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Newsletters created by Mike Hamers, Lightspeed Commercial Arts

#28  REBRAND WITH A PLAN: 7 Keys to Ensure a Smooth Transition (Sept 2017)
Follow these principles when shifting your brand to make it a positive experience—for you and your customers.  If you rebrand poorly, your brand can suffer badly. Scarier still: Your margin for error is slim at best. But you can improve the odds considerably by rebranding according to these seven principles..

PREVIOUS ISSUES

#27  Finish Strong: Are You Stretching Toward Your Goals or Just Coasting: (April 2017)
We make daily choices to either stretch or coast toward the finish lines we create for ourselves through personal goals. They’re often small decisions—routine things we don’t think about a lot—but they have the power to determine much of our success. Reaching a finish line can be as simple as completing an “almost done” project or initiating a long-delayed and difficult conversation. Unfinished business can be disastrous. It drains your mental energy. It derails your goals. It impacts how you feel about yourself. And, critically, it can undermine your reliability in the minds of others..

#26 unpublished.

#25  10 Brand Identity/Logo Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (1/11/17)
Brand-management professionals understand that a brand consists of much more than the logo. A brand is a well-thought-out framework of messages, tone of voice colors, names and vision. Despite the importance of a great logo design, many small businesses unwittingly take a few missteps in this part of the business development process. However, these mistakes can be avoidede. Here's how!

#24  Online Video is Mainstream: 20 Ideas to Market Your Business (April 2016)
• 88% more time is spent on a website with video   • 90% of online shoppers find videos helpful in making buying decisions    • 80% of Internet users can recall watching a video ad on a website the visited in the past 30 days and 80% of those who watch a video ad take some action after watching that ad. Statistics show that posting videos online is one of the most effective ways to inform, educate, and entertain your potential clients. What you can do is limited only by your imagination. Here are 20 ideas to get you thinking about your next, or first, marketing video..

#23  Composing and Framing Photos for Maximum Effectiveness (April 2015)
Whether you’re utilizing stock in yours advertisements or website, or you are also the photographer, here are some tips to help you create more impact with your visuals. It can be challenging to get the right photo to fit the desired space without some kind of correcting. Common needs for correction include distracting background elements, framing mistakes, unbalanced images, limited space in your marketing piece, etc.

#22  Composing and Framing Photos for Maximum Effectiveness (April 2015)
Whether you’re utilizing stock in yours advertisements or website, or you are also the photographer, here are some tips to help you create more impact with your visuals. It can be challenging to get the right photo to fit the desired space without some kind of correcting. Common needs for correction include distracting background elements, framing mistakes, unbalanced images, limited space in your marketing piece, etc.

#21  Composing and Framing Photos for Maximum Effectiveness (April 2015)
Whether you’re utilizing stock in yours advertisements or website, or you are also the photographer, here are some tips to help you create more impact with your visuals. It can be challenging to get the right photo to fit the desired space without some kind of correcting. Common needs for correction include distracting background elements, framing mistakes, unbalanced images, limited space in your marketing piece, etc.

#20  Visualizing Big Data: Conveying Complex Info Beautifully  (February 2015)
Infographics are important because they change the way people find and experience information-based stories – especially now, when more and more infographics are being used to bolster editorial content on the web. Infographics create a new way of seeing the world of data. They help communicate complex ideas in a clear and often beautiful way.

#19  Why Type Matters: The Power of Fonts in Business  (January 2015)
Fonts Turn Words into Stories that Influence. Fonts shout out their own personality and individuality. Well-chosen typefaces help tell the stories of what you are going to find when you open the package. Fonts can literally transform the very meaning of a word. Learn about the power of fonts and especially custom fonts when branding nationally and internationally.

#18  Is Your Website Mobile-Ready? How to Avoid 8 Common  (Nov 2014)
         Oversights When Interacting with Smartphone and Tablets
Research shows that more e-commerce happens on mobile devices than on desktop computers, mobile devices are the primary means many consumers use for accessing the internet. PLUS, 58% of U.S. adults own a smaprtphone and 47% own a tablet -- and the numbers are growing. Here's how you can prepare your website for the best user expereince.

#17  3D-Printing in Manufacturing: Rewriting how things are made (Aug/Sep 2014)
         The Rise of the Third Industrial Revolution is Still Getting Started
We’re now able to 3D print in 200 different materials, from titanium to rubber, plastic, glass, ceramic, leathers and even chocolate and sugar.  3D printing will massively reduce the cost of certain products as the cost of labor is removed The 3D manufacturing revolution is actively and passionately taking place in medical labs and manufacturing plants across the world — and even beyond.

#16  Infographics: Maximum information in Minimal Space (April/May 2014)
         Combine Data and Visual Design to inform and delight your audiences
Inforgraphics are becoming a powerful tool for disseminating complex or conceptual information to large audiences. Google searches for infographics has increased by 800% from 2011 to 2013 In this issue we exlore the types and some valuable tips on How to Get the Most from Your Inforgraphics with plenty of visual examples.

#15  Business Cards: 600 yr. old and Still the Best Value for (Mar 2014)
         Your Marketing Dollar
Business cards offer a legacy that lasts. Why? Because they work now as they have for centuries. Today's cards continue to evolve and are gaining new popularity as a marketing tool. Here's a brief history of the evolution: from calling card/courting card to the modern-day full-color with QR codes and more.

