If it doesn’t sell, it’s not creative. – David Ogilvy

We may not be Ogilvy, but we’re creative and our graphic design team proves it.

When it comes to marketing, a graphic design team - a good one - makes for a great support element. You cannot get by without the right graphics. Here are some of the many things that a good graphic designer can do for you:

    *   Sales Brochures
    * Corporate Identity Packages
    * Instruction Manuals
    * Getting Started Brochures
    * POP/POS Display Materials
    * Posters
    * Tent Cards
    * Catalogs
    * Product Packaging
    * Logo & Corporate Identity Design
    * Newsletters
      - Full Website Development/e-commerce
      - Static Websites
    * Web Pages/Landing Pages
      - Web Graphics & Logos
      - HTML Newsletter Templates
    * Flyers, White Papers & Reports
      - Business Cards & Letterhead

Whether working online or off line, in print or on the Web, a graphic designer can enhance your content with great graphics. And you’d be surprised at how many sales are made because a company included graphics with their well-written content.

According to a study conducted by Enquiro Search Solutions in 2007, 85% of business buyers go online during the purchasing process, and 83% found the vendor from which they eventually purchased online. What email has proven it can do – better than any other one-to-one tactic – is move the prospect through the purchase process by delivering information that is tailored to the buyer’s needs.

Every year these statistics go up. It won’t be long and we’ll them in the 90%+ range. 85% is still pretty high and if there are that many people going online to find companies to do business with then it only makes sense that you’ll use every marketing opportunity at your disposal to keep your customers coming back and closing them on the sale. Are you doing that?

E-mail is a powerful tool because you can use e-mail to “keep them connected.” E-mail can be used as a one-time marketing opportunity or as a periodic update tool. Either way and you can tap into those customers who do business online. E-mail is perhaps the best tool you have available to you for communicating personally with your customers and addressing their individual needs. When you hit each customer in that soft spot where they will make a positive buying decision then you’ll know you are on the right track. E-mail marketing makes that easier and much more enjoyable.

Copywriting is copywriting, right? Wrong.

There are similarities between online copywriting and off line copywriting, or traditional writing. You still are writing to persuade. Whether your copy is to be found through a search portal or to be read from a page, you still want your copy to spark an emotional reaction. That part is the same.

Other similarities between online copywriting and traditional copywriting include:

• Both require a call to action
• Both are the meat of your marketing collateral
• Both are improved with graphic enhancements
• Both need human readers to interpret them for value
• Both are at their best when they sell the benefits and list the features

Copywriting, in a sense, is the same whether done online or through print publications, but there is one fundamental difference between the two that makes online copywriting a bit more of a challenge. That key difference is that with online copy you have to capture the attention of robots, spiders, machines, algorithms, entities that do not breathe.

Search engines exist to catalog information. Your job as copywriter is to make sure that information is cataloged properly so that humans who need it can find it. That means you have to become an expert in search engine optimization. You can’t leave this to chance. You have to understand how search engines crawl, read, and index information. In addition to doing all the other things that traditional copywriting does, online copywriting must feed the spiders.

When it comes to copywriting, are you closing the sale? Most people never close the sale because they fail to do one thing. It’s the one thing you can do for your copy that will increase your sales even if you don’t change anything else. Do you know what that is?

It’s called a Call To Action. By including a call to action in your copy - online or off line - you’ll increase your sales and conversions more than you will by doing any other one thing. It’s the one thing new copywriters fail to do the most and it’s the most important thing you can do in your copy. Fail to include a call to action and you’ll likely lose out on 50% of your sales. Include it and watch your income go up. This is no joke!

Copywriting = call to action. And don’t you forget it.

People love stories. Always have. That’s why good storytellers are some of the most loved people on the face of the earth. Recently, Brian Bieler wrote a great blog post about why stories are important in marketing and how you can engage your audience through storytelling. Here are some highlights to his very useful blog post:

Brian’s three keys to successful storytelling

1. Learn the story
2. Tell the story
3. Remember the story

A good story is one that captures people’s emotions. People will not always remember what you say, but they will remember how you make them feel. Get them emotionally involved and engage them with a memorable story full of images that create strong reasons to act. But remember that it isn’t the story that is the important thing. Features and benefits are far more important; the story is there to help you show the importance of features and benefits.

