Help for Corporations Having a hard time getting in the game? Distinguishing yourself from your competition? Communicating your company's values and benefits effectively? If so, you're in the same boat with many small and medium size companies, who aren't large enough to have a real live marketing person or department in-house, but still need to present their businesses as credible and competitive. Many try to do it themselves, using the advice of printers or a friend who does graphics on the side. Most also discover its harder than it looks, and that just having a "snappy-looking" brochure doesn't necessarily do the trick. It takes an understanding of your business, your customers, your competition and your vision to produce strong communications tools to introduce your company, or reinforce important benefits to your prospects and customers. Gould clients have solved this problem. Do you have a long range plan? If not, you're probably jumping from one opportunity to another without knowing what is working and what is not. Developing a marketing plan doesn't have to be complex, but it does require that you look at your business objectively. You may not like everything you see, and for many that's just too scary. If you will clear the time and hire a professional for a few thousand dollars, any business can have a working model - a marketing plan - that shows everyone involved what's important to the company, its goals and the direction it's taking, and what is going to be done to accomplish it. You'd be surprised how many employees are aching for that kind of purpose and direction from their employer. It makes you wonder how anyone is being successful out there. Do your customers associate your company with something important to them? If not, your sales materials need improvement. The key to any effective advertising - graphics and text included - is to create a strong, positive benefit to your customers (from their perspective) that is gained when they do business with you. If that isn't being accomplished, you're wasting your money. The image you project - the expectation you create in the mind of the customer - is critical if you are to be taken seriously. Maybe its a "down home" image, maybe "high tech." Whatever it is, you must have support materials that tell that story concisely, in language the customer understands. If you're not successful enough to afford strong, current marketing support materials, what makes you think new prospects will take a chance on your ability to follow through with good service? If you can answer that satisfactorily for yourself, keep on keepin' on. if not, call Gould. We can help. Is your CFO deciding your marketing direction or strategy? Budgeting should be the last step in developing a marketing campaign or strategy. If not, you will eliminate some of the best ideas before you even get to them. First, decide what you need to accomplish - where you are, where you want to be, the resources and obstacles in your path - and THEN how much it will take to fund your objective. If you're a little short, spread out the timetable or prioritize from the most important thing you can do down to the least important, and eliminate items from the bottom, not the top.