I know print is far from dead, but it has certainly taken a bit of a backseat to online marketing.

At this moment, though, print is still very much alive. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t include print marketing as part of this series on content sharing and repurposing.

For certain products or services, it’s best to reach out to people where they live or work right through their mailbox.

I recall one business that called me and said they were having good success marketing online. But they realized that some of their ideal prospects had no idea to be looking for their services. These were upper-level prospects who probably didn’t have time to be online for their own pleasure much less looking online for a service they didn’t even know existed.

So, they knew they needed to go the print route. There are obvious choices you can use here if you have a lot of information to share. Magalogs, newsletters, bookalogs, slim jims, special reports, sales letters, brochures… they can all can carry great content that you’ve already created.

And that’s the key… great content. We’re so used to only focusing on a sales message that we sometimes forget that compelling content is just as important in print as it is online.

While larger pieces like magalogs and reports can carry lots of custom content, don’t overlook something as simple as a postcard.

Let me give you an example. You sell dark chocolate and you’ve written an article on your blog about the 12 health benefits of dark chocolate.

Each month, you send a postcard to a prospecting list outlining one of the benefits. Somewhere on the postcard, label it “1 of 12”, “2 of 12”, etc. Labeling it like this gets people to be on the lookout for the next in the series if it contains information they find useful or interesting.

Because you want to encourage people to visit you online whether they want to order your chocolate right now or not, you give them a reason to get more of your content on your site. Maybe it’s a video showing how your chocolate is made, or a free, longer guide on the benefits of dark chocolate. There are many possibilities.

The point is, whether you’re using a magalog, a postcard, or something inbetween for your print marketing, you can leverage content that you’ve already created so it’s working extra duty on your behalf.

Other articles in this series:

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Your Starting Point

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Twitter

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Facebook

Content Sharing and Repurposing – LinkedIn

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Google Plus

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Guides & Reports

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Books & eBooks

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Guest Blogging

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Article Banks

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Blog Hubs

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Magazines & Newsletters

The answer is within your own website.

I don’t know how involved you are with the inner workings of your site. But just about every site has some capability, whether built-in or through plugins, to see which search words or phrases led people to you site as well as to see which words people are searching on once they’re at your site.

Some of these search results won’t surprise you. After all, if you have a site about parakeets, you would expect to see that word come up quite a bit in the list of your site’s top searches, either alone or with other words or phrases.

Where we discover some content gold is related searches we might not have thought of. Or, we had thought of it, but never took the time to write about it because we didn’t think it was an important topic.

Let me give you a personal example.

It’s no surprise with the name of my site, The Magalog Guy, that a focus of mine is magalog marketing. But there are other members of the magalog family… slim jims and bookalogs in particular.

Examining my search data, I discovered people were finding my site based on the phrase “slim jim marketing.”

While I mention slim jims on my sales page, I had never written a specific blog article explaining the differences between a slim jim and magalog.

What the search data told me was that I should address that topic in an educational type of article, not just mention it in the list of services I offer. After all, people were searching on that phrase which made it pretty clear they were looking for answers and/or information on slim jims.

That slim jim article has become one of the most popular on my blog. And that’s simply because I was paying attention to what other people were wanting information about. Prospects were clearly telling me what they wanted to know more about, and I gave it to them.

That’s a huge part of content marketing… giving people information they want. The trick, of course, if figuring out what they want.

In this example, it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. It was just a matter of being aware of the resources I already had available to “hear” what they were saying.

Certainly mining your search data alone isn’t enough to keep you going on articles long-term. But if your stuck for ideas, this is a good place to look.

One of the content marketing related services I offer is helping businesses see all the content available to them specifically. If you’re not ready for that step, I’ve put a few tips into a free guide called Great Ideas for Generating Great Content that you’ll find on the Resources page of the Klassen Communications website.

Think of this as Magalog Marketing 101… what a magalog (slim jim, bookalog, issuelog) is, magalog samples, successful traits of magalogs, and much more.

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89v1PvvAPEk

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DnrgGHVbGs

Part 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq4YQVJI0S8

Part 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve6LsgT7L7c

If you have questions or want to talk about how to put this powerful marketing format to use for your product or service, let’s talk. I offer a free project analysis to first discover whether a magalog is right for you. If so, we can get the ball rolling.

If a magalog isn’t right for you, we can discuss other options that will have the best impact.

That free phone chat is yours for the asking. Contact me so we can schedule a time to talk.

I also consult on magalog copy and layout if you’re planning to tackle a project like this in-house.

