Headlines do more than get attention. When a consumer reads your headline you have spent 80 percent of your advertising dollar. On average, five times as many people read the headline as compared to the body copy.

The first thing the reader sees, reads or hears can make the difference between success and failure.

Your headline should offer news, helpful information or a promise of reward for reading. No matter how persuasive your body copy or how great your product, your ad cannot sell, if it does not attract immediate attention.

The primary purpose in any piece of writing – whether it be an advertisement, a blog post, or email – is to get your first sentence read. And the purpose of first sentence is get the second sentence read – until it leads to your call to action. This is why a strong compelling headline is so critical to get your customers’ attention.

For copy to convince the consumer to take the next step it must do 3 things – Get Attention, Communicate and Persuade by:

• immediately focusing on the benefit to the reader
• make a promise to the reader that you later fulfill
• back up everything you’ve said with very specific proof

Copy that is written in clear, concise and simple words will get your point across. And no one will ever complain that your writing is too easy to understand.

If your company has been around for a while, maybe you’ve decided it’s time to revitalize a sleepy look. Or, perhaps you’re targeting a new audience and want a brand with a broader appeal.

Refreshing your brand strategy should be your first step, dig out a path for your brand update with the following questions: What has changed in your business? Do you have new people or new products? Are you serving new markets? Are customers asking for different things than they used to?

Does the outside world realize you’ve changed!?

Remember, it’s not just what you say; it’s how you say it. Your message should be clear, concise and emotionally compelling. Offers, coupons and links on a website should all be relevant and current. Think of your website as a storefront, a place where you can let people know who you are and why they can trust you – as an added bonus your storefront is open 24/7!

Don’t be afraid to try out new marketing styles for your company to spice things up.

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement
and the thrill of creative effort.

Warmest greetings and
best wishes for the new year.

Design6°

Good taglines do important work. They narrow down an entire company you know little to nothing about into one well-crafted sentence. The tagline often makes sense of the images or text which precede it.

If you are a small business owner, don’t think you’re off the hook as a far as a tagline is concerned. Your business has a brand, regardless of size – and a good tagline can carry even more weight in your marketing efforts as compared to some big companies that are already well known.

Invest in an expressive one-liner describing your brand and stick it on everything!

Click here to see a list of some of the more memorable taglines out there.

Having designed hundreds of logos, we are experienced in the process of researching, planning, sketching and creating brands and knowing exactly what is professional and what is not.

• A professional business should look professional.
• To make it memorable keep things simple.
• A well-designed logo should be timeless.
• Every typeface has a personality, find a font that is truly appropriate for the business.
• Choose color combinations for your logo that work well with your entire brand.
• Your logo should be effective without color – if it doesn’t work in black, it doesn’t work in color.
• Versatility is important – your logo should work in both vertical and horizontal format.
• It should be scalable to work even when just an inch in size.

We have learned that small businesses really need more than just a logo. They need a consistent image in many formats. A logo is the starting point of your whole corporate image – it should reflect the time and thought gone into designing it.

A great logo can provide a company with success.

While Creative Director with The Merz Group, I was given the wonderful opportunity to work with The Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House to create their Annual Report.

The inspiration for my concept came from my sons’ fascination with superheros and dressing up. While kids are pretend playing, they are always the fearless leader, never afraid of anything. They jump around the house extremely confident to play the hero, to rescue those in distress, and imagine that they are bigger and stronger than they really are.

The Annual Report’s no-sew cape crusaders and their imagination helps give them the courage to overcome any obstacle.

“The Philadelphia Ronald McDonald the world’s first salutes all super heros — the brave children, their awe-inspiring parents and family members, volunteers, Board, staff, friends and donors — who have gone “above and beyond” to make a difference in so many ways.”