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How to Keep Brand Value

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Your brand is everything. It’s what makes potential buyers and customers recognize you and helps set you apart from competitors. It’s important to maintain the value of your brand in order to make the most of your business marketing. Keeping brand focus and consistency is key. If customers know what your brand stands for, they’ll end up appreciating it more, and you’ll gain more organic traffic. A strong brand value helps tell your company’s story, creating awareness, loyalty, and excitement for the consumer. Sales and marketing trends will continually change over time. However, building the power of your company’s brand is an investment that pays for years to come. 3 Ways to Keep Your Brand Value 1. Business Visuals Your logo is at the forefront of your company. Anyone who knows your business knows what your logo looks like, including the color palette, typography, imagery, and graphic elements. These brand visuals are most important to maintain throughout your busines
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Make Ideas Fly Before They Die

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When facing a life or death decision, do you think the opinions of others would affect your behavior? Social proof is a powerful phenomenon. People constantly look to the opinions of others to help them live wisely and navigate uncertainty. The behavior and preferences of your peers can shape every choice you make – from the vehicles you drive to the candidates you vote for. But surely some of that superficiality would fade in more critical situations, right? Not necessarily. More than 40,000 people in the United States experience end-stage kidney failure every year, with bodies that cannot filter toxins and adequately remove waste products from their blood. These people are dependent on dialysis treatments as they wait desperately for a kidney transplant. Often more than  100,000 patients are eagerly waiting for a new organ. Surprisingly, research shows that 97.1 percent of kidney offers are refused, and nearly 1 in 10 transplant candidates refuse a kidney in error. How could
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Add Depth and Drama to Your Page with 4 Riveting Techniques

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Tension. There’s just nothing like it to prompt emotion in relationships, film, and art. Steven Spielberg demonstrated this masterfully in the classic 1993 film Jurassic Park . While young siblings Tim and Lex hide in an industrial kitchen, two raptors creep inside and begin prowling and sniffing the perimeter. As the children silently crawl on their knees and cower under stainless steel countertops, the toenails of the raptors click . . . click . . . click . . . along the floor behind them. Though some would classify Jurassic Park as a children’s film, you can be sure the tension of this scene had every adult breathless as the raptors prepared to pounce. Create Rhythm and Release in Your Page As plot twists are to a story, visual tension is to design. Visual tension is an aspect of composition that uses unexpected color, shape, or scale to create energy. While visual tension can be used to evoke anxiety, typically it is used to add depth and create a more dynamic viewer ex
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3 Non-Negotiables for Stellar Customer Service

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Want to build connections that bring benefits? You can do this everywhere you go by using people’s names. Career Coach Joyce Russel shared a story about a friend recovering from an injury. This man was staying in a rehab hospital and was not particularly happy with his care from the therapists and staff. Unsympathetic, his wife noted that he hadn’t treated the hospital staff with particular kindness, “Do you even know the names of the people who are helping you?” she asked him. “No, why should I learn their names?” he replied. She reminded him that just by learning and using people’s names, he might get better care. Sure enough, it helped! Keep Your Best Customers Coming Back Personal attention brings powerful results. If you want a no-fail tactic to increase your sales, one of your best strategies is to entice proven customers to buy again. Here are just a few ways to keep customers coming back: Greet People by Name When you want to build loyalty, learn and use the na
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Do Your Print Marketing Materials Need an Upgrade?

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There is a great deal of time, effort, and energy placed into updating your print marketing materials. You need to cover all the relevant information in a very limited space. This means you need to fully optimize your messaging and make sure your materials attract attention. With all this thought going into ensuring packaging and flyers and postcards are fantastic, you may be unwilling to make regular updates. Unfortunately, this can allow your message to become stale or even allow inaccurate information to be shared with customers over time.  Time to Make a Change!  Donna, a local florist, realized it had been more than 6-8 months since she reviewed and revised the messaging on her printed materials. She knew it was probably time to make some tweaks. Businesses can change dramatically over time, with shifts in hours of operation, updated special offers, and more making an appearance.  Regular reviews to ensure your messaging is still on point helps keep your marketing mate
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8 DOs and DON'Ts for Handling Difficult Employees

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Have you ever managed a problematic employee? You’re not the only one. Though we all have tricky team members, Reader’s Digest collected 15 of the most outrageous stories . Here are two examples: The New York City Department of Health has a robust help-line for its IT department. This should be very beneficial to clients. However, one of the (twice-suspended!) help-line operators continually complicated things by answering calls while pretending to be a talking robot. An Egyptian bus driver had an ingenious plan to beat a mandatory drug test: He used his wife’s urine. Sounds foolproof, right? Unfortunately, he failed the test, even though she was clean. He found out when his boss handed him the results and said, “Congratulations; you’re pregnant.” How to Deal with Problematic Behavior While it’s tempting to overlook lousy behavior, the costs of this passive approach go beyond the direct effects of one person’s actions; they spill over onto other employees . Bad behaviors aff
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6 Tips to Improve Your Printed Newsletters

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Online ads, digital promotions, and e-newsletters bombard recipients daily. Much of this information is being deleted or filtered out without ever being read. Because of this, printed newsletters are making a comeback, and more businesses are using them to keep their customers current with what is happening.  Regardless of whether the company is already sending out a newsletter or debating on starting one, it is good to learn new ways to improve it. Here are some tips to help improve printed newsletters.  6 Tips to Improve Your Printed Newsletters 1. Exclusive Information Offering exclusive information in a newsletter or a special incentive for signing up can help increase the mailing list and encourage recipients to read it. Information can include unique advice from the CEO, advance notice for special announcements, or information someone can only receive if they read the entire newsletter. Special incentives can include discounts for products or services, gifts, or invit
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