Don't get beat by the system: ALTCS/Arizona Medicaid Planning

We recently finished a website for Hall Long Term Care Services.  The site is www.needaltcs.com. Hall Long Term Care Services helps in ALTCS/Arizona Medicaid related financial planning.
It doesn't matter which side of the health care battle you're on, one thing is clear.  The longer we live the more likely it is that we will spend at least some time in a special or long-term care facility.  Sometimes called "nursing homes," long term care facilities help take the load off of hospitals and help reduce our overall health care costs. 
As it should be, the patient and their own insurance should cover as much of this expense as possible.  But after those funds ruin out, much of the financing to cover the costs of this care is done through Medicaid. (In Arizona, Medicaid is known as ALTCS or the Arizona Long Term Care System.) The costs can devastate a family's finances.  And the other partner can find themselves penniless.
Qualifying for ALTCS can be difficult. Like Medicare, there are some "donuts" that can costs you tens of thousands of dollars, and like taxes, there are ways to be sure you don't pay more than you need to.
That's where Hall Long Term Care Services can help.  Like a tax consultant, they can help you prepare for ALTCS/Medicare qualification with financial planning advice that will help you avoid the donuts and protect your assets.  Visti www.needaltcs.com for more information.

New McMail Newsletter!

Mark Tollefson at MarkIdeas.com has put out his first newsletter using our McMail Email Marketing Software.
Mark is a brilliant marketing strategist and immensely creative marketer who has a lot to say about growing your business.
I'm sure you'll enjoy his Strategy, Marketing and Motivation Ideas. 
Just click the link to read it. If you like what you see, the sign up form is on the left side of the page.

The Newsletter Archive page you see is a free extra you get with a McMail Email Blast Newsletter.  While competing email marketing services charge $5 a month extra to create your newsletter archive, at McMail, it's FREE.   To learn more about McMail Email Marketing Software and how easy it is to start a successful email newsletter, call us at McColley Marketing Media - 480-258-4135.

Here's the problem...the names have been changed to protect...

...to protect...to protect... the guilty, I guess.  I found this ad on Craigslist today. 

So, when you fork over 4-5 hundred dollars to buy an ad in this magazine, your ad will likely be created by someone who is getting paid in gift certificates!
I have to explain something that not every small business owner understands:  The most important part of your ad, isn't where it's seen or heard, or even how many people are exposed to it.  The most important part of any ad is what you say and how you say it. 
If your ad doesn't reach out and grab the buyer, you've wasted your money.  Period.
Now take a look at the nearest piece of media.  Go ahead,  I'll wait.
Start on page one and turn until you find an ad where the logo is small and the headline is big.  Then see if the headline says anything other than "Our store is best." 
(Things like "Unbeatable Prices" and "No One Undersells Us" are just another way of saying "Our store is Best").
How many pages did you have to go?
The ads you passed violate the most important rule in effective advertising: "Talk about the buyers needs, not the sellers."
And, unless they were in the magazine above, there's a pretty good chance they were created by ad designers who get paid cash money.  "Professionals."
Imagine the expertise of someone who is getting paid in bowling certificates and movie passes.
Media only deserve to exist if they can do an effective job of (1) getting an audience and (2) converting that audience into buyers for the sponsors.  If the owners of media don't understand those two requirements, they need to join the buggy whip manufacturers in the history books.  Which is what is happening to a lot of ineffective media these days.

Need help making your marketing dollars work harder?  Give us a call.  McColley Marketing Media. 480-258-4135.

How are you doing on your 2010 goals?

It’s almost December, the last month of the year.  How are you doing on your goals for this year?

Chances are some of them are lagging a little behind what you wanted – hopefully not all of them, though.

I’m a great believer in “The Secret” and all that power of attraction stuff.  I also preach about being mentally focused on the things you want and want to accomplish.

But there is a missing element in all that. In fact, in some ways those “power of positive thinking” things can hurt you if you think that’s all you have to do.

