July 2009
10 posts
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All 32 Reasons to Hire Laura Lambeth
You should talk to Laura if you:
Need a Versatile Writer
Need to Implement Better Processes
Want to Make Your Clients Look Good
Want to Get Good Information from Experts
Want Someone Who Appreciates Floatie Time
Need Greater Consistency
Want Someone Who Learns Quickly
Need to Sustain a Long Argument
Only Have Eight Words
Want to Grow Your Pool of Writers
Want Someone to Give It to...
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#32: Because You're Trying to Sell Something
Here’s marketing in a nutshell: find ways to sell something to somebody who should like to have it, while finding a nice middle ground between being so low-key they don’t realize you’re selling something and being so aggressive they never want to buy anything from you. You can’t lose sight of the fact that you’re trying to sell something, but you can’t...
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“Laura is an exceptional writer and understands how to strategically position a...”
– Mandy Jordan, Marketing Director, First American Payment Systems
#31: Because You Want to Get the Right Message Out
Be sure to check out the Lambeth Marketing website or Laura’s LinkedIn profile and e-mail laura@lambethmarketing.com.
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#30: Because You're Not the Headmaster of the...
You’ve heard the cliche that there are no dumb questions. And yet, there are many people who are so afraid of appearing dumb that they don’t ask questions. Even when not asking keeps them from learning information that’s important to doing their jobs right the first time.
That’s why I love something that Laura wrote once to encourage her colleagues to not be afraid to...
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#29: Because You Need to Improve a Website
With such a large percentage of marketing budgets moving to online vehicles, many organizations are looking for writers with strong backgrounds in interactive work. To be sure, there are important considerations like keyword density and intrasite linking that can trip up writers who are not used to organizing complex, multithreaded messages into a coherent marketing piece.
But a writer like Laura...
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“Laura was a wonderful collaborator. I could always count on her to help and...”
– Laura Coppedge, Success Magazine Web Manager, VideoPlus
#28: Because You Want People in Your Organization to Help Each Other
Learn more about Laura’s collaborative skills, check out the Lambeth Marketing website or Laura’s LinkedIn profile and e-mail laura@lambethmarketing.com.
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Week 5 Update
Since the last update, 39 new visitors visted the site, 20 of them coming directly from In This Economy. That brings us up to 98 visitors who have made 158 visits since June 17 (when I installed Google Analytics). On Facebook, since June 1 we’ve had 254 visitors.
The vast majority of visitors come from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as you would expect. But we have also had visitors from Rio...
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#27: Because You Need to Hold Onto Business
There are any number of reasons that you may need to justify why your organization should hold onto business that you feel you’ve done a perfectly good job with. For example, your client may be consolidating the number of vendors it uses. Or someone may have heard about a flashy new competitor.
When a major client sent us an RFP for the kind of work we’d been doing for them for 10...
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#26: Because You Need to Fill in the Blanks
(click image to play an online version of Mad Libs; if you come up with a funny one, e-mail it to me and I’ll share the best ones)
Sometimes one of your marketing efforts is missing a little something—a key insight, a creative spark, an organizing mind to pull the disparate parts and team members together. Laura’s great at filling in those blanks to help your organization achieve...
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#25: Because You Work With People Who Don't...
No matter how sophisticated your marketing organization, you will necessarily work closely with some people who just don’t get marketing. It’s not what they do for a living and their brains think in ways that are better suited for their jobs.
And yet to be successful, you’ll need to draw information out of product experts. Walk a sales team through every step of creating a...
5 new and creative ways to get your resume out... →
Funny article includes a couple of serious links to 32 Reasons, for which we are grateful. I know the toilet paper thing is a joke but the idea that you’ve only got about one square to catch the attention of a prospective employer is probably true.
June 2009
26 posts
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“As a team leader, Laura is highly organized and responsive, never too busy to...”
– Cindy Turner, Owner, The Write Strategies, Inc.
#24: Because You Want a Writer’s Writer
Be sure to check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.
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Week 4 Update
Fewer than 10 reasons left in our experiment to see if we can find Laura a job before I get through 32 reasons to hire her. So it’s time for an update on how well we’re getting the word out.
I mentioned about a week ago that that I had installed Google Analytics on 32 Reasons. Since I didn’t do that at the time the site launched on June 1, I don’t have complete information...
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#23: Because You Want to Communicate in Words Your...
Whether you’re sitting down to create a marketing piece, some kind of internal communication, an e-mail to a client or stakeholder, or even to make a phone call, there are a lot of ways you can screw it up. High on the list is focusing so much on you and what you have to say that you forget to make sure it means something to the person you’re trying to communicate with.
Laura is a...
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#22: Because You Want to Exceed Expectations
...
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#21: Because You Want to Make Human Connections...
We can debate whether there are fundamental differences between B2B and B2C communication, but one key thing they have in common is that there’s always a human at both ends. The question is whether you keep that in mind in the midst of people who focus on increasing sales and bulleted lists of product features.
Laura knows how to draw on the full range of human emotions to build high-impact...
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#19: Because You Can't Afford to Waste Any...
When you’re trying to build a brand experience—for your customers or for your employees—individual pieces of communication are important. But what ultimately reinforces your brand is the cumulative effect of several touchpoints.
