Services > Publishing

• Publications consulting
• Client newsletters
• Contract publishing

Publications consulting:
Strategic planning to ensure success

Information sells. Successful publications give accurate information and generate ideas that help your clients run their businesses. They also create a demand for more information about your services and your products.

At The Business Word, we are not just another free-lance writing or design firm. Rather, we are specialists in publications consulting and management.

We take the marketing approach. When you become our client, we help you develop marketing objectives and strategies, and we become your publications consultants and managers.

At The Business Word, we are editors, marketing strategists, financial managers and futurists. We know how to help you:

• Identify your readers and their interests.
• Evaluate your competition.
• Develop a solid editorial plan.
• Design a format that will entice readers.
• Position your publication as must read material.
• Determine costs and set budgets.
• Target important sources for advertising revenue.
• Sell subscriptions and renewals.
• Organize and maintain your circulation department.

The Business Word has consulted on and produced publications and articles on parenting, health care, architecture, management, finance, banking, law, marketing, insurance, employee benefits and economics.

We know how to make your publication successful. We can help you:

• Do feasibility studies and business plans for publications.
• Develop and produce magazines and newsletters.
• Redesign magazines and newsletters.
• Evaluate existing publications.
• Evaluate ideas for new publications.
• Hire editorial and production staff for publications.
• Plan circulation strategies.
• Plan advertising sales strategies.
• Prepare sales presentations and media kits.
• Buy and sell publications.

If your publication is worth printing, it is worth doing well.

Client newsletters:
Information that sells—and sells you

Information sells. Successful newsletters give accurate information and generate ideas that help clients run their businesses more smoothly and efficiently. A successful newsletter:

• Demands to be read.
• Showcases your specialized knowledge and concern for your clients and prospects.
• Develops and helps to enhance your image.
• Increases communication with your clients without requiring you to add sales personnel.
• Informs clients about your products, services and promotions.
• Provides a continual, low-cost stream of information about you and your industry.

The best newsletters give readers information they will not find elsewhere. By publishing an authoritative and interesting publication, you show that your firm is service oriented. Your readers anticipate your newsletter and keep it as an essential source of information.

Let us help you.

We know how to highlight your expertise and enhance your corporate image. Our consultants are experts at positioning newsletters for maximum impact. We do the work for you, freeing your staff for other projects. We cut the dozens of hours you would need to produce a newsletter to a few minutes of planning and approval over the phone for each issue.

Our timely production scheduling guarantees your newsletter will be done on time and within budget.

We maintain a full-time staff that can give your newsletter the continuity of attention needed for a consistent editorial product.

Our team of professional business writers, editors and designers are skilled in communicating with your top executives and managers to elicit information of vital interest to your readers—and we will present it in a visually stimulating package.

Our state-of-the-art desktop production system allows us to make your changes quickly and inexpensively.

We feature your product and service information, incorporating your brochures and reply cards to leverage your investment.

We print and mail your newsletters. Let us eliminate the hassles of printing, maintaining mailing lists and dealing with the post office—chores often imposed on managers and staffers with more pressing duties.

At The Business Word, we take a marketing approach. We see information itself as a selling tool. When you become our client, we help you develop marketing objectives and strategies and become your publications consultants and managers.

Contract publishing:
When your magazine needs to be turned around

"Our magazine is losing money, ad sales aren't what they should be, the mailing list is a disaster and we never make deadlines. How can you turn this situation around?"

The simple answer is that we will put experts to work on your publication--people you cannot afford full-time.

You need a professional publisher to develop your business plan, prepare your budget, negotiate with your printer, manage your sales people, hire a strong staff and keep you informed. Each of these tasks should take only a few hours a month. When your publisher is doubling as editor, sales person or circulation manager, that person is doing only one of those jobs well. He or she may be spread too thin to do anything well.

You need an editorial pro to develop your editorial strategy, plan issues and supervise the production of each issue. Again, this takes only a few hours a month. Lower level editors and desktop publishers should produce the magazine. Your circulation manager should be strong enough to work on several publications. And you may share a sales person with one or more publications.

If your magazine is losing money, you can afford the best people only if you share them. As managers, we believe people are as good as the system allows them to be. The Business Word is continuously improving publishing techniques and systems that we've been perfecting for years. We provide all of our employees with Macs and the software they need for desktop publishing, ad sales, circulation management and accounting. We give them in-depth training, continuing feedback, encouragement and the resources they need to do their jobs well. Most important, our people are given a lot of autonomy and the authority to solve your problems. Because they, in a sense, "own" your magazine, they become very involved in your industry and dedicated to the success of your publication.

Successful magazines have strong editorial products, well defined audiences, competitive ad rates, creative ad sales people and publishers who cut costs without cutting corners. Whatever your budget, we can find a way to bring these advantages to your magazine.

The Business Word is in business to help you make the most of your magazine's franchise. Under our management, your magazine will:

• Boost sales.
• Reduce costs.
• Improve quality.
• Meet deadlines.
• Impress subscribers.

Think of The Business Word as your publisher and editor--an employee with our own employees. You retain the authority and control that you have with your own staff. The difference is that we come to you with publishing expertise and the ability to help you develop your business strategy and implement it.

For a free assessment of your magazine's potential, call Donald E.L. Johnson at 303-290-8500.