Brian’s Secret Storytelling Strategy

1. Use stories to keep ideas in order and show ideas sequentially: First this happened and then that happened
2. Use stories to point out how this happened or that happened
3. Use stories to help others understand why things happen
4. Use stories to share information and to illustrate
5. Use stories to help illustrate principles that can be used in other situations

Stories are powerful memory tools. People will remember what you tell them a lot better if you include a story that engages them emotionally. Good marketers are good storytellers.

Finally, Brian shares his craft of telling a story. Here’s how to do it, he says:

• Start with simple, easily recognizable truths
• Show people the way out of their problems
• Let the customer win
• Illustrate how your products and services work better than your competitors’
• Provide value in everything you do
• Point to scenarios that show how and why things happen
• Leave your listeners room to have their own point of view
• Have fun and be real

These are great tips. Good sales people are good storytellers. If you can’t engage your audience with a good story then you could lose their interest. It’s one of the most powerful sales tools on the planet and I agree with Brian that with good stories you can close a lot of sales.

Let’s face it, the Web is getting more and more social every day. If you do any online marketing at all then you will likely be confronted with the decision to perform some type of social media marketing to include blogging. But what should you know about it?

For starters, it isn’t always about closing the sale. Companies that focus on making sales are being short sighted. It’s all about building relationships and that’s where the power of blogging and social media marketing come in. You may meet people online - in chat rooms, discussion boards, forums, social networking sites, and even on your own blog - with whom you never do business, but they could still benefit you in numerous ways.

One way these non-customers could benefit you is through referrals. By focusing on relationship building instead of sales, when you connect with someone who isn’t a customer and has no intention of being one then you could be setting yourself up for future success by opening a door to other customers through that person’s contacts. Build that relationship and it could lead to referral business down the road.

Too many businesses think that their blog should close sales. It doesn’t have to close sales to be effective. Nor does social media marketing. What you really want to do is increase your presence, build your brand, and build relationships. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Whether you are writing a website or a print brochure, chances are you’re in need of graphics as well as copywriting. But could you live without one or the other?

It’s important to put things into their proper perspective. Know what the elements are capable of and how to make them work most effectively to meet your needs. Words sell. That’s what you need to know about copywriting. Graphics enhance. But what does that mean?

Try building a website without words. Could you just throw up a photo and expect to draw in customers? Would a photo sell your products alone? It could be the best photo in the world, but chances are no one is going to buy your product just on a photo and no sales copy. Whether it appears on a website, a blog, or in a print catalog, no one wants to look at a photo. They want to be sold on the benefits.

Words sell the benefits. Always have. Always will. You must infuse real solid benefits into your writing and enhance the sales content with the best graphics.

Graphics are important. Just because the words sell doesn’t mean you can’t use graphics. Sometimes, a properly placed graphic can get you more sales than your content alone would get. But graphics alone will likely not get you any sales whereas copywriting alone at least has the potential to close some. The bottom line is, both copywriting and graphics are important and you need to teach them how to work together to increase your sales, your ROI, and your overall marketing performance.

Traditionally, marketing and sales have gone in hand. But they are not the same thing. Marketing is the the entire process of creating, pricing, distributing, and promoting a product or service. It can be something as simple as a mailing label on a box you send through the mail (the label has your return address and logo on it, doesn’t it?), or it can be something more complicated like a multi-tiered market research initiative.

Sales is the actual process of getting the product into the hands of your customers. The two disciplines are related and need each other, but if you don’t understand the difference between marketing and sales then you could spend a lot of time on useless activity that doesn’t pay off.

Online, the distinctions are still the same. Marketing is presenting your message to consumers not yet ready to buy. Selling is getting your product into their hands.

Online marketing, like traditional marketing, is the entire process of building relationships with people who want what you have to offer. The very idea of creating a product involves marketing. Pricing is marketing. Distribution is marketing. Customer service is marketing. But sales is simply explaining to your prospects what the benefits of your product are and making it easy for them to get it.

These distinctions are necessary because you need to know which tools you are going to use to help you achieve your objectives. Do you need a blog? Are you going to have a live chat box on your website? If so, who will respond to messages and what kinds of customer service needs will you address through that tool? All of these are questions you’ll need to answer and when you do, you’ll find that your business will run a lot more smoothly.