While Laura excels at high-profile projects, she may be even more valuable to an organization as someone who is committed to consistently delivering a...
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#18: Because You Have a High-Profile Project
When you’re responsible for a high-profile project, the selection of the writer can feel far more important than normal. Obviously, you need someone who can get the right words on the page to achieve the aims of the project. But you probably also need a writer who can win the confidence of anyone she has to interview or present to. You might even need someone who can defend her work without...
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Week 3 Update
This week, I installed Google Analytics on the Tumblr site (yeah, should’ve thought of that *before* I set up the site). So it’ll be a little while before I have meaningful data about traffic here. But using the insights for the Facebook page tells us that 179 people have looked there. Thanks for all the sharing you’ve done—and please keep spreading the word about Laura!
...
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“I’ve worked with Laura for over two years, and I think she’s one of...”
– Richard Cole, President, Richard Cole Communications
#16: Because You Want Someone Earns Respect for Your Organization
Be sure to check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.
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#15: Because You Want to Address Problems...
“Proactive” is one of those business buzzwords that is much more easily (and much more frequently) said than done. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a legitimate goal for your organization—if you have the people to help you reach it.
Laura helps the teams that she works for be proactive because she can:
Identify potential problems early.
Develop good solutions.
Lead...
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#13: Because You Want a Client Perspective & #14:...
Although organizations and their agencies are supposed to have shared objectives, the differences in the ways they reach those goals can feel quite large. It can be very valuable to have someone on your team who has been on the other side of that relationship.
Laura has extensive experience working in a corporate setting and at agencies. When she’s at an agency, she can help an account team...
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#12: Because You Need Team Players
Almost anyone can have a great marketing idea. But there are far more bad marketing ideas—ones that aren’t right for your audience, your brand, or your sense of decency—than good ones. That’s why it’s crucial to have people who are committed to working for the good of the team.
Laura is great at contributing to collective marketing efforts because she’s quick...
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—Right Said Fred, “I’m Too...
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#10: Because You Want to Grow Your Pool of Writers
Tell me if this sounds familiar: you’re swamped with work that you need done—so swamped that you don’t have time to find people who could help you do it. Laura has demonstrated that in a situation like this, she knows how to identify and qualify additional resources.
Shortly after Laura took over as the lead writer on our largest account (only six months after she was hired), we...
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Laura's Portfolio (PDF) →
If you want to take a look at some representative samples of Laura’s work, you can download this portfolio. When this piques your interest, don’t forget to check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.
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#8: Because You Need to Sustain a Long Argument &...
(Pairing these two because I don’t want you to get the idea that Laura’s only good at one of them.)
A lot of marketing communications fall into the 150- to 300-word range. E-mails. Direct mail. Web pages. Flyers. Ten-second radio tags. (Just kidding!) It’s a nice length because you can focus on a single topic but go into some depth without taxing anyone’s attention too...
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#7: Because You Want Someone Who Learns Quickly
When you bring new team members on board, your hope is that they can get up to speed quickly. In an ideal world, perhaps they might become experts in their areas within the first year.
We hired Laura to be the writing lead on our agency’s largest account and within six months she not only had taken on the majority of the writing for the account, she also was assigning work to our freelance...
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Week 1 Update
After one week, we have 25 Facebook fans and 4 posts on Twitter. Please click continue to spread the word so we can find Laura a job before we get to reason 32!
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#6: Because You Need Greater Consistency
Delivering a consistent message to your target audiences depends, in part, on finding the right balance between a clear main idea and compelling details that support that idea. If you give your audience members twelve bullet points, they won’t remember them. And if you offer only the top-level message, they’ll wonder why they should believe it.
Laura understands this and, what’s...
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#4: Because You Want to Get Good Information from...
Crafting effective marketing communications often depends on sifting through very detailed information to pull out what’s most important to your target audience. But what if that information only exists in the brain of someone who doesn’t think the way a marketer does?
Laura is fantastic at interviewing experts. She knows how to strike the right balance between giving them the freedom...
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#3: Because You Want to Make Your Clients Look...
Whether you work for an agency that does work for external clients or a marketing department that serves internal clients, one thing that’s sure to keep your clients happy and coming back for more is if your work can make them look good.
Recently, a client contact we hadn’t done much work for came to us with a need for a front-and-back flyer that described an offering the company had...
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#2: Because You Need to Implement Better Processes
To deliver excellent work consistently, organizations often need clear processes. And while it’s important for everyone to follow them, someone has to have the skills to develop the processes and get everyone to buy into them. Laura has all of those skills. A couple of years ago, we had a major transition in the way that we did work for our biggest client. This large IT company had...
May 2009
2 posts
1 tag
#1: Because You Need a Versatile Writer
If your team is regularly presented with new types of communication challenges, you don’t want a writer who’s only good with one media, one industry, or one audience. We originally hired Laura to write collateral for a large technology company—1,600-word pieces for senior IT and business audiences that made a compelling case for sometimes very complex software. And while she...
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So, What Is This Site?
My friend and former coworker Laura is an amazing writer and is looking for a job in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I had this harebrained that I could help—or, more precisely—that I could enlist your help.
I’m going to spend the next few weeks sharing 32 reasons that somebody might want to hire Laura. I think she’d be a wonderful associate creative director at an agency or a...