You have to do the work. 

I’ve just spent the last 5 weeks with my head down while finishing up a set of six websites.  They’re for a big player in the radio/tv audio field and we launched 3 of them a week ago and 3 more just went up.   Just in time for a major marketing push they have going on for the end of the year.

It was an interesting project.  We started last spring, but as we got started, they realized they need to look a little more holistically at their web strategy.  So they put the project on hold while they got input from some of their partners and consultants.

Then, 6 weeks ago – the first day of my vacation – they solidified their plan.  And they wanted to get the sites all done in 2 weeks – one of which was my vacation.  We got a short reprieve but some trade magazine marketing was set for mid-November with no way to change things.

They are huge sites – while an average business site might be 5 or 10 megabites in size, these sites are each 30 times larger.  They have lots of technical information and graphics that show off details of their high end products.

The only way to get that kind of work done is to put your head down and ignore all distractions.  I have to commend the team on their end for some very long hours in getting this done.

So back to where I started.  What about your goals for the year?

You’ve still got 4 weeks.

Do you need to turn up your effort a bit?

A little change can make a big difference.  Think about hot water.  At 211 degrees it will burn your skin and you can cook an egg – but raise it just one more notch – to 212 degrees and you make steam.

And steam can power a locomotive.

You’ve got a month to go…lets make some steam!

If part of your goal set for 2010 involved getting your web site working harder, we would love to be involved.  We do small business web site design, internet marketing, and email marketing.  Call McColley Marketing Media at 480-258-4135.

Kudos to the team at Wheatstone

Wheatstone is the preeminent maker of audio control boards for the radio and television broadcasting industry.  Their equipment is the best out there.  And they've jumped into the digital world and created some very cool products for using networking and even the internet for getting sound from studios to transmitters and your home, car and office.
I was contacted last spring by an engineer friend who had recently joined the company and was put in charge of refocusing their web presence and getting them heavily into social media as well. 
He wanted Joomla for their site's content management system - something I've been working with since the beginning. 
Long story short.  We've just relaunched six Wheatstone websites with new branding.  And a Wheatstone blog, too.
Kudos to Scott Johnson and Mike Shane at Wheatstone for their mad dash to the finish line, and thanks to Bob Martin at RTM Creative, Wheatstone's agency who is responsible for much of the "look" of the sites.
Take a look at the Wheatstone corporate site, then follow through to any of the brand sites from there.
Wheatstone Radio
Wheatstone Television
Wheatstone Commercial
Vorsis
Audioarts Engineering
I'd love to hear what you think.

If you would like to get more out of your website, let’s talk! We do small business web site design, internet marketing, and email marketing.  Call McColley Marketing Media at 480-258-4135.

Introducing www.coolidgecc.org

May I introduce www.coolidgecc.org!
We just launched the site tonite.  Coolidge Christian Church is a small church in Coolidge Arizona. 
Many church sites today look like they were designed for rock bands.  Grungy graphics, huge splashy slide shows.  Of course, many churches today have rock bands and big multimedia presentations with video and animations and grungy graphics.  They also have full time graphics people and music directors and...who knows what all.  And 10,000 members to pay for it all.
No kidding, there's a help wanted ad for a church in my area that is looking for a full time graphic artist right now. They're saying they have 10,000 members. 
I've lived and worked in towns smaller than that.
Coolidge Christian Church is more than a little bit short of 10,000 members right now...hey, the whole town of Coolidge isn't much bigger than 10,000.  
But Coolidge Christian Church is looking to grow!  The church is small town conservative in style and members are, on average,  a little older than the rock band church's membership. 
Knowing all that, their website is a bit conservative in design, too.  And since they won't have a full time staff working on the site, we designed it to have incredibly low weekly maintenance - yet it has dynamic, fresh content all the time.  And when they do their updates, it's a simple as can be - no special coding or anything needed.
Let me know what you think of it if you get a chance.  And if you're anywhere near Coolidge AZ on a Sunday morning...you know you have a friendly place to drop in on.

