SURAHMIN BUSINESS

Whether you are marketing a pharmaceutical or biotechnology product, medical device, hospital, or other healthcare product or service, an advisory board is a potentially valuable asset in helping you understand your target audiences, competition, market, and the position your brand occupies in the marketplace. There are numerous ways to use your board to your advantage, even if yours is an e-advisory board and meets only virtually.

Who should be on your advisory board?
Ideally, your board includes heavy users of your product, lighter users, and even potentially non-users. The members may be all one profession: physicians exclusively, for example. Or your board may represent multiple allied health professions. The goal is to get a balanced perspective on your brand from both users and influencers, both advocates and detractors.

What should your advisory board do?
Through meetings and/or online discussions, your board can advise you on the strategic and tactical direction of your brand. Your board members can share clinical insights as well as enhance your competitive intelligence by sharing insights into how competitors market their brands. Your board also can help you develop surveys (on your website, via direct mail or email, or via Sermon or other healthcare professional-targeted social networking sites) and moderate focus groups in peer-to-peer research initiatives. And as feasible, your board members can make presentations supporting your brand at national conventions, regional conferences, dinner meetings, advocacy group meetings, and online and offline seminars. Additionally, you may establish a dedicated social networking site (or password-protected sub-site on your website) where your board members-as well as non-members who opt in-can post case studies, and discuss treatment challenges and solutions.

What should you do with the information your board generates?
Advisory board activities generate content that can be edited, distributed, and “merchandised” to your target audiences. For example, create transcripts of panel discussions and focus groups. Videotape your board members making presentations. Share your survey results. Publicize these and other advisory board output through your website, an e-newsletter or e-mail campaign, YouTube and other social media vehicles, plus PR targeting the media.

How should you get started?
First, plan ahead. Decide what you want to do with your advisory board and what you hope to gain from their activities. Outline a proposed schedule of the board’s activities. Then determine the most effective way to form the board-whom to invite and how best to contact them. Extend the invitations, and get started ASAP. Your advisory board’s input can help considerably in your quest to understand the hearts and minds of your customers.

I’ve been an interested observer of the Kansas City advertising industry for 15 years, both while working in it, and merely an observer of it. I’ve come up with four hard and fast truths about the Kansas City web design industry since getting back into the business recently.

New agencies have to sell their services.
Agencies have to be good at self-promotion. It is imperative that they have staff available to go in front of business owners and sell their services.

People in the Midwest are do-it-yourself creatures. They don’t like to spend a lot of money on something that they’re not sure will show return on investment. They’re perfectly OK with having their nephew throw up a site to promote their company.

The problem is that they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t understand how search engines work. They don’t do analytics. They don’t know what we know about keywords. They sure don’t understand how to build a site from scratch and how much more effective and flexible it is than throwing up a Word Press site.

The face of the company has to be available to talk up the service. Business owners can’t be expected to just open a phone book or do a Google search, and then sign a contract. Marketing the business itself is vital to the creation a client list.

Most small design companies know what they’re doing.
There are exceptions, of course, but the area seems to be a breeding ground for solid work in advertising. For one thing, two of the best journalism schools in the country are within a quick road trip distance from the city; the University of Missouri and the University of Kansas. There are also fine design programs at schools nearby – Johnson County Community College, UMKC and of course, The Art Institute – come to mind. This makes the area fertile ground for new talent.

There is enough business to go around.
Unlike surrounding midsize cities, Kansas City’s job market is not primarily dependent upon one particular industry, compared to Omaha, Wichita, St. Louis, etc. Small business is a commodity in the metropolis, giving a lot of business to go after.

That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t a lot of corporate entities in Kansas City. Sprint, H & R Block, and Hallmark, just to name a few, all call Kansas City home.

T-Mobile is taking a page out of Apple’s marketing handbook with their latest ad campaign. In case you haven’t seen it yet, T-Mobile has come out swinging at AT&T in an ad designed similar to the successful Mac vs. PC campaign. Just when you thought you had the latest and greatest 3G phone, T-Mobile shows up like that annoying friend who always has to have something better than you.

