Blog Archives

Seven Rules For Successful Brochure Marketing

4/27/2010

Print brochures are made with marketing in mind. They are not just print collateral which graphic designers use to exhibit their expertise. Your brochure aims to attract the attention of your target audience so you can increase the profits of your practice.

Here are some suggestions so you can create a design for your brochures to better engage your target audience with your message:

1. Create a design that talks

Do not just make your print brochures visual displays of your services. Use your graphics and text to communicate to your target audience your message. Mix and match these two elements so you can provide more effective marketing collateral for your practice. Make sure that your text supports the graphics in your brochure, and vice versa. The end goal is to have it easy for your readers to understand your message.

2. Be unique

Offer your readers something distinctly yours. Capitalize on what you have to build your brand value. By providing your present and prospective patients your unique benefits, you’ll have more chances of getting them interested in your services.

3. Always keep it sweet and simple

This is not just a basic rule for nothing. It is what draws the line between an effective marketing tool and a failed one. By keeping it simple and brief, you will make it easier for your target audience to understand your message right away so they can make a wise decision regarding your services.

4. Determine your font size

A font size that is larger than the standard size can get you attention. Not only that, but it makes your text readable, which in turn can help your target audience understand what you want to say to them.

5. Create sections in your brochure

Dividing your brochure into sections can again help your target audience to better understand your message. Do not overwhelm them with too much information. Instead, break your data into bite-size chunks so they can go straight to the topic they need.

6. Always offer quality

It should not mean that although you have a relatively inexpensive brochure, that it should also look cheap. There are ways and means to look professional without having to break your budget. Ask BAC Medical Marketing for suggestions on how you can save on your costs without sacrificing the quality of your marketing collateral.

7. Lastly, represent your brand image in your brochures.

Always remember that your marketing collateral represents who you are and what you can do for your target audience. So make sure that your print brochures embody everything that is you, which makes you distinct from the rest of the competition.

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An Appreciative Heart Is Good Medicine

4/20/2010

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Reprinted below is the seventh in a series of articles from our newest client, HeartMath, LLC, that deals with how stress impacts our lives and what can be done to relieve it.

Psychologists once maintained that emotions were purely mental expressions generated by the brain alone. We now know that this is not true – emotions have as much to do with the heart and body as they do with the brain. Of the bodily organs, the heart plays a particularly important role in our emotional experience. The experience of an emotion results from the brain, heart, and body acting in concert.

The Institute of HeartMath (www.heartmath.org), a research center dedicated to the study of the heart and the physiology of emotions, has conducted numerous studies identifying the relationship between emotions and the heart. A number of their studies have provided new insight into understanding how the activity of the heart is indeed linked to our emotions and our health, vitality and well-being.

Emotions and the Heart

Recent HeartMath studies define a critical link between the heart and brain. The heart is in a constant two-way dialog with the brain – our emotions change the signals the brain sends to the heart and the heart responds in complex ways. However, we now know that the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. And the brain responds to the heart in many important ways. This research explains how the heart responds to emotional and mental reactions and why certain emotions stress the body and drain our energy. As we experience feelings like anger, frustration, anxiety and insecurity, our heart rhythm patterns become more erratic. These erratic patterns are sent to the emotional centers in the brain which it recognizes as negative or stressful feelings. These signals create the actual feelings we experience in heart area and body. The erratic heart rhythms also block our ability to think clearly.

Many studies have found that the risk of developing heart disease is significantly increased for people who often experience stressful emotions such as irritation, anger or frustration. These emotions create a chain reaction in the body – stress hormone levels increase, blood vessels constrict, blood pressure rises, and the immune system is weakened. If we consistently experience these emotions, it can put a strain on the heart and other organs, and eventually lead to serious health problems.

Conversely, HeartMath’s research shows that when we experience heart-felt emotions like love, care, appreciation and compassion the heart produces a very different rhythm. In this case it is a smooth pattern that looks like gently rolling hills. Harmonious heart rhythms, which reflect positive emotions, are considered to be indicators of cardiovascular efficiency and nervous system balance. This lets the brain know that the heart feels good and often creates a gentle warm feeling in the area of the heart. Learning to shift out of stressful emotional reactions to these heartfelt emotions can have profound positive effects on the cardiovascular system and our overall health. It is easy to see how our heart and emotions are linked and how we can shift our heart into a more efficient state by monitoring its rhythms.

