Parenthetically Speaking (or Writing)

Does attention to detail in your writing make you look smarter? Does it improve your marketing skills? It’s not hard to make a case for that. Just as clean fingernails and polished shoes help make a positive impression, so does your attention to grammar, syntax and punctuation.

So here (courtesy of Empire State College, NY) is a helpful guide to alleviate a frequently heard question: should one put the period inside or outside the parenthesis?

Short Answer: Punctuate correctly in and around parentheses. If a whole sentence is inside parentheses, then put the period inside the end parenthesis. If only part of the sentence is in parentheses, then the period goes outside of the end parenthesis.

Examples: Parentheses are like polite back seat drivers. (They interrupt to explain additional information that the reader should know.) Parentheses can hold explanations, illustrations, or clarifications forty (Byron was 36; Nathanael West, Rimbaud, and Robert Burns were 37; Thomas Wolfe and Pushkin were 38; and Dylan Thomas was 39). I told him I absolutely believe in marriage (as a cure for the temporary insanity of infatuation). Parentheses are also used to set off dates, provide reference information, and to enumerate a list.

• Angela Merici (1470-1540), an Italian, founded the Ursulines in 1535, an unconventional religious order in which women took vows but lived at home and taught in the community.
• The Chinese poet Li Po (c.700-762), a “lighthearted winebibber,” fell out of a boat and was drowned when he tried to kiss and embrace the moon’s reflection in the water (Hendrickson 111).
• The reason there are so many popular bike trails outside of Washington, D.C., is that the land is mostly flat (see contour map on page 6).
• If your toddler does not sleep through the night there are several questions to ask: (1) Have you developed a soothing bedtime ritual? (2) When checking on your child, do you accidentally wake him or her? (3) Is your toddler afraid of the dark? (4) Is your toddler waking regularly in the night hungry or thirsty? (5) Does your toddler use a pacifier or “cuddly” so he or she is able to comfort himself or herself?

Marketing: The Love Story

Would you choose your mate based on looks alone? So why make a major decision about marketing your company based on superficial external appearances?

Here’s an actual quote from a direct marketing agency: “Postcards take your business or services and products to a new level.” That’s like saying you should marry a redhead if you want to be happy.

I’ll make a bold generalization here: Any marketing that starts from the externals, is destined to be short lived and ineffective.

Here’s how to spot great (and conversely) poor marketing: The best marketing starts with a memorable message, conveyed and understood in a memorable way. It’s a conversation and a connection. It’s organic in conception, and with patience it naturally blossoms into an elegant, well designed form.

The average marketing project is designed exactly backwards. It’s starts with looks, and then squeezes in the message as an afterthought. That’s superficial. So when someone tells you to “fill up your your pipeline with qualified leads” using a canned program or a preformatted template, you might want to put your hand firmly over your wallet.

Talk to anyone who is in a successful long term relationship. It’s work, at times hard work. This is not something you want to rush into. It requires thought, devotion and dedication over time. It’s an act of love. Just like great marketing.

The Perfect Website

Well of course, it doesn’t exist.

Still, too many sites seem to miss the mark; they’re stuck in old world thinking about marketing and advertising. They focus their engergy on promoting a brand, or product benefits. Yes, people still do buy the brand, but using a website to promote a brand misses the point.

The brand message rings a little hollow in the wake of Enron and AIG. People want to know who they’re really dealing with. Is your website a window into the soul of your organization? Or is it a billboard designed to fit into a 19 inch montor?

If you’re in a small business or professional practice, your website is a huge opportunity, done right. You can spend your energy trying to look like a mega corporation. Or then again, you can let your website (and the rest of your marketing) give your customers a taste of what it’s really like to do business with you. You can freely share your expertise in the perfect medium. After all, the web was designed from the ground up for the exchange of information.

Big or small, there’s really no downside to being generous, even with “proprietary” information. Doing so establishes credibility and maximizes exposure. It generates good will in a way that an advertising message cannot. Anyway, people expect free information, freely given, on the web. Bucking that trend will be an uphill battle.

The perfect website doesn’t have to be pretty, though that doesn’t hurt. Instead, it should be fresh and vibrant, dymamic to the needs of the moment. It should be easy to maintain and practical. No need to hire a programmer on a daily basis, please. A great site is clear and consise in style, avoiding the burden of clutter.

A perfect site is one that you will continually perfect. You’ll be adding content, checking traffic, and search results on a regular basis. In short, if your site is gathering dust, it’s destined to be a dud in your marketing mix.

Finally, the perfect site compliments the rest of your marketing, in print, and in the real world. It requires your energy and creativity on an ongoing basis.

The perfect website: the moment it’s done it’s time to start over.

Organic Marketing, Part One: Mail Call

I personally check the mail every day. Today, along with the usual assortment of bill and checks were:

Three identical postcards from an accounting firm. None have my name.

Three indentical jumbo postcards from a courier company. Again none have my name.

A folded sheet full of flyers. Too much time to sort though all of that, me thinks. File 9 to all of the above.

A beautiful catalog from a large mailing list source. Part of their offering actually competes with my business. An uphill battle, to compete with your customers…

Coupons from an office supply store. Hmmm, some of these look good, but I generally shop at another store that’s closer.

And oh yes, the mailer from a well known bank that sounds like a fish taco place. This mailer was done perfectly, personalized with a great incentive. But… as a former customer, they repeatedly broke my trust. No mailer, however well designed, no offer, no spin could bring me back.

We spend a lot of time on how to spin our pitch. How to convince others to make a decision. But that’s only one cell of our marketing organism. The cells either work together, or they go out of control. It’s called cancer.

Yelling Louder

How can you find new customers?

For more than the last 100 years its been about yelling the loudest to the largest number of people. Making them notice you. Pushing a business card in their face. Building a restaurant on a street that they pass frequently. Bombarding them with “me-too” direct mail. Making “cheaper” your big selling point. Buying a giant billboard or airtime on a radio station to do any of the above. Guess what: these approaches don’t work nearly as well as they did 20 years ago. Unless you’ve got deep pockets, try something different.

Where to start?

I’ve heard so many folks talk about becoming a complete “solution,” a “relationship” seller and such. All of your real competition claims the the same. It pretty much falls on deaf ears any more. A waste of time and money.

“We’ll do anything to earn your business” doesn’t count. Does top quality mean anything to anyone any more? Great service? Low prices?

To all of the above I say: Big deal! (expletive deleted). Even a recession won’t make low prices the salvation of your brand. So what then?

The answer is uniquely yours, it can’t be something you’ve repackaged. It’s got to come from the inside out.

Get to work. Figure it out. Nobody else can do it for you!