Website for an author

Screenshot: rjburle.com

I was called upon late in 2020 by sci-fi horror author R.J. Burle to create a website to coincide with the release of a series of novels and to generally have a more professional online presence than he had previously. He was advised by peers that one key to connecting to a fan base was going to be his email list… and growing it. This was to be the foremost function of the website at this stage.

Since he would be handling the content management himself and was already familiar with using WordPress, that platform was an easy choice. Step one was to see if there were any themes available that would have most of the desired functionality and require the least front-end customization, as production time was a consideration.

With the help of some third-party plug-ins, we created several different forms: modal and static “subscribe” forms and a “contact” form. The two former were integrated directly into his Mailchimp account where new subscribers would automatically be added to a list and sent a “welcome” autoresponder featuring exclusive content that was promised in exchange for subscribing to the list.

View rjburle.com

R.J. says that usually at the third or fourth book in a series of novels, a writer will get picked up by a publisher and supported by their marketing and distribution, so I was proud to be a part of promoting his first book and laying the groundwork for his new fans and potential publishers to take notice. ΜΤ

N2 Publishing: Public Relations Articles

Public Relations Writing

One of my responsibilities as publisher of the MacGregor Life magazine is to assist sponsors with their public relations pieces that are printed in the form of articles in the publication. These are written to connect the reader to the business on a personal level and show the owner’s passion for what they do… not to perform as direct marketing.

I often find that in writing these pieces I get deeply interested in these industries. I know our readers have the same curiosities so I attempt to go a little deeper in interviewing these business owners and put in the effort to tell their entire awesome business story. I like to think that the result is maybe more like a piece out of Inc. or Fortune rather than a small neighborhood publication. You be the judge.

Woody’s Furniture
Bardi Designs
Triangle Custom Landscaping
Phase II Personal Training Center

Chevrolet: Content Marketing for a Sales Consultant

In a bid to move up at a dealership to a Marketing Manager role, and in a move that confounded my peers, I sought out and attained a position as a sales consultant for a Chevrolet dealership. This was for a year, and although I am not averse to long or late hours, the business encroaches on family life. But it was not the gritty world that one would imagine. Car buying has changed a lot in just the past ten years… including the tools available to sales professionals who see themselves as independent business owners, almost separate from the dealership that employs them.

What has been very effective for sales professionals with the know-how and commitment is an online content marketing strategy centered around a personal website. Without violating Chevrolet copyright or the dealer’s rules, I designed my personal sales website (archived here) with graphic elements used in Chevrolet collateral. My content included search engine-optimized articles and videos. It ranked pretty well in local searches (my videos got around 5,000 views altogether – local, thanks to geo-tagging), and even generated a few leads for me.

The website and other marketing channels I used really challenged and demonstrates my entire skill set: web development, photography, copywriting, video production, SEO, etc. Helping people find cars that they loved was fun too. ΜΤ

Imagen Brands: Carolina Sewn E-mail Marketing

During my tenure at Carolina Sewn, I played a role in bringing our marketing into the digital age. One key ingredient in our business-to-business mix was our e-mails. This was exciting to me because e-mail marketing lends itself well to all kinds of data gathering and testing.

For example, I’d try out different subject lines on small samples of our list and then use open rates to determine which subject line got the best open rate. Maybe a little too advanced for a division as small as ours, but I was indulged.

As with a lot of our B2B marketing campaigns, I was responsible for nearly all of the creative – tactical executions like images, copy, layout – and even some of the strategic considerations.

Here are five of the countless campaigns we sent.

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Imagen Brands: Carolina Sewn DropShip Campaign

At Imagen Brands/Carolina Sewn Bag & Leather Co., as with many manufacturers, it was preferable to have merchants purchase minimums of inventory. What we found, though, was that our higher-end offerings were met with apprehension from smaller stores. This was due to the price point and the fact that some merchants had never put emblematic items on their shelves that retailed for more than $50.

The solution was to offer these merchants an opportunity to get involved at no risk by offering our high-end emblematic leather accessories on their website and through an in-store catalog that required no investment in inventory. They’d simply take orders, pass them along to us to make the product and ship it to the customer.

We used several different platforms to market this concept (known as drop-shipping). Among them was a sales letter and catalog, an F.A.Q. article, and an email that I wrote and designed. Take a look here…

DropShip Sales Letter and Catalog
DropShip Frequently Asked Questions
DropShip E-mail

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Imagen Brands: Carolina Sewn Content Marketing

One of my early missions in working for the collegiate division (Carolina Sewn Bag & Leather Co.) of Imagen Brands was to bring its digital presence up to par with – if not surpass – our competitors. First on the agenda was the website design. The Carolina Sewn strategic business unit has since been restructured, but a ghost of the 2010s-era website can still be viewed here:

carolinasewn.com

What I specifically had in mind was creating a platform for a business-to-business content marketing initiative that would build credibility with our prospects and help educate them on the products they were purchasing from us. Here are some noteworthy samples…

The Neon Renaissance
Five Minute Fabrics Course: Colors and Patterns
Six Products to Watch in 2013
Three Surprising Uses for Journals and Notebooks

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Exercises in Advertising: Sugarman-style Long Form Ads

Having just finished Joseph Sugarman’s Advertising Secrets of the Written Word (now known as The Adweek Copywriting Handbook) I decided to look around my household and choose random items that I love – and some that it would be a challenge to write enthusiastically about – and create a long-form direct response ads for those items in the style of the ubiquitous JS&A advertisements of the 1970’s and ’80’s.

I spared no detail. Visually, you’ll notice the bad clip-out job on the photography – reminiscent of old “camera-ready” film stripping. The dot pattern is coarse, maybe a little exaggerated on my part, and I shut off the software-based automatic type kerning adjustments that would not have existed in the early 1980’s.

Pop psychology buffs will recognize the basic Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques that make an appearance. Sensory modifiers are carefully used to appeal to all five of the V.A.K.O.G. representational systems, establishing rapport with a broad audience. Also, unconscious right-brain resources are accessed through isolated instances of emphasis in the text as well (e.g.: the italicized words in Iron Man‘s first column of text that together read: “father – must – own – cast iron – cookware”). Not sure how authentically Sugarman-esque these last elements are, but Sugarman did serve in military intelligence and the C.I.A. Who knows what tricks he had up his sleeve.ΜΤ

Policy: eCommerce Website

Policy was a side business belonging to my wife and I where we drop-shipped licensed, custom-imprinted travel accessories to the ladies and gentlemen of America’s biggest Greek letter societies (a.k.a. fraternities and sororities). For my wife it was an exercise in book keeping and accounting. For me, it was an exercise in branding and online marketing. And photography. And copy writing. This was boot-strap to the core. The centerpiece of it all was greekpolicy.com.

The storefront was a highly (self-)customized Shopify cart with a constellation of Google Search and Display Network ads, and landing pages for each society. Unfortunately, because I used a third party platform for the website, all that remains are the screenshots shown here. And yes, our capital ran out before sales really took off.ΜΤ