You see, the latest phone on their network has 4G capabilities and they’re making sure you know their competitor AT&T is living in the dark ages with their 3G network. According to the ad, the increased speed means you can make video calls from anywhere. Currently, making a video call on an AT&T serviced device requires a Wife connection. It would make sense to assume that browsing and downloading would be faster over 4G as well.

When one company directly attacks their own competition it’s always going to rub some people the wrong way. It’s not a new tactic though and it’s often very successful. Here’s what I think are the major positives of taking this approach:

People are talking. When was the last time you heard someone talking about T-Mobile and their 4G network? I guarantee that you’ll be seeing a lot more discussion about them now. This morning my Google Reader was full of posts about this new campaign. The video was just posted yesterday and it’s already making an impact.

Puts competition on alert. With this kind of campaign you’re sending a direct message to your competition (and shareholders) that you want some of their market share. AT&T is going to pay close attention to T-Mobile now and be forced to come up with a strategy if the ads have their desired effect.

Highlights major selling point. When you’re attacking the competition you’re always going to do it by bragging about what you do better than them. Why would I choose T-Mobile over AT&T? Well I didn’t know the differences between the two before but now I do thanks to these ads.

These kinds of ads make good business sense but there’s one major negative: dividing the customer market.

An effective layout for flyers does not stem from the use of flyer templates. Custom flyer printing requires a more deliberate and purposeful layout for it to be able to sell or market something quite effectively.

Therefore, if you are still sticking to templates as a basis for your design, you might want to rethink your strategy. Let me give you five easy to do and simple layouts that always results in effective marketing flyers. Just follow the tips listed below and you will see.

• The headline layout – One of the most basic layouts is the headline layout. In this design, you need a very noticeable headline or title that should be displayed prominently at the top part. The headline should be in large format with a simple but bold font. It can have a very attractive and bright color or a simple bold black would be good as well. Of course, the text alignment should be centered for a balanced layout. The rest of your content (images and supporting text), will then flow directly below this headline.

This is a great layout to use if you have composed a very catchy and powerful title or slogan. The headline will attract the readers you need and become the most memorable part as well. So if you are a great writer of marketing slogans, you can use this best flyer layout.

• The portrait layout – Now, on the flipside of a headline layout is a portrait layout. Just like the headline layout, this kind of layout hinges on one main design element. In this case, we have the main portrait image. This layout has this main portrait image displayed prominently in the layout. Usually it is placed at the dead center of the design and it should encompass more than half the flyer page itself. The rest of the supporting texts are placed at the bottom or even at the back of the flyer so as not to bother the portrait itself.

Needless to say, the portrait itself will carry the whole brunt of the work of communicating the message in this layout. So you will need a great image that will tell the whole story for you. Of course, since a picture paints a thousand words, it should be easy enough to get your message across with the right image. This layout is best used for advertising as well as P.R. flyers.

There’s no doubt about it. Words can make or break your business. Whatever you have written in your marketing collaterals, whether they’re postcard printing or door hangers, your words can convince your target clients to buy your products and services, or to just ignore them. Carefully selected words can attract the attention, while the wrong words can certainly leave your target readers cold and unimpressed.

The reason behind this is actually scientific. Human beings are hard wired to respond using their emotions. This means that people in general think and decide with their hearts; the heads much later. Hence, a prospective client would often put at the top of the list something that he or she wants rather than what he or she really needs. The justification of the action is then made logical after the decision has already been completed.

This is why even at a very steep price businesses often get away with it because the heart rules over the mind. Even if the target client was thinking of buying something more practical, but when he or she sees something that he or she wants, the logical reasons to make the purchase goes full throttle. The end result is that the would-be buyer can actually talk her or himself into buying the product or service he or she saw in print postcards for example to make oneself feel better about it later.

This is a prime example of how emotions can make it easier for any business owner to market to their target clients. By using your words to pique at the emotions of your prospects, you are more likely to convince them of your value. Your print postcards for example become your sales agents, tempting and swaying your prospects to take your offer whatever the price.

But it’s also not that simple as it says here. As they say, dealing with the emotions is as challenging as possible. You cannot just choose your copy without thinking about it thoroughly. Because a copy can never be dishonest and misleading. The very last thing that your copy should be is to promise something that you know very well you can’t possibly keep. The key to effective copy is to not overdo it. If you can only promise two stars at most, then that’s what should be reflected in your text.