How to have a BREAKTHROUGH Holiday Season

No all of us have a retail driven business, but the end of the year is also the end of the budget year for a large number of companies and even in these tight spending times, the use-it-or-lose-it madness of budgeting can still make for a great end of the year.

Have you ever hired or worked with a consultant?

I’ve had the good fortune to be involved with and work for a couple of consultants in a couple of fields over the years.

Most consultants make their living by learning about several different industries and then taking the good ideas from one and transforming it for another. It’s a proven idea; all you do is introduce it to someone who has never seen it.  You become the hero and get hired again and again.

But I had another consultant tell me the secret of being a great consultant.  No cross-industry pollination is needed.

You go into a business and interview all the key players.  As you’re interviewing them you ask, “What do you think needs to be done to get your business rocking?”

In the final report, you list these in some order of precedence and you put a price on getting each of them done.  Then you help them keep on track.

So save yourself $10,000 this week.

Make a list of the Top 10 things your business needs.  Then pick one and do it.  That’s it.  No out-of-town consultant needed.  You already know what your business needs.  Do it.

Your Holiday Season will thank you.

If your needs fall under the banner of Marketing and Advertising, give me a call.  It never hurts to get a fresh pair of eyes on your plans (and I won't charge you $10,000 for a consultation).

Congratulations to Tires Tires Tires!

The word has been leaked.  One of my web design clients has been given a huge industry award.  Tires Tires Tires has been named "America's Best Dealer" by Tire Review Magazine.  It was supposed to be kept a secret until Monday night's big "Top Shop Award" dinner in Las Vegas.  Congratulations to Dan and Dale and Gary and everyone at Tires3.com for getting some pretty sweet - and much deserved - recognition!  Find out why they earned the award - read the Top Shop Award article.

Fear - we're getting it all wrong...

We flew back to South Dakota last week and my 10 year old grandson got pretty nervous when he started reading signs at the airport. The threat level was “high”.

He wasn't so sure we should be getting on the plane. Luckily it's not too difficult to redirect the attention of a 10 year old and we got him on the plane. And everything turned out fine.

In fact, the odds of dying in a terrorist attack are infinitesimal. But they make great fodder for fear-mongering by newspeople and politicians. Newspeople for the ratings, politicans for the votes.

There's was an interesting article on Fear in Psychology Today that says we have it all wrong.

Our fear mechanisms were developed in the days when we were often the prey and not the predator. Even now if you go walking in the desert and hear a rattlesnake you're going to freeze – that's your instincts taking over. But that fear mechanism that helps hide you from the motion sensitive sight of a predator is exactly the wrong reaction to a modern situation where a car is suddenly veering toward you.

Our primitive instincts screw up our reactions - and our thinking.

Studies have shown that after 9-11, one and a half million people cancelled their holiday flying plans and drove instead. Looking back at traffic casualties, an additional 1000 people died as a result.

People who wear seatbelts drive faster. Have a big 4-wheel drive? You don't get a superman's cape with that, but you drive like it – and have more accidents in lousy weather than people with sedans.

We think that marijuana is more dangerous than football for our teens. No one has died of a marijuana overdose, but about a dozen high school football players died of injuries in 2006. Last year 5 died.

Sunshine kills multitudes more than nuclear power. But big 9-11 type incidents like 3-mile Island and Chernobyl hit the news and get pounded into our psyches.

We're wearing pink ribbons and doing 3 day walks for breast cancer – but heart disease kills more women than all kinds of cancer combined.

• 6 times as many people die of diabetes than aids

• appendicitis kills more than salmonella

• and malnutrition kills more than pregnancy and childbirth

But if you watch the news, follow the ads, and listen to the politicians you get a completely different impression.

Here's a good example: which killed more Americans: Bird Flu or Mad Cow Disease?