And feel free to contact me if you’d like this Magalog Marketing 101 webinar given to your group.

(For those reading this on the Kindle, please visit this blog directly to view the videos: http://www.magalogguy.com/blog)

If you search on slim jim, you’re hit with food and locksmith-related entries. For our purposes, though, a slim jim is part of the magalog family.

Where a magalog is traditionally about 8.5 x 11 inches, a slim jim is around 5.5 x 10. So the primary difference is that a slim jim is narrower than a magalog and can be shorter.

I have to fudge and say “around 5.5 x 10″ because printing and mailing costs can affect the size. Sometimes a change in the size can have a significant impact on those costs. That’s why I always recommend talking to a print broker if you don’t have a printer you trust to look out for you.

Because a slim jim is smaller than a magalog in physical size, it’s often larger in terms of page count. The smallest slim jim I’ve ever worked on was 24 pages.

That doesn’t mean a slim jim can’t have fewer pages. But if a company is wanting to test a magalog against a slim jim, obviously the smaller size of the slim jim will require more pages to hold the same amount of copy.

So why use a slim jim?

First, it gives you a different look. Don’t forget that part of the goal of any marketing piece is to stand out and be read. The slim jim format is different in size from magazines and traditional first-class mail. So it stands out.

Second, there can be a benefit in terms of printing and mailing compared to a typical magalog. There can be other variables involved in those costs. But it’s worth keeping that in mind when considering a magalog vs. a slim jim.

Oprah Winfrey used a slim jim for one of her promotions. I displayed a few pages from that slim jim in my Boosting Response and Revenue with Magalogs webinar that you can view on for free. (By the way, I present that webinar to different groups. If you’re interested, be sure to contact me.)

While the Oprah slim jim wasn’t my design, if you’re interested in seeing a full slim jim, not just a few pages, you can see one I did for a client on my Issuu site.

While it would be the designer’s challenge and not yours, you should be aware of how a slim jim affects order forms and longer sidebars. On the sample from Issuu, take a look at the order form on page 23. It’s packed! The challenge for your copywriter will be to keep the content to a minimum.

Also, check out page 16, one of many examples where we can’t take the term “sidebar” literally. While that slim jim does have some examples of content that is “on the side,” the significant sidebars like you see on page 16 are dropped strategically in the middle of the copy. Otherwise, as true sidebars, they’d cross pages which is something we didn’t want.

Again, that’s the challenge for your designer and copywriter, not you. But as always, I like you to know what’s happening behind the scenes whenever possible.

For now, hopefully you have enough information to consider whether a slim jim should be part of your marketing mix in the future.

To give you a quick visual comparison, I’m linking to a very short video I put together about slim jims for my YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AEYkQREmbI

If you have other questions, I do offer a free consultation by phone to talk about things like this. No high-pressure sales tactics. We’ll both know whether the conversation should continue or whether getting some answers to questions is good enough.

You can learn more about that and why we should be working together here.

Contact me today to schedule a time for this free call.

I also offer a number of free resources – including this blog – to help you consider some proven ways of approaching your marketing that you might not be doing now.

All of these tasks – and more – are time consuming. But the successful consultants have processes in place to automate as many tasks as possible. Lead generation is one such task.

Even the most in-demand consultants are constantly marketing themselves. Ideally, clients come to them already predisposed to make a long-term commitment. But often the consultant is going to have to get materials into prospects’ hands that will help make the case for making that commitment.

It’s a multi-step marketing process that plays out over months and even years. The question becomes… How best to convince a prospect that you’re “the one”?

The secret that other industries know that you may not

Recently, one of my clients (a health firm) completed a magalog after spending over a year working on it. Before I go any further with this story, let me assure you that “over a year” is an extreme exception and nowhere close to being the rule. But getting it right trumped getting it done fast. Copy rewrites, getting opinions from marketing experts outside the company, and even changes in company personnel created a process that took longer than expected.

So why all the effort?

Because they knew, if done properly, the magalog was going to provide a big payoff not only in immediate sales, but also with long-term relationships that would lead to more sales.

In other words, all the time and money that went into the magalog was going to give them a much higher return that would make it all worthwhile.

As I mentioned in my expanded magalog primer article, health and financial services/products generate a lot of skepticism. It’s not that people aren’t willing to buy if there’s value… they will! But they take their time to research and find out if the product or service is really beneficial for them.

Successfully meet the customer’s need in these industries and you’re likely to have a customer for a long time.

That’s why a maglaog (or slim jim, or issuelog, or bookalog) is so well-suited to these prospects.