Benefits Come From Being Appreciative

The feeling of appreciation is one of the most concrete and easiest positive emotions for individuals to self-generate and sustain for longer periods. Almost anyone can find something to genuinely appreciate. By simply recalling a time when you felt sincere appreciation and recreating that feeling, you can increase your heart rhythm coherence, reduce emotional stress and improve your health.

For people for who may initially find it difficult to self-generate a feeling of appreciation in the present moment, experts suggest that they recall a past memory that elicits warm feelings. With practice, most people are able to self-generate feelings of appreciation in real time and no longer need the past time reference. Dr. Rollin McCraty, Director of Research for the Institute of HeartMath, says, “It’s important to emphasize that it is not a mental image of a memory that creates a shift in our heart rhythm, but rather the emotions associated with the memory. Mental images alone usually do not produce the same significant results that we’ve observed when someone focuses on a positive feeling.”

Positive emotion-focused techniques, like those developed by HeartMath, can help individuals effectively replace stressful thoughts and emotional patterns with more positive perceptions and emotions. One of the long-term benefits to be gained from the practice of these kinds of techniques is increased emotional awareness. This increased awareness can help individuals maintain a more consistent emotional balance, a fundamental step in the process of improving cardiovascular health.

Diet and exercise will continue to be an important factor in keeping the heart healthy. However, there is increasing awareness of the importance of maintaining a healthy emotional state for those recovering from heart-related illnesses, as well as for maintaining heart health. Studies have shown that HeartMath’s positive emotion-focused techniques reduce stress and anxiety, which is a safe and effective way to lower blood pressure and increase functional capacity in heart failure patients. This approach is currently being used in a number of hospitals and cardiac rehabilitation programs around the country.

Copyright © HeartMath. Since 1991 HeartMath has been dedicated to decoding the underlying mechanics of stress. HeartMath is internationally recognized for their solutions to transform the stress of change and uncertainty, and bring coherence and renewed energy into people’s lives. Research and clinical studies conducted by HeartMath have examined emotional physiology, heart-brain interactions, and the physiology of learning and performance. Through their research they have demonstrated the critical link between emotions, heart function, and cognitive performance. HeartMath’s work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals such as American Journal of Cardiology, Stress Medicine, and Preventive Cardiology, as well as business journals such as Harvard Business Review and Leadership Excellence. HeartMath’s organizational clients include NASA, BP, Duke University Health System, Stanford Business School, Redken, Kaiser Permanente, Boeing, and Cisco Systems, as well as dozens of school systems and thousands of health professionals around the world. To learn more about HeartMath, go to www.heartmath.com.

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A Special Offer For Mom From Crocs.com

4/13/2010

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BAC Medical Marketing and Crocs.com are pound to partner to offer our web site visitors a very special Mother’s Day offer (Please see specific details below).

Crocs, Inc. is a designer, manufacturer and retailer of footwear for men, women and children under the Crocs™ brand.

All Crocs™ brand shoes feature Crocs’ proprietary closed-cell resin, Croslite™, which represents a substantial innovation in footwear. The Croslite™ material enables Crocs to produce soft, comfortable, lightweight, superior-gripping, non-marking and odor-resistant shoes. These unique elements make Crocs™ footwear ideal for casual wear, as well as for professional and recreational uses such as boating, hiking, hospitality and gardening. The versatile use of the material has enabled Crocs to successfully market its products to a broad range of consumers.

Crocs™ shoes are sold in more than 125 countries and come in a wide array of colors and styles.

Current Offer:

Click on this link – http://www.BACMedicalMarketing.com/Affiliate-Program-5.html and click on the Crocs.com banner ad to access the Crocs.com web site. Take 15% off Crocs.com purchases over $100.00 now thru May 9, 2010 with code MOM15 at checkout.

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Are We Resigned To Stress?

4/6/2010

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HeartMath Stress Experts Say We Can Significantly Reduce Our Stress By Understanding How Our Emotions Work.