#14  Use Color in Website and Call-to-Action Buttons to Grab Attention (Feb 2014)
         Color is the Key to Brand Consistency
Color improves brand recognition by up to 80% and increases comprehension of your message by as much as 73%. Examples of how to develop an “Expanded Color Palette” with your logo as your foundation plus 8 prime examples of good size, placement and use of color for effective Call-to-Action buttons.

#13  How to Choose Colors for Maximum Brand & Logo Recognition  (Jan 2014)
         The Psychology and Meaning of Colors in Branding
Color plays an important role in the art of persuasion and in brand recognition. There is a perceived appropriateness to how colors are interpreted in marketing and branding uses. A color-by-color guide matched with samples of Fortune 500 logos plus some color analysis of Mike Hamers' logo designs.

#12  Why Don't My Colors Match?!  Color Theory for Everyday Use:
         The Mechanics of Color Modes (12/01/13)
In depth analysis of how to use color as an organizational tool and element of a brand. We go through a brief history of how Pantone organized color and the mechanics of RGB, CMYK, Pantone Sopot color and Hexidecimal and more.

#11  Are You Making These Common Logo Mistakes: 7 Easy Ways to Know
         If It's Time to Update Your Logo – "Before & After" Examples (Oct 2013)
7 Critical Questions to Ask Yourself to Determine if it'sTime to Update Your Logo and Brand Message. Annotated "Before and After" examples from local business help with the show-and-tell.

#10  How to Write Marketing Materials that Magnetize Your Clients
         with Tried and True 3-Filters Technology™ (Sept 2013)
The 3-Filters Technology™ is a model to understand how people process information relating to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of human needs. Using the 3-Filters Technology™ increases website effectiveness, gets more responses to your call-to-action, results in more customers, and increases your customer retention. The 3-Filters can be learned and implemented at a much deeper level. Attend Larry Nelson’s workshop on “9 Roles for an In-Depth Understanding of Your 3-Filters”.

#9  How to Make a Landing Page that C.O.N.V.E.R.T.S.
      Visitors into Customers: 8 Elements You Should Include (Aug 2013)
So you have your marketing all ready. Your web page is built and your pages are well optimized and generating good natural traffic. Your Facebook ads are bringing even more traffic. But you're not getting sales – those numbers aren't moving at all. The solution is to make highly-effective landing pages.

#8  12 Advantages of Email Marketing (July 2013)
Why does email marketing present a benefit over other more traditional forms of marketing? Why does it drive better returns on investment and customer engagement metrics than other marketing techniques? Why would you invest the time and resources to develop an email marketing program at all? In this article we go through the top twelve email marketing benefits to your business compared to other forms of marketing.

#7  Numbers in a Headline Attract 25% More Traffic: 5 Reasons Why (June 2013)
Numbers are a time-honored trigger to get readers to pay attention. When you use a number in a headline, whether in a blog post, an email subject header, an ad or even in a face-to-face conversation, you immediately hook the other person’s interest. Numbers reach directly into our unconscious and say, “this message is important”.  And according to the experts, numbers as figures/digits work better on the web than numbers as a spelled-out word form. ALSO, 16 Rules for Writing Numbers: Digits vs Words

#6  Layout Design Basics: 13 Common Mistakes / 5 Success Steps (6/03/13)
We narrowed the list to a baker's dozen of the most conspicuous ones seen most often. Avoiding these mistakes can help make your layouts look more professional. We then follow up with 5 Steps to Visual Success with a specific example to demonstrate how a simple, uncluttered layout is more apt to be read and to be acted on.

#5  Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly: 19 Practical Tips (5/13/13)
The challenge of the small screen size of smartphones is to make your site easier to read and accessible without excessive zooming and scrolling. Smartphone touchscreen technology makes it dicey to click tiny links with our fingertips. To address the needs of smartphone browsers, designers are well advised to create variations of websites tailored for "mobile sites". Here are a few interface design best practices.

#4  Writing Winning Taglines for Succesful Brand Positioning (3/18/13)
Descriptive and simple, taglines are not arbitrary.  They should grow out of an intense, creative and strategic process and can be crucial to a company’s success and longevity.
Your tagline is another important tool for telling and selling your brand story.

#3  Mobile Marketing with QR Codes: 9 Facts and Insights (2/28/13)
Too much to say and not enough room to say it in? QR codes may be the answer.
Decoding QR Codes for successful integration and implementation

#2  Put Your Best Card Forward!  12 Tips to Make Your Business Card a Business Tool (2/04/13)
Does your business card sell you, your ideas, and your products or services?
Evaluate your business card with this list of 12 Tips designed to optimize the effectiveness of your card; then take the ranking test at the end. These tips will make the difference to building your business and increasing your profits.

#1  10 Brand Identity/Logo Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (1/21/13)
Brand-management professionals understand that a brand consists of much more than the logo. A brand is a well-thought-out framework of messages, tone of voice colors, names and vision. Despite the importance of a great logo design, many small businesses unwittingly take a few missteps in this part of the business development process. However, these mistakes can be avoidede. Here's how!

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Mike Hamers at mike@lightspeedca.net    •   Mike's Cell: 303-527-1222.