Marketing ' Visual Impact That Lasts by John H. Melchinger Tell me-I will forget. Show me-I will remember. Let me try-I will learn how. That's the crux of this article......using visual impact to help people remember what's important. People see you in their mind's eye. They remember you visually. Why not feed that to your best advantage? Your business card can help make you memorable. Get past ink color and typestyle, format and layout. Use an odd size of unique dimensions and heft. Try a 3" or 3.5" square card of heavier than normal stock. This is handy as both a business card and for jotting notes to clients. One of my client reported that my card doubled as coasters, too. Your letterhead carries your most important messages regularly to the people with whom relationship building is most important: your clients, centers and prospects. Highlight yourself. Present an image that is different in an appealing way. Don't neglect paper stock when creating your letterhead image. Letterhead and matching envelopes should feel good, with a pleasant amount of heft. Heft seems to be more important than texture. Pick up a few samples of different papers, close your eyes, and move each piece around in your fingers. You will sense the differences in stiffness, body and heft, and you will be better able to choose the one you like best. Notes. A full bodied, stiff paper about 4" x 6" attaches nicely to things you might send to people, such as articles and client Use a note card that identifies you. Impact also comes from what you write on your notes. Handwritten messages and a broad pen stroke make your message stand out. Convey that you are thinking of that person. Place a note on an article, such as Jayne - Saw this. Thought of you. -John Notes attached to things you send people can create big impact with little effort. The return on investment is quite high, especially when you systematize the effort. Make a list of the people you want to do this for. Keep the list handy, and make a check mark next to the name each time you send something. This way you will see who you are neglecting and shouldn't, as well as with whom you may be overdoing this informal thinking of you effort. You can enhance your brochure with visual impact. With the advent of superior color and inkjet printers, the laser printer is less acceptable for printing brochures on any stock because the ink cracks and peels easily after a little handling and mailing. You've seen this effect with laser-printed addresses on envelopes that come through the mail, as well as with the letters inside. Good color printers resolve this with indelible inks and superior printing in black. Print certain text in color. Imagine a brochure, letterhead, biography or any other marketing pieces with headlines, names, titles, logo, Internet addresses and web sites, or any other important features to highlight, done in tasteful colors. Use the power of new word processing programs to highlight text, just as if you applied a Hi-Liter to the text by hand. You can create high visual impact, especially in brochures and presentations, with just a small amount of color. Using color can also allow you to produce a single brochure and emphasize one issue or market in one sales call, then another issue or market in another. Targeting audiences and ideas is easier with visual enhancements such as color. Bulletins. The masthead you create for your bulletins-the banner at the top of the page-makes your bulletin noticeable (or not). This goes a long way to get people to read your bulletins. As the messages you send become noteworthy over time, readers will begin to visually isolate each of your bulletins for their more urgent attention. What you write eventually demonstrates the worthiness of your bulletins in general, but their initial impact and getting them read comes as much from the visual impact of the first pieces as the messages you put in them. Presentations. One-pagers are my favorite marketing tool. In a single, simple image, you can convey a high impact message that will not be forgotten. Remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs? There have been several triangles over the years, made to look like pyramids, that depict the five stages of emotional growth and maturity, and equate each to a product or level of reality in financial growth and maturity. There are many ways to say all this, but one basic image works well for showing all this, and the one image is more memorable and useable than all the words. This type imaging is dangerously underemployed in marketing financial services. All the word maneuvering that goes on causes a lot of today's compliance problems and lawsuits. If you combine your refined visual image with targeted themes and memorable phrases, you could become very dangerous in the marketplace-to your competition. To see is to believe. John H. Melchinger coaches personal financial services advisors how to market their professional practice to high income and high net worth affluents. Effective market identification, segmentation, selection, penetration and development, with compelling packaging and promotion, make his clients among the best planners in the business. His marketing techniques, how-to books, articles and presentations have become classics in private practice marketing. John donates one day per month to non-profit organizations that request his support for workshops, seminars and fund raisers. John is available via email to: john@melchinger.com. T. (403) 547-7521 (messages) F. (403) 547-7524 Web site: www.melchinger.com