The company has the space to build their case and provide the information that their customers or prospects demand. And in that process, the company also positions itself as an expert in its field.

Being viewed by prospects as an expert among your competition

Now, other industries are beginning to see the value in that benefit. One such industry is consulting.

For all the value and experience they offer, consultants are often viewed as a bit of a luxury. It’s not that clients wouldn’t love to hire one to help increase sales, it’s just not always given the priority it should, especially when times are tough. (Of course, that’s one of the most important times to hire a consultant.)

Then there’s the matter of finding the right consultant. Any one can throw up a basic sales letter website in a day and claim to be an “expert”. Try a Google search on “business consultant” or similar phrase. Not exactly an easy process for the person responsible for finding the best fit yet having no idea where to turn.

That’s where magalogs come in.

The fact that they’re used so widely in other industries should tell you something: When done properly, they generate qualified leads and increase sales.

If you’re a consultant, you know it can take some time to turn a prospect into a client. Part of that process is finding ways to communicate with the prospect on a regular basis. It can’t be a constant hard sell. That drives prospects away.

How to make your magalog work for you

Think about how you filter the marketing material you receive in the mail. If it looks like blatant advertising, it generally gets a lower priority. But something that stands out from the norm attracts attention.

A magazine-styled magalog with cover copy addressing your prospects core needs is going to get far more than a passing glance.

Here’s just a quick list of things you could include in your magalog:

• Advice that the prospect can put into action right now to increase sales.
• Little-known marketing techniques that can give the prospect an edge over his competition.
• Branding success stories and what your prospect can learn from them.
• Advice on hiring the right people and keeping them motivated.
• Tips to save time that actually work.
• Success stories from clients that your prospect can relate to.
• Q&A section addressing common questions about the value of consulting.

Each article helps to establish you as an expert in consulting while at the same time providing immediate benefits to the prospect. When the prospect feels you’re truly interested in helping them before they’re a client, you begin to break down the barriers that make them hesitant to hire you.

And when they do decide it’s time to write the check, who are they going to call? Chances are it’s not the consultant who believes “prospect value” is including a free recipe in their generic, template-based newsletter.

Chances are, you already have a lot of content via articles you’ve written or speeches you’ve given. Now, it’s simply a matter of taking that content and putting it into a format that few, if any, of your competitors are investing in.

A magazine-styled magalog spotlights you as an expert and adds to the perception that you’re one of the top people in your field in a way that a traditional sales letter, newsletter, postcard, or special report doesn’t. Those are all good marketing vehicles, but are they helping you stand out from other consultants who are doing the same thing?

Unlike some industries that mail their magalogs to a large mailing list, you can save money by only printing a small number of magalogs to send to your “A+” prospects and current clients. (We never want to forget providing extra value for existing clients who are an excellent source for referrals.) For prospects that may not be too serious on your radar, e-mail a PDF version if you choose.

Turning a cold-call into a warm-call… or having prospects call you

When you send useful information, clients respond in a positive way and are much more willing to want to know more. You’ve presented a positive image that helps you stand head and shoulders above the competition.

Better than you cold-calling, imagine your prospects calling you to discuss some of the ideas you presented in your magalog.

Even if you’re the one making the call, your magalog in their hands turns a cold-call into a warm-call and gives you a great starting point for a conversation.

Successful consultants know what they’re worth and charge appropriately. But to convince a prospect to write that check, you have to prove your value and find ways to separate yourself from your competitors. (Just like your prospects have to do with their customers.)

Because of their complexity and cost, magalogs aren’t done on a whim. But that’s one reason they increase your professional perception. It shows you’ve reached a certain level and should be taken seriously as an expert in your field.

As you consider ways to market yourself more effectively and show yourself as an expert among your peers, it might be wise to consider what the health and financial industries have already discovered: Magalogs work!

While I maintain http://mikeklassen.blogspot.com, I felt that if I was going to start a new blog for MagalogGuy.com, I’d bring the blog “in-house” and start working with WordPress.

The goal here is to focus on information relevant to magalogs, issuelogs, bookalogs and slim jims… although a lot of that information will apply to other types of design projects.

One big difference between this blog and my blog on Blogspot is that this one is focused on information for clients and potential clients. My Blogspot blog is focused on helping beginning direct market designers.

If you have any questions about magalogs, issuelogs, bookalogs or slim jims – or general questions related to the layout of your projects – please feel free to contact me. Unlike some creative types, I’m easy to get a hold of either by phone or direct e-mail.

You’ll find the contact info at the bottom of the main MagalogGuy.com site.

Thanks.

Mike Klassen – The MagalogGuy