9 Tips for Great Design of Your Marketing Material

9 Tips for Great Design of Your Marketing Materials

by: Neroli Lacey

1) Don’t just hire a good designer. Hire someone who has had plenty of experience designing business collateral. Your designer needs to ask you the right questions about the project. And he/ she needs to be able to turn the design round reasonably fast too.
2) Write the copy first. I believe the copy drives the project. (Unless this is a print ad, in which case the visual and headline will often dominate).
3) Read your copy word for word to your designer. You’d be amazed how often designers don’t understand the project because they haven’t been properly briefed. Your designer is going to be expressing in design the same persuasive arguments that you / your writer will be articulating in words.
4) Ensure that your designer communicates your branding i.e. the values you are trying to communicate.
5) Check that the copy is easy to read once it has been laid out by your designer. If the design takes too much attention to itself, then your readers won’t be following your arguments.
6) A professional designer will give you a creative brief: he sets out on paper the brief as he understands it. This includes the brand and the benefits of the offer in question. The creative brief means misunderstandings get cleared up before it they are too expensive to change.
7) He’ll then present you with 23 design options for your review, about 3 weeks later.
8) Remember, you aren’t choosing the color for your sports car, you are choosing the piece that best reflects the brand and personality of your company or offering.
9) Finally your designer brings you the finished product. He instructs printers and oversees production.
WOULD YOU LIKE A WORLDCLASS JOURNALIST TO GHOSTWRITE AN ARTICLE FOR PUBLICATION FOR YOU? Contact Neroli Lacey NOW!
How clear and persuasive is your website, brochure copy or direct mail? Call Neroli Lacey NOW to win more business TODAY.
CALL ++ 612. 215. 3826 or email: [email protected]

About The Author

Iกm Neroli Lacey of Beyond Communications Inc. in Minneapolis, MN. I’ve been helping executives transform their businesses and their lives with outstanding marketing materials since 1995. VISA, 3M and Perot Systems are some of my bigger clients. I have worked with clients in Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Austin, Minneapolis, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin and Delhi. I used to be one of the top journalists in Britain writing for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, The Evening Standard, New Statesman, Vogue and Tatler.
Before newspapers I was an investment banker. I grew up in London, England, studying Latin with Greek at Bristol University.
Please visit my website: www.beyondcommunications.com

Or contact me at: [email protected]

6122153826

This article was posted on April 30, 2004

by Neroli Lacey

Cleaning Up Your Copy

Cleaning Up Your Copy

by: Neroli Lacey

When you are beginning to write, you gather as much data as you can. You continually add allied thoughts. . You use your right brain, the creative side.
So when you have an idea and your mind says, ขnot relevant to my core subject,ข you ignore the doubt. You don’t cross anything out. You behave as magpie.
To polish your copy, you do the opposite.Here’s how: shut the door and banish distractions. Read your copy v e r y s l o w l y and concentrate.
Better still, read the copy out loud s l o w l y. If reading out loud is impractical say the words to yourself soundlessly. The instant you sense ขthis shouldn’t be here,ข cross it out.Trust your first judgement. Trust your first judgement.
What ขshouldn’t be here?ข. Any material that is superfluous, because you’ve said it before in a different way. Or because it is not central to your main argument.
You should be removing words as well as ideas. You want to communicate in as few words as possible. Shorter is better. Shorter is richer. Shorter is more bang for your reader’s buck. Short sentences are easy to read and understand.
If you are fond of a certain sentence, but you know deep down it is not relevant here’s a tip to help you excise. Create a heading at the end of your draft called ขovermatter.ข Whenever you are not sure whether to cut or leave a sentence, cut and paste it into overmatter.
Later delete all the overmatter. Sometimes doing it in two steps is easier than one fell swoop.
As novices we love a certain word, phrase or musicality. Don’t be distracted by that. Think only of your reader and the shortest route to communicating your idea.
My mentor, Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones, says,ขwhen you go over your work, become a Samurai, a great warrior with courage to cut anything out….be willing not to be sentimental about your writing when you reread it. Look at it with a clear, piercing mind.ข
ขClear writers have accepted the grim reality,ข says John Trimble that ninetenths of all writing is rewriting…perhaps most important of all, they are sticklers for continuity. They link their sentences and paragraphs as meticulously as if they might face criminal charges for negligence.ข
Do you have a robust marketing plan? How persuasive is your website, brochure copy or direct mail?
To win more business,call Neroli Lacey NOW.
++ 612. 215. 3826
or email: [email protected]

