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design & marketing blog

Marketing, design, and technical resources for making your digital and print communications more effective.

The Power of Words

April 19th, 2011

Graphic Design, Web Development & Writing Services for Boise

July 3rd, 2009

Boise Writing ServicesTell the receptionist not to hold your calls! Now you’ll have more time to devote to whatever it is you do, because RisingLine, your Boise based graphic design and Web development specialist, now offers writing and editing.

That’s right—you can stop struggling through your brochure, flyer, or Web content, and let us take care of it. We’ve teamed up with Gemstone Media, Inc., to create an unstoppable marketing resource.

What do you get?

  • Fantastic digital & print graphic design
  • Expert Web development
  • Crisp writing and editing
  • Savvy marketing ideas
  • Single point of contact
  • Comprehensive services from a local Boise-based team

So stop worrying about your next marketing project, and start working. Or take a longer lunch. You choose.

Gemstone Media’s clients include:

  • AT&T
  • Cisco
  • HP
  • Microsoft Office
  • Office Depot
  • T-Moblie
  • Tully Associates
  • UW Business School
  • Microsoft Windows
  • Seattle’s Visitors Bureau

Contact us for more information and get started on your next project.

Great Customers Buy From Those They Know and Trust

December 12th, 2008

Do you want to grow your business without relying on expensive advertising? Would you like to utilize an easy strategy to turn your best customers into your best salespeople? Are you tired of attracting poorly qualified prospects that waste your valuable time?

OK, enough of these silly rhetorical questions….any business manager who just read these questions has just gone through a brief period of euphoric fantasy followed by a sick feeling in their gut…knowing that it’s just too good to be true. I’m here to tell you though that they can be true and furthermore they can build businesses of much higher value.

Here’s some reality therapy about Advertising:

  • People don’t believe advertising.
  • Advertising is exceptionally expensive (you knew this already)
  • The customers your advertising brings are often not high-value life time clients. Do you really want your business built on customers who were attracted by a gimmick or low price? Unless you can build loyalty fast they will leave the first time they see a better gimmick or lower price.

We’re all bombarded by thousands of advertising messages each day. How many do you remember from yesterday? A more important question: Of those you remember for how many will you become a customer? For example take Geico insurance, sure their hackneyed ads are embedded in our brains, but how many of us actually buy from them? Not many. About 7 out of every 100 auto insurance buyers. Don’t get me wrong, Geico has a solid business model but is it plausible for your business?  Can you afford to spend $500+ million a year to generate demand through advertising?

In my 15+ year sales career I’ve learned that one principle is by far the powerful: people buy from those they know and trust. Like many of the most profound concepts in life, this truth is simple and intuitive yet ignored by a vast majority of sales and marketing “experts”.

I was told once at a sales training seminar, “If you can’t be a good actor then you can’t be a good salesperson.” No wonder sales people have such a bad reputation! Do I really want to be sold something from someone who is acting (i.e. lying)…why should I expect that my customers want to get an acting job when they read my marketing collateral or meet my salespeople?

Traditional advertising and sales are almost always based on acting. It’s so established that advertiser embellish the truth on a regular basis that we’ve invented the special legal word“puffing”. It doesn’t sound as bad as “lying” but means the same thing. Take a look around at the advertising or packages closest to you this moment and notice how we’ve become desensitized to the “puffing” of advertising…do you really believe that spaghetti on the shelf is “America’s Favorite Pasta“? No you don’t. That’s why you will typically buy it on price or otherwise only when you have credible insight into it having superior quality.

So it’s really no wonder that most people instinctively don’t believe either salespeople or advertising. Valuable life-time clients buy from the exact opposite of the angle presented in most advertising and sales…they buy from sources that they know and trust.

Serve Your Customer

October 7th, 2007

I recently read a good piece on CNN that demonstrated how a few select entrepreneurial companies understand their customer is the lifeblood of their organization. This subject is important to me as I witness more often than not companies not taking customer orientation seriously. From one particular semiconductor company here in Boise, I hear it stated quite often that its goals are “market orientated,” yet the strategic goals and the advertising campaigns are constantly focused on its products and production procedures. Listen up, it’s not about what you do, who you are, or what you sell, but rather about who you sell to and what they need. Successful companies know how to empathize with the market by understanding the wants and needs of existing and potential customers.

Furthermore, employees are typically patronized by their top management on how they are the engine that makes the company go, but in reality, no company exists without customers and organizations should be structured and focused on addressing that principal. Yeah, happy and excited employees make for a better productivity; but I’ve worked for several companies that lose money and customers and the end result is always the same: low moral despite catchy internal motivational slogans or non-customer related group incentive programs. Getting straight to the point, quit wasting time on slogans and pep talks and goals that have nothing to do with serving the customer.

To conclude my mantra, organizations exist for one purpose and one purpose only … and it’s not in business to build widgets, to be innovators, to motivate employees, or to attain the most marketshare … but to serve those customers who keep your company afloat.

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