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Business Resource Article: "Marketing Communications - What Do You Have to Say to Get Their Attention?" Author: Bonita Richter

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By Susan NichoIs, Editor/Publisher

"Need a Change?"

Welcome to this week's edition of the Interactive Marketing Ezine. It is Great to have you with us - both our new members and those of you who have been with us for years.

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Have a Great & Successful week!
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Editor/Publisher

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Marketing Communications -
What Do You Have to Say to Get Their Attention?
Author: ©Bonita Richter

Marketing Communications - What Do You Have to Say to Get Their Attention? What do you have to say to get your client's attention? What if what you had to tell them is critical to their success, and you have to get the message across, how would you say your marketing message to make sure they paid attention to you?

As business owners, and marketers, we are all faced with the dilemma about how to design a marketing message will be heard amidst the clamor of every other marketing message out there.

"If I could have your attention, I would love to point out the basic components in a marketing strategy that will help you grow your business."

Have you heard this sound bite before? Did you already mentally tune out? Thought so...

What if I said to you:
"Top-earning coaches/consultants do this one simple thing every day to grow their business."

Did this statement create more interest, and curiosity in you?

The most basic way of getting someone's attention is to break the pattern of predictable, and expected behavior. Common sense, or predictable messages, don't attract attention because a person intuitively already 'gets' what they hear. People "tune out" because they've heard the same message many times before, and aren't expecting any new information.

To get peoples' attention, avoid the generic story everyone else is saying, and say something unexpected.

So, what are the key elements in getting peoples' attention, and just as important, how do you keep their attention once you get it?

You do this by stirring two essential emotions: surprise and interest.

Surprise

When our 'guessing machines' fail at predicting what we expect to happen next, this creates the emotion of surprise.

Being surprised jolts us to attention, because we want to pay attention to learn about something we 'missed.' Unexpected, surprising ideas are more likely to stick in our brains because they force us to pay attention and think. We, as humans, want to find the answer, to solve the question of why we were surprised.

Think about the core, singular point you want to get across to your clients, such as, 1) how to increase sales, 2) how to get healthier, 3) how to get good grades, and so on. Break a pattern, stump people's guessing machines about what they think you will say, and state something surprising and unexpected about the topic or situation.

Interest

To keep someone's interest once you have it, the easiest way is to point out, or 'open a gap' in a person's knowledge. You do this by generating curiosity, or creating a mystery.

You generate curiosity, and create a mystery by posing questions that lead the reader to think, What don't I know that other people know?, What will happen next? How will it end? Curiosity occurs when we feel a gap in our knowledge. You, as a marketer, must open a gap in knowledge, before you close it with facts.

Our tendency is to tell people the facts. However, you must first convince them they need these facts. The idea is to get their interest, highlight some specific knowledge they're missing, through:

1. Posing a question (How many moons does Jupiter have?)

2. Pointing out a knowledge gap (Which restaurant is the cleanest in ________?)

3.Presenting them with situations that have unknown resolutions (Who will win the Men's Figure Skating competition in the Olympics?)

To create interest is all about finding a way to spark and elevate interest about a particular situation or topic; and, by adding an element of surprise and unexpected behavior into your marketing communications, you'll be able to successfully attract more of your desired clients' attention!

Copyright 2010, Bonita Richter

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Online Fax Services - How Do They Work?
Author: ©Titus Hoskins

Online fax services, often called "email to fax" services, are a popular form of cloud computing. To many business owners and web users, cloud computing is a relatively new concept which can be confusing if you don't have a tech or a computer background. Basically, cloud computing is simply outsourcing your computer or business tasks to an outside company, software and servers.

In this case, all your faxing services are handled by a third party who acts on your behalf as an intermediary. You can access your faxes through your web browser or an email application which you place on your desktop. These outsourced fax services are completely scalable to fit any growing company or business.

In order to use online faxing, you first have to sign up to an online fax service provider, who will give you a local or Toll-Free fax number which you can use to do all your faxing. In many cases, this may be multiple fax numbers depending on the size of your company or your faxing needs. Regardless, one of the major benefits of using cloud computing and online fax services, they can be quickly adjusted to meet your growing needs since there are no additional hardware (fax phone lines, fax machines...) to install.

Once you have signed up to online fax service, you are also given an online site (interface) where you can logon and check all your faxes. You can also send your faxes from this location - your faxes are sent as email attachments usually in Tiff or Pdf format, but there are many different formats you can use. Because it's a web-based service, you can access your faxes anywhere, anytime, as long as you have Internet access. Faxing is as easy as sending an email.

Another great benefit of using online fax, you can send and receive multiple faxes at the same time. No more missed faxes because of busy signals or paper jams. And if you have a large client base, you can quickly send a fax with one click of the button. Those clients can receive your faxes on their PDAs, Cell Phones, Laptops, Computers... or any device connected to the Internet can be your virtual fax machine, pardon the pun.

These online fax services cost on average around $10 a month but if you shop around you can find cheaper rates. Keep in mind, this is usually a long-term business expense so it pays to do your homework now since you can save significant revenues over the long haul. Many of these fax services will work directly with companies to set up the best custom system to match your faxing needs.

Perhaps, one of the major reasons, this form of cloud computing has become so popular with individuals and companies alike, has to do with availability. All your faxing is available to you 24/7, 365 days of the year, which means your business is also open 24 hours of the day. If faxing plays a major role in bringing in sales, contacting clients or for providing services... one can easily see how using such a service will make any company more competitive. If you truly want to bring your company or business into the modern computer age, then using an online fax service is the only way to proceed. This is definitely one form of "cloud computing" you should be using.