazines.

Business networking really is fun because you get to meet new people and make new friends, and who doesn’t like friends?  It really is a program that you can get excited about and reap the benefits of increasing the circle of friends, colleagues, and clients in your business and personal life.

Written by David Walrath

Ajalon Printig & Design

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A Super Script to Build a Successful Business

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

How communicating clearly what you do can create more business.

We all understand the wisdom of the adage; you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And we know that if we are unclear about what we do, or what type of work we want to do, certainly others will be also equally confused.

Many people form an initial impression of you in the first 3 to 8 seconds of your meeting. It’s critical that you be aware of how your appearance, body language, tone of voice (along with pace, inflection and pitch), your choice of words and the content of what you say, influence their lasting impression of you.

When you introduce yourself for the first time, how you describe yourself plays a significant role in how others perceive you.  It can determine how much they will be willing to consider using your services or referring you to others.

There is a lot of information that needs to be communicated in order give people a complete picture of who you are and what you do.  Do you stumble through this information or leave important information out?  The following script developed by Joe Stumpf at By Referral Only creates a powerful presentation when introducing yourself.

Here is an example of that script:

Hi, my name is Steven Davis.  I am an effective and energetic consultant working with the experienced professionals at North Bay Real Estate.

For the past exciting year I’ve enthusiastically and consistently focused on helping people in the Redwood Empire with their real estate needs.

I work with a dedicated team of thoughtful partners out of our well equipped office in Montgomery Village.

Rather than just rattling off a bunch of information this script presents the opportunity to share your referable qualities.  This can give a prospective client a comprehensive and compelling picture of you and your most professional qualities.

Take special notice of the adjectives that describe the type of business person you are. These adjectives serve as flags that draw attention to you and make you more referable.

Properly using the appropriate words distinguishes you from all the others and helps make you more memorable.

To make the most positive impression, you must carefully select words that accurately describe those traits that distinguish you.  Some examples of referable business and character traits are:

Accomplished

Attentive

Capable

Committed

Competent

Concerned

Creative

Credible

Decisive

Dedicated

Detail-oriented

Effective

Efficient

Energetic

Enthusiastic

Experience

Focused

Friendly

Honest

Imaginative

Influential

Informed

Knowledgeable

Motivated

Outgoing

Persistent

Proficient

Prompt

Purposeful

Qualified

Resolute

Service-oriented

Sincere

Skilled

Thorough

Thoughtful

Trustworthy

Do you feel like a good Boy Scout or Girl Scout now?  This list is not exhaustive and it certainly is all right to use different words that are more appropriate for you or for your industry.  What is important is that these words flesh you out and make you more real and powerful, thus improving the possibility of that you will be remembered and used.

So here is a script with blanks that you can fill in and modify for your presentation.

Hi, my name is_________________________________________________.

I’m a/an_________________________________________ and

___________________________________________consultant working with the

___________________________________________professionals at

___________________________________.

For the past_____________________________________ (period of time)

I’ve _______________________________________________ and

__________________________ focused on helping the people who live in

________________________________________.

My _____________________________________ team/partners

of _______________________________________________ and I work out of our

_________________________________________________offices in

_________________________________________.

Following is another example of this format to aid you in inserting your own words into this script.

Hi, my name is Robbie Stearns.

I’m an expert mortgage coach working with the talented professionals at First Mortgage.

For 24 exceptional months I have, like clockwork, willingly made my progressive mortgage advice available to the homeowners who choose to use their mortgages as a way to create wealth and security.

My committed team of four self sufficient, dynamically thinking partners work at our comfortable and pleasant-to-visit offices in the Plaza Suites.

Take the time to write out your answers in this script.  Practice aloud.  And be prepared to present yourself professionally and powerfully in your next meetings with people.  This script is only 4 sentences long, but when you have it mastered it presents you in a powerful, referable way.

Written by David Walrath

Ajalon Printing & Design

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