Direct Mail Advertising - How Effective Is It?

Direct mailing is an effective way to help your business succeed. This business solution can significantly boost sales and widen your customer base. Read on to know how it works.Direct mail advertising is a type of marketing strategy that works by sending print materials to the consumers' mailbox. This method aims to promote different types of products or services, or an upcoming event like a fund raising activity. This is one of the oldest forms of marketing, but it proves to be a cost-effective solution for many businesses. Even non-profit organizations and government entities can use this type of advertising.Direct mailing has certain advantages. For one, it is lower-priced than most types of advertising, as you can use bulk...

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Icons For Small Business Branding

These are three different kinds of powerful icons that these big businesses use in their brands. Let's examine how they're using them and what they do for them - and see how we can use those in our businesses.I started out this little research-project looking up Wikipedia's definition of icons. It was dry. Incredibly dry.So, I'll distill it for you, like this:Icons are symbols. They're images of things that stand for something universally recognized and in particular. They're often representational things - like animals, people or objects that have certain characteristics. They can also be more abstract - like the cross or a Valentine's heart.Let's take a look at the three kinds of icons I called out above - how they work and how you...

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American Pain: The Largest U.S. Pill Mill's Rise and Fall

Christopher George and his twin brother Jeffrey opened their first pain clinic in a strip mall on the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale in 2008. There were a couple of rooms and a handful of doctors. No appointment was necessary.It was a good year to be in the business of servicing people in pain. The economy was tanking. The real estate market was in free fall. People were losing their homes, businesses, savings, and jobs, and looking for an escape from their discomfort. The George brothers ran an ecumenical clinic. Their doctors didn’t discriminate among the causes of human suffering—be it back pain, fibromyalgia, toothaches, cancer, depression, divorce, boredom, mental illness, unemployment, hip replacement, or withdrawal symptoms.Just...

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