About The Author

Iกm Neroli Lacey of Beyond Communications Inc. in Minneapolis, MN. I’ve been helping executives transform their businesses and their lives with outstanding marketing materials since 1995. VISA, 3M and Perot Systems are some of my bigger clients. I have worked with clients in Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Austin, Minneapolis, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin and Delhi. I used to be one of the top journalists in Britain writing for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, The Evening Standard, New Statesman, Vogue and Tatler.
Before newspapers I was an investment banker. I grew up in London, England, studying Latin with Greek at Bristol University.
Please visit my website: www.beyondcommunications.com

Or contact me at: [email protected]

6122153826

This article was posted on April 30, 2004

by Neroli Lacey

Finding Your Clientกs Business Problem Leads to Be

Finding Your Clientกs Business Problem Leads to Better Copy

by: Neroli Lacey

WHAT’S THEIR PROBLEM?
How do you begin a dialogue with a prospect, be it in person, on your website or in print?
You talk about your client’s business problem.
What IS your client’s business problem?
Answering this question is the hardest part of marketing. What we all do instead, is focus on our solution, i.e. ขwhat we do.ข
ขWe sell network management software.ข
ขWe are a businessoriented law firm.ข
ขWe trade commodities.ข
Worse still, we continue talking about ourselves: how many employees we have, how many years we have been in business, where our head office is.
Let’s think again. Are you worried about the vulnerability of your IT systems today? Do you dread losing your information assets? Aha, our network management software has worked wonders for clients just like you.
Are you thinking of expanding your business? Do you know how to find an experienced team that knows your industry backwards and can deliver. Are you looking for a team that has done this kind of transaction for many years. A team with the best experience and knowledge of your industry in the country? We don’t just deliver wordy legal contracts, we deliver costeffective business solutions.
Do your clients want specialty products delivered in exactly the way your clients want to receive them, sometimes in custom format? We don’t just trade commodities, we deliver service and quality every time, in just the way you want it.
Every good piece of marketing collateral starts by setting out the business problem. Because reading this, your client will say, ขfinally, someone who understands what I am struggling with.ข This is your ขhook.ข The hook requires empathy. Later you will apply logic. i.e. why your service is the ideal fit for his problem.
How often do you put yourself in your clients’ shoes and wonder what she struggles with? I’ve seen how hard this is with every client I have ever worked with (save one, he just needed a writer to set out his thoughts on paper.)
I have also seen how transformative it is to do this exercise. When you really understand what your clients’ problem is, you also understand the nuances of your solution. Doing this work becomes an exercise in strategy. It helps you answer what you are about in the marketplace.
It positions you. ขPositioning,ข means defining exactly who your ideal client is, what they really want and what you are really really good at. Position yourself correctly and you knock your competitors out of the game.
How important is it to begin your dialogue with your client’s business problem. It is crucial. Good writing (and good talking) is good thinking.
Do you have a robust marketing plan to execute against? How clear and persuasive is your website, brochure copy or direct mail? Call Neroli Lacey NOW to win more business TODAY.
CALL ++ 612. 215. 3826 NOW
or email: [email protected]

About The Author

Iกm Neroli Lacey of Beyond Communications Inc. in Minneapolis, MN. I’ve been helping executives transform their businesses and their lives with outstanding marketing materials since 1995. VISA, 3M and Perot Systems are some of my bigger clients. I have worked with clients in Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Austin, Minneapolis, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin and Delhi. I used to be one of the top journalists in Britain writing for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, The Evening Standard, New Statesman, Vogue and Tatler.
Before newspapers I was an investment banker. I grew up in London, England, studying Latin with Greek at Bristol University.
Please visit my website: www.beyondcommunications.com

Or contact me at: [email protected]

6122153826

This article was posted on April 30, 2004

by Neroli Lacey