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Home::Newsletters
Ramp up your newsletter to build a strong business
Author : Barbara Saunders, Newsletter Associates
Ramp up your newsletter to build a strong business To survive in
business, you've got to focus your attention on the areas that
will guarantee you success. Your clients are your greatest
asset. Taking the time to educate them and connect with them
will pay big dividends over the long haul. There are lots of
ways to spend your marketing dollars. But I've found that the
number one most effective marketing tool around is a newsletter.
This is the perfect time of year to fine tune - or develop -
yours.
Hey! It's good news! What sets your newsletter apart from all
the other stuff that comes across your clients threshold
everyday is that a newsletter is perceived as good news. Think
about it, the stuff in the newspaper is general pretty dismal.
The rest of the stuff in the mail is either advertisements or
bills. Take advantage of that perception of your newsletter
being something good.
Please don't insult your clients' intelligence by cloaking a
hard sell as a newsletter. Marketing surveys across the country
have shown that newsletters are very well-received and the best
way to stay in touch with your clientele. Make your message, and
your practice, stand above the rest by making each issue
interesting and informative.
More education equals more work for you Your clients probably
have very little idea what all you do. Your newsletter is the
perfect forum to raise their understanding and appreciation of
the advantages of your services. By just elevating their
awareness of the scope of your expertise, your laying the ground
work for future business.
There's another added benefit that bares mentioning. When your
clients know more about what you do, they talk about it to their
friends. A personal referral is ten times more valuable than
someone that responds to an ad. They're already prescreened and
warmed up for you.The other plus of this educational approach to
your newsletter is that it reminds your clients that they need
your services. With so many distractions in our world today,
things that are important tend to slip into the background. Each
issue you send gently reminds them of the importance of your
services
.Just because I said that you shouldn't use your newsletter for
a hard sell doesn't mean that you shouldn't use it for promoting
gift certificates or special offers or rewards for referring new
business. It's the perfect place to unveil new services.
Above all else - reflect professionalism Never forget that your
newsletter acts as your representative to all that see it.
People who may have never met you personally will make judgments
about your services solely by what they think of your newsletter.
Each issue may get saved and passed onto friends and associates.
These are introductions to you services. They must make a
high-quality presentation. Take some time to get the look and
feel right. If you're using a word processing program, for
example, to produce your newsletter, you're really selling
yourself short. That may have worked all right 15 years ago, but
in today's reality it's just not going to give you a
professional looking piece. Of course, since I run a newsletter
design service, I'm going to tell you to seek out the services
of a professional - but that would be a sort of hard sell. At
least, collect some examples of newsletters that you like and
use them as guides.
The number one problem most people have when doing their own
newsletter is to stress over content and then put too much into
each issue. A good rule of thumb for a standard 4-page
newsletter is three articles of 500 - 700 words. Be sure to work
in some higher quality graphics to break up the text. Never,
never, never use graphics that you've down loaded from the web.
Their resolution is much too low to be of any worth in print.
They'll just make your newsletter look tacky and low end.
Make the commitment When you send your newsletter consistently,
it communicates to your clients that you're professional. You're
establishing a presence and it says that you plan on being there
for them in the future. This is guaranteed to help you build a
stronger business that's not overly affected by outside economic
factors.
This article was written by Barbara Saunders, owner of
Newsletter Associates, a complete newsletter service helping
companies and organizations build their relationships to fuel
their business. For more information, visit
www.newsletters-inc.com. (c) 2004 Barbara Saunders. All right
reserved.
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