This is Samuel Johnson, a British lexicographer and writer who lived long ago but once said that none but a blockhead (that's how they talked in merry old England back in the 18th century) ever wrote anything except for money.
This was back before the days of Twitter and the blogosphere when learned people observed the [...]
How important are visuals to your marketing copy? In particular, how important are powerful visuals?
The going rate of word to image is supposed to be 1000:1, but I think that is an old wives' tale. When you grow up, you discover that you can go swimming within 30 minutes after eating and that pictures are [...]
Marketing costs money and next to the product manager's expense account, the biggest bolus of bucks is going to be charged back to communications. This causes lots of people to periodically wonder if MarCom is really "worth it" but since great communications has thus far aptly defied real measurement, no one arrives at a satisfactory [...]
LeQ Medical just got an A rating from the Houston area Better Business Bureau. LeQ Medical started in 2003 and we joined the BBB a few years later. Now we aren't really all that active in the BBB. I don't go to their meetings. They send me a newsletter, which I mostly don't read. But [...]
You've hired a writer and you're eager to get started on your big project. Right now, you don't know it but the writer sees that you are standing at the edge of a cliff. Whether you take a step and tumble to disaster depends a lot–not on the writer–but on you. So here are the [...]
It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that labeling is intended for people, specifically medical people, and specifically medical people trying to use your products. I am no Sigmund Freud, but allow me to offer a profound psychological insight into the innermost thoughts of the medical person trying to use your product who [...]
The people who put graffiti on buildings are often called taggers or writers. This is quite amazing since people who are busy writing materials for publication online or even offline are increasingly called “content providers.” While this is a nice discussion for another day, both types of writers (taggers and content providers) prize one type [...]
Maybe your career in espionage never took off. That’s okay. You can still do some easy, comfortable intelligence work that could help your marketing career and probably won’t wind up with you being chased by an enemy agent.
The fact is: intelligence, when defined as “what’s going on,” is vital to your career and valuable in [...]
Medical marketing people wind up talking to a lot of interesting people and they also wind up talking to engineers, scientists, software “code warriors,” biostatisticians, and clinical denizens. In fact, you can’t really do much good at marketing medical products and services without knowing these characters. But how do you get what’s in their head [...]
Getting face time with a doctor is a big deal for a sales representative. Usually this face time can be measured in seconds; for the fortunate few, minutes.
One of the most important responsibilities of the marketing department is to equip the sales rep for this 10 seconds. In a lot of ways, medical marketing departments [...]
You should train the people who answer your phones. This is the real front line of marketing.
Most companies hire lots and lots of people with fancy degrees and pay them big salaries and let them sit around far away from the battle. Meanwhile, they pay other people with far less education very little money to [...]
Focus groups can be very valuable in learning about how your marketing materials are perceived. The problem with focus groups is that–when done properly–they can be extremely expensive.
Most medical companies I know do not do focus groups very often, and they have good reasons. Focus groups take up a lot of time, they are [...]
There are studies on this, but I’m not going to look them up. You know it’s true: if you write an ad, the main thing that people will read is the headline.
In fact, a good number of the people who see your ad will ONLY read the headline. (Okay, that number is 70%.)Â So if [...]
You know the scenario. Somebody (Mr. Bigwig) has to give a presentation and he decides that he needs help with his presentation, so he enlists you (Victim) to help him. However, he refuses to start on this project until 6 p.m. on the evening before it is due and he provides only the most [...]
Most people struggle with writing for a variety of reasons, including the inescapable fact that writing is simultaneously difficult and boring.
However, most good medical marketing types need to know how to write passably well, so here is how. I cannot promise that I can make you an adept and agile writer, but I can [...]
I am not normally a big fan of prognostication (although I am quite the fan of big words) but when one year turns into another, particularly one decade ends and the next begins, it is very tempting to look ahead and see what is going to happen.
Here are my predictions for 2010 for medical [...]
You’re in marketing, but even here you’re not safe. Sometimes math intrudes on your life. For marketing people, the most common form of math is statistics, a pseudoscience that purports to make numbers mean something.
So here is a fast guide to statistics for marketing people.
Most statistics that we deal with have to do with clinical [...]
If there is ever any area of literature that, in general, needs some serious help it’s patient literature. Companies, hospitals, and even physicians all work hard to create materials aimed at helping their patients learn about therapies, treatments, options, drugs, and conditions and most of this stuff goes unread or misunderstood.
That’s a shame, since [...]
Contrary to prevailing winds of change, medical marketing is not illegal, immoral, dishonest, or sinister. Marketing is the glorious art of persuasion which basically means that marketers are tasked with trying to get customers to pick them.
And the most magnificent thing about marketing is that it really has not changed much over the centuries. True, [...]
Even people who hate to write or fear communications work send out emails. In fact, emails are so fast and convenient, there is a seductive concept involved that we all ought to be good at it.
Well, most people are not very good at email. Your email can appropriately represent what you want to say and [...]
Writers do not actually get writer’s block. It is a condition that affects primarily non-writers who are trying to write. But don’t despair if you have writer’s block. It can be cured.
You have to know why you have writer’s block. You have it because somewhere in your past you took an English class and in [...]
Conflict of interest has officially arrived as a buzzword. I know that because it now has an acronym: COI. However, there is nothing coy about the folks bandying the term about.
COI in medical marketing refers to the fact–deemed an embarrassment at best and a transgression at worst–that people who publish on certain topics often tend [...]
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