This is the first article of a three-part series. I decided to try
something a little different and illustrate the marketing
challenges of a small business. I’m using one of my clients,
PrescottWeddings.com (you can read more about PWC,
including a testimonial from the owner of PWC, on my Web
site, http://www.writingusa.com)

PWC is an online resource guide for couples planning their
weddings. Along with a ton of information for brides and
grooms, the site includes a resource guide where local
businesses can advertise their products and services.

We launched PWC in November 2001. Like many start-up
businesses, PWC didn’t have much money for marketing.
Yet we had two major challenges (three counting the limited
budget):

1. PWC had to attract two kinds of target markets to the site
– advertisers and couples — essentially at the same time.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, we had to appeal to each
group even though one was dependent on the other —
advertisers wanted brides and grooms logging onto the
site, and brides and grooms wanted a complete resource
center.

2. Several bridal print publications had come and gone in
Prescott — and had burned their advertisers while racing out
of town. Businesses were understandably hesitant about
sinking their money into another bridal venture.

Armed with those challenges, we went to work. Now, just
over two years later, PWC enjoys well over 40,000 hits a
month and has increased its advertising base by over
600%. On top of that, PWC is well on its way to establishing
a reliable brand in not just Prescott but throughout Yavapai
County.

So how did we do it? A great Web site with great content (but
more on that in a later article) plus three main marketing
strategies:
1) Using print to drive traffic online
2) Thinking small
3) Frequency, frequency, frequency

I’ll cover number two and three in the next two articles. Today
we’ll talk about number one: Using print to drive traffic
online.

The cornerstone of PWC’s marketing program has been
print advertising, more specifically monthly advertising in the
local newspaper. Print advertising is an excellent choice for
many businesses — from small to large. In fact, it’s not
uncommon for small and medium-sized businesses to
build their advertising program around print.

The strength of print advertising is its flexibility. Print
publications come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They
can appeal to a broad readership or a narrow one. They can
be published every day or once a year. This variety gives you
a lot of flexibility in fitting print advertising into your
campaigns.

You can also track print to a certain extent (coupons in
newspapers for example). Print is physical, allowing your
customers to carry something around with them.

However, print’s weakness is also its strength. It’s a visual
medium only, so it requires more effort and interaction from
your audience to make an impact (they need to stop and
read it).

In the case of PWC, we chose monthly advertising in the
local paper as the foundation of our marketing program. We
decided upon the local newspaper because it has the
broadest reach. Prescott isn’t big enough to have its own
evening television news, so the newspaper is the best
vehicle for local news.

If you live in a big city, the local newspaper may not be
practical because of cost. In that case, you may want to try a
niche newspaper or magazine, like a business or lifestyle
journal, or maybe a regionalized newspaper. In Phoenix for
instance, the Arizona Republic is the main newspaper, but
all the cities around Phoenix, like Scottsdale and Tempe,
also have their own papers.

Because PWC is a Web site, there’s an assumption we
should be using only online methods to advertise. Online
methods are good, and PWC does use them, but they only
take you so far. Print is a part of the “real world” — something
you can touch and pick up, not virtual like a Web site. Print
has also been around a lot longer, and carries more trust
with it. We found by using print, some of that trust and “real
world” essence rubbed off, making PWC seem less
anonymous and more like a “bricks and mortar” business
(a business with a store front).

Also, since we were trying to drive local traffic to the site, it
made sense to advertise locally rather than attracting
people from all over the world. But even with our local
advertising, we still have a substantial number of visitors
from around the state, including Phoenix and Tucson, as
well as all over the globe.

The point of our marketing program was to advertise
regularly so we could both build the PWC brand and drive
traffic to the Web site. Yet it was essential to keep our costs
down. So we leveraged our monthly newspaper advertising
to stretch our marketing dollar as far as we could. More on
that and how we “thought small” in Part 2.