Reprinted below is the sixth in a series of articles from our newest client, HeartMath, LLC, that deals with how stress impacts our lives and what can be done to relieve it.

In the 1950’s a noted researcher named Hans Selye popularized the term stress for the first time. Selye said: “Everyone knows what stress is, but in reality nobody knows.” Today, however, we are learning more about the underlying mechanics of stress as science helps to unravel the mysteries of emotions. HeartMath, a globally recognized authority on the physiology of and relationship between stress and emotions, has spent the last 17 years decoding the underlying mechanics of stress. HeartMath experts say the subtler day-to-day stressors are breeding an attitude of resignation towards stress. Stress can become engrained in our brain’s neural circuitry, forming unhealthy habits that drain us emotionally. HeartMath studies show we can significantly reduce the amount of stress we experience by understanding how our emotions work (www.heartmath.com).

Our accelerated lifestyle has contributed to a mindset that living with daily irritations, anger, frustration, low-grade anxiety, and hopeless feelings is normal. After all, many people you know feel this way. A recent survey conducted by the National Consumers League shows that adults are considerably more stressed now than they were five years ago or even one year ago.

Most of us have tried different approaches to dealing with our stress, but find we don’t have the time to stick with it, or maybe we feel a temporary relief but the stress returns soon after. Feeling we’ve run out of options, we tend to defer stress with the mind by talking ourselves into believing that’s just the way life is. Deferring stress is the same as resigning to stress or believing it’s a force we can’t change.

In a recent study conducted by Dr. Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and her colleagues, researchers observed a significant resignation in young people, with many kids feeling like nothing they do matters. The project studied more than 25,000 young people and found a strong increase in cynicism, helplessness and general negativity. Stress affects everyone from young children to adults, and experts are concerned that if we don’t put more emphasis on stress and the core emotional causes, we could be looking at a generation that will progressively develop a crystallized “whatever” attitude towards life.

HeartMath researchers say stress and emotions cannot be separated. Dr. Rollin McCraty, director of research for the Institute of HeartMath, says, “Ongoing low-grade stress can do more harm to the body, mind, and emotions than one large stressful event can.

“We’ve studied the physiology of stress in thousands of people of all ages over the last seventeen years. One common factor we’ve observed is that although someone can ‘think’ they’re not stressed or defer it as just an irritation or a low-grade anxiety, the stress reaction has already been triggered. The body is responding more strongly to what the person really feels; the body registers even the subtler everyday irks and frustrations as stress.”

Psychologist Deborah Rozman, Ph.D., founding partner of the HeartMath System and co-author of Transforming Stress: The HeartMath Solution for Relieving Worry, Fatigue, and Tension, says, “The majority of people believe that emotions just happen to them. We haven’t been taught that we can shift out of stressful emotions. But it’s important to understand that stress is accumulated by carrying around unsettled or negative feelings without resolving them. The lack of understanding about how to address our emotions is one of the real causes for today’s stress epidemic.”

Our brain’s neural circuitry is designed to create habits to make it easier to perform tasks without having to think much about them. Each time you repeat a habit, whether an attitude, a behavior, or a repetitive task like driving a car, it becomes more reinforced and automatic. According to HeartMath researchers, the same is true with stress.

The subtler or more mechanical everyday emotional reactions tend to go unnoticed and accumulate. Experts say this eventually this leads to resignation, low-grade anxiety, and low-grade depression.

Dr. Rozman says, “Stress accumulates because we keep storage bins of emotional reactions to people and situations. These storage bins keep us reacting in the same old way over and over. We resign and feel that’s just the way it is, and continue to fill these storage bins with frustrations, hurts and resentments.”

The subtle stressors we tend to ignore are generally everyday occurrences. Dr. McCraty gives this example: “Have you ever received an email from someone you recently had a frustrating conversation with? As soon as you see the sender’s name you experience feelings of dread and irritation. The past experience triggers unresolved feelings about that person. The reason you feel this is because you’ve stored these feelings in your amygdala.”

McCraty explains that the amygdala is an almond-shaped neuro-structure in the brain. It stores emotional memories to help you make instant decisions and cross-references these memories to help you avoid a threat. For instance, if you were bitten by a dog as a child you might feel anxiety in the future when you see another dog. Or if you have accumulated feelings about a certain relative who treats you with disrespect, then each time they call, a feeling of irk gets triggered and you experience that accumulated stress all over again.