It's a trick question, neither killed any Americans. In fact, over the last 30 years, if you combine the deaths of both mad cow disease and bird flu, the number is less than 500 - worldwide.

But both dominated the airwaves and scared people into buying flu shots or wearing masks or cutting down on beef they ate. Great for big pharma and bad for agriculture.

Roosevelt had it right – the problem is fear itself. Constant stress is harmful to us physically and mentally. Heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, lowered immunity, even memory and formation of bone are affected. Depression is rampant.

Maybe that’s why you're more likely to die of suicide than homicide.

This week, look at your fears and assess the real risks – get some real numbers, not opinions. Then take one positive action that goes against a fear that might be holding you back.

Oh, and shut off the media until after the election.

For use 10/26/2010 at the Scottsdale Innovators business leads group - BNI

Lynn McColley

Small Business Web Site Design from McColley Marketing Media

Wedding

We're in South Dakota right now, we've been enjoying the fall colors after the big wedding weekend for our youngest son.  I'll post some pictures as soon as they are available.

Sub Zero Ice Cream Grand Opening

If you're lucky enough to live here in the Valley, you'll want to make a trip to Stapley and Baseline.  Sub Zero Ice Cream is having their Grand Opening starting tomorrow. 
In addition to the most incredible Ice Cream, they've got neat ideas for the Grand Opening. (Saturday the 2nd through Saturday the 9th - closed Sundays)
First, you'll get a regular sized ice cream for the price of a small!
Second, you can sign up for prizes, including an iPad and three catered Ice Cream Parties.  If you think about it...They're new, how many people will go through the door in one week?  Your chance of winning that iPad you've been dreaming of is really pretty good.
Check out their website Sub Zero AZ Ice Cream.  I'll take credit for that one.

The Social Network

I got invited to a special sneak preview of "The Social Network," the movie about the early days of Facebook and how it came to be the powerhouse that it is.
Early rumors had said it was going to be very critical of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  I think he came off as brilliant but socially inept most of the time - although a couple of incidents are hinted at that might make him sinister.
The person who comes off the worst is Napster founder Shawn Fanning who got involved just as Facebook was starting to get big.  He's the big bad guy.
A word of caution here.  The movie was released by Sony and Columbia - both of whom own record companies and have lots of reasons to hate the first big file sharing website's founder.
Overall, I liked it - and the rest of the audience seemed to as well.  If you're a Facebook user (and with 500 million users its a safe bet that you are), you might like to know more about the site that everyone loves to hate - at least a little bit.  Go see it!.
BTW, thanks to Andrew at Underdog Studios for the tickets.

Scottsdale Innovators BNI Chapter picture

A picture of some of the members of the <a href="http:www.scottsdaleinnovators.com">Scottsdale Innovators BNI Chapter</a>. We meet every Tuesday at the Rock Bottom at Desert Ridge.

Scottsdale innovators of BNI

A picture of the members of the Scottsdale Innovators BNI Chapter.  We meet every Tuesday at Rock Bottom in Desert Ridge.

The Medium is the Massage - a bad advertising decision

I should have turned around a taken a picture. Let me set a mental picture instead. It's 106 degrees - a warm day for late
September in Phoenix. I'm driving back to the office from a meeting. Up
ahead on the right there is a sign spinner. Local businesses hire people to
stand by the road and direct people to their business. He's not as active
as some of the really talented sign spinners, but he's holding a sandwich
board type sign and pointing at his employer's office.
As soon as I get close enough to read the sign, I know this guy is doing
more harm than good. He appears like he's homeless. I don't see his
clothes because of the sign, but his hair is showing & it hasn't been washed
in several days, he's got a grizzled beard and, while he might be a nice guy
looking for work, he appears to be someone you might cross the street to
avoid walking past.
The business he's spinning for: a therapeutic massage business.
My immediate thought connected the perception of this guy spinning the sign
with the idea of getting a nice relaxing massage. It wasn't a pretty
picture.
So many times we look at marketing as tasks that need to be accomplished (I
need a sign spinner from 4-6pm) rather than the perception we need to
generate (I have a clean professional office where you can relax and escape
the worries of the day).
I just thought it might be hurtful to the sign spinner to publish his
picture with this kind of rant, so I skipped the camera.
By the way, Google "The Medium is the Massage" for some marketing thoughts
from Marshal McLuhan.
If you need some nice signs made for spinning, I've got a couple of creative
contacts both here in Phoenix and in Sioux Falls. Drop me a line or contact
me through the McMarketingMedia home site

Hunting and Farming

Hunting and Farming - Reach and Frequency - Chamber and BNI

Some important thoughts concerning Social Media usage in your small business internet marketing.

I spent my morning in a training class for BNI.  I’m the outgoing president of my group, the Scottsdale Innovators.  I’m moving over to be a support team member now, and needed a refresher class to make sure I’m up to speed on my new duties.

In response to a question about what BNI was, someone in the class said it was a place the “meet and get to know” other business professionals who would help them grow their business.

“Meet and get to know”

If you’ve never heard of it, BNI - Business Networking International, has 125,000 members worldwide who meet every week in groups averaging 21 members.  Every week, these same people meet in the same group to trade referrals.  The interesting thing is: the longer you’re in the group, the more your response grows.  Compare that to a big group like the Chamber.  Go to a mixer with 300 people and you have to “work the room” to collect cards for followup.

In advertising it’s called Reach and Frequency.  If you’ve got a great offer and put that message out one time, you’ll “reach” that media’s audience once and, if the audience is huge like network TV, you’ll get a decent return on investment.  If you use a media like local radio, you won’t reach as many people, but the prices are less so you can run more ads.  Your initial response might not justify the expense.  But if you keep at it consistently, your response rates will grow dramatically.

In real estate sales, smart agents will stake out a neighborhood and become the “expert.”  It means that they advertise over and over to the same people in the knowledge that as people “get to know” them, they will eventually call them when it’s time to sell their home in that neighborhood. They call it ‘farming” as opposed to “hunting” for people in the market right now. 

Both systems work.  Hunters eat tonight.  Farmers will starve in the short run, but their pantry will be overflowing when the harvest comes in.

Social media is definitely a farming/frequency type of media.  If you’re going to get into social media be prepared to wait for your efforts to payoff.  The good news is the surveys I’ve seen show that companies that  are in it for a year or more say they are planning on spending more in the future – which is a good indication that their investment is beginning to pay off.

P.S.  One other thought.  Social media is more like small group networking than advertising.  It’s a two way street.  Unlike regular advertising where you “broadcast” a message to the masses, social media is a “get to know” media where you talk and then…listen.  If you skip that second step, you’ll find it hard to be successful in the new media future.

The First Rule of Internet Marketing

If you're investing in internet marketing, Rule #1 is: Keep Your Website On.

For the third time this year, I have had a client let their website expire and the site go dark.

The Three Parts of the First Rule of Internet Marketing:

1.      Print, then save in a file, all of the receipts from your domain registration service, your hosting company and your web designer. Include all of your passwords for the various accounts.

2.      Put your anniversary dates into your planner so you’ll know when things are about to expire.

3.      Keep your hosting company, web designer and domain registration service accounts up to date. In particular make sure each has your active email, one that isn't tied to your domain name (if it expires, your email will, too).

4.      Don't ignore emails from any of the above. In fact, your webmaster would love to get a forward from you asking “Is this important?” rather than go through the process of trying to get your site back up after the files have be removed.

Lets give a little link love to my custom kitchen designs client: Top Shelf Interiors.

An added note. Unless you hired a large established agency to build your website, don't count on them being there next year...or even next month. When your site goes live, get a full copy of the site files in CD or DVD to put into the file folder with the account information. It's good insurance in case your designer or your hosting company goes away.

Click here to download:

image001.emz (17 KB)