One way HeartMath experts say you can stop the negative emotional experiences from accumulating is to learn to track the more subtle emotional reactions. They suggest thinking of the emotions as sound effects. Your outer sound effects, such as sighs, swear words, negative humor, and expressions whispered under your breath can give you clues to the real feelings underneath. Your “inner sonics” like ugh, silent swear words, and feeling that things have “gone south” go on all the time and affect your next thoughts and choices.

Many people believe that the mind rules. But HeartMath results show that it’s our emotions that are shaping much of our thinking and, more often than not, determining our choices and behaviors.

Accumulated stress can actually prevent us from finding the creative solutions we need to better deal with stress. Whether an irritation triggered by a relative or co-worker, or low-grade anxiety triggered by current news events, HeartMath’s research shows that stress compromises our cognitive abilities. We can’t think as clearly or as creatively and we have a harder time making decisions.

Becoming more aware of the subtler or more mechanical everyday stressors – and learning to release the stress so it doesn’t accumulate in an emotional storage bin – will go a long way in helping people feel less emotional drain, stress, and anxiety.

HeartMath research has been distilled into simple strategies and learning programs that can significantly help to reduce stress. Fortune 100 companies are using HeartMath’s techniques and technologies to improve employee performance and lower organizational healthcare costs. Hospitals and healthcare organizations around the country are using the techniques and technologies to help employees and patients alike. HeartMath’s corporate and healthcare clients include Cisco Systems, Duke University Health System, Boeing, Liz Claiborne, Shell, Unilever, Ohio Hospital Association, and the Stanford Business School, among others.

One of HeartMath’s award-winning programs is called the emWave® PC Stress Relief System. This patented software program uses a special finger sensor that allows you to see in real-time on your computer monitor how your emotions are affecting you.

The program’s tutorial teaches the user HeartMath’s scientifically validated techniques. HeartMath results show that with even a little practice you’ll quickly learn to recognize the more subtle and mechanical stress reactions and how to transform them into productive and creative energy and solutions.

HeartMath also offers a handheld technology called emWave Personal Stress Reliever®, which also gives you the same real-time benefits with the convenience of being a mobile technology (www.emwave.com).

For more on the emWave PC Stress Relief System go to www.emwavepc.com.

Copyright © HeartMath. Since 1991 HeartMath has been dedicated to decoding the underlying mechanics of stress. HeartMath is internationally recognized for their solutions to transform the stress of change and uncertainty, and bring coherence and renewed energy into people’s lives. Research and clinical studies conducted by HeartMath have examined emotional physiology, heart-brain interactions, and the physiology of learning and performance. Through their research they have demonstrated the critical link between emotions, heart function, and cognitive performance. HeartMath’s work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals such as American Journal of Cardiology, Stress Medicine, and Preventive Cardiology, as well as business journals such as Harvard Business Review and Leadership Excellence. HeartMath’s organizational clients include NASA, BP, Duke University Health System, Stanford Business School, Redken, Kaiser Permanente, Boeing, and Cisco Systems, as well as dozens of school systems and thousands of health professionals around the world. To learn more about HeartMath, go to www.heartmath.com.

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A Special Offer From The Microsoft Store

4/1/2010

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BAC Medical Marketing and the Microsoft Store are pound to partner to offer our web site visitors a very special offer on select Xbox Games (Please see specific details below).

Currently, the Microsoft Store already offers over 300 Microsoft consumer products for sale and will offer a full selection of Microsoft products in the coming months. These flagship products include the following:

> Windows 7 software (both boxed and downloadable versions)
> Office software (boxed and downloadable)
> Xbox consoles, accessories and games
> PC hardware such as keyboards and mice
> PC games
> Zunes
> Other MS software products: Expression, Visual Studio and Works

Current Offer:

Click on this link – http://www.BACMedicalMarketing.com/Affiliate-Program-5.html and click on the Microsoft Store banner ad. Search for Xbox Games and take 40% off select Xbox Games from the Microsoft Store with promo code: CLR-MSFT-Games-40%. Offer valid while supplies last!

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