Michele Pariza Wacek owns Creative Concepts and
Copywriting, a writing, marketing and creativity agency. She
offers two free e-newsletters that help subscribers combine
their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting
principles to become more successful at attracting new
clients, selling products and services and boosting
business. She can be reached at http://www.writingusa.co
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Competency in Counseling

There is no shortage of advice-givers in today’s society. Actually, it seems no matter where you turn, you hear someone giving advice or counsel on one issue or another. Frequently it’s hard to try and avoid those wanting to give advice. To prove my point, simply express to others a dilemma you have, and watch folks stumble over themselves to give their opinion. Some counsel you hear is good, little is from a biblical worldview, and much counsel is simply bad and ungodly. With that in mind, who are capable to provide counsel or give advice? Are Christians competent to counsel people with problems? What actually constitutes competency? What are the qualifications for a counselor?

Biblical counselors frequently quote Romans 15:14 to support the position that Christians possess adequate ability (competency) to counsel: “I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another.” Colossians 3:16 is considered the comparable verse to Romans 15:14, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom,….” Continuing in Romans, Paul makes the case for boldness: Romans 15:15, “I have written you quite boldly on some points, as if to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me.” Each of these verses contains the necessary characteristics or prerequisites required of a competent counselor. Counselors are to be, “full of goodness,” “complete in knowledge,” the word of Christ should dwell in them richly, they should be full of wisdom, and they should speak boldly.

First, counselors should be full of goodness. This is not goodness that is natural within us, but is from the Spirit of God whose fruit is goodness, Galatians 5:22. Being full of goodness denotes an abundance of grace consisting of benevolence, humaneness, and an understanding to fellow Christians in the spirit of Galatians 6:1, “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” Second, counselors should be complete in knowledge. This is spiritual knowledge relating to: 1. God, His nature and perfections, His mind and will, 2. Christ and the work of redemption, 3. The Holy Spirit and how He operates, 4. The Gospel knowledge necessary to salvation. If a counselor is to have an understanding of the biblical issues relating to human nature and behavior, the study of the scriptures will be fundamental to his or her qualifications and effectiveness. It would be paradoxical for someone to say they counsel biblically, yet lack the wherewithal or inclination to provide biblical explanations to issues and problems. 2 Timothy 2:15, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”

Third, the word of Christ should dwell richly in the counselor. The counselor should understand the scriptures, especially those which speak of Christ and testify of Him, teach pardon by His blood, justification by faith, and salvation. He must know the Bible thoroughly and how to use it practically. I would seriously question the motives and presuppositions of a biblical counselor who lacked the willingness or desire to study and learn the doctrines central to the work of a true biblical counselor. If a counselor believes “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path,” Psalm 119:105, how can that truth be applied without having more than a Sunday school knowledge and understanding of God’s word? How can the counselor provide the lamp and light if he doesn’t know its whereabouts? Richly implies he should not only possess the word, but it should have a significant place in the counselor’s life. The counselor should be engaged in frequent reading, hearing, and meditation on the word.

Next, the counselor should possess wisdom. James Strong defines wisdom as “devout and proper prudence in relations with men including the skill and discretion in imparting Christian truth.” The counselor must learn how to discover the facts about the problems to which he must find biblical solutions. Psalm 111:10 states where one should start in obtaining wisdom, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding.” Finally, the counselor should speak with boldness. He should reprove, advise, and exhort without dread or fear. 2 Timothy 4:2, “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage–with great patience and careful instruction.”

Having stated the biblical prerequisites for what constitutes a competent counselor, what then constitutes an incompetent counselor? One might assume it would be just the antithesis of what I just stated. However, since all Christians possess the key competent attributes in some degree (albeit many in extremely small amounts), there is more to what constitutes incompetency. The strength of biblical counseling begins with its presuppositions. In other words, it accepts on faith that God exists and the Bible is true, and understands the implications of adhering to it.

What are some of the key presuppositions in biblical counseling? To start, counseling issues are theological issues because our life is lived before God. That is the exact opposite of psychology’s main presupposition of there is no God. If there is one single difference that makes the two counseling models stand out, it’s the fact that one acknowledges God and the other does not. Also, the heart drives behavior and all counseling issues are heart issues. This establishes that all behavior is righteous or unrighteous, not healthy or unhealthy; and certainly not the psychological heresy “feelings are neither good nor bad, they just exist.”

Furthermore, one’s view on the nature of man is critical in understanding behavior and offering biblical solutions. If man is depraved and his behavior is the result of sin, the biblical counselor can offer solutions, hope, and a cure. If there is no sin, reductionism becomes the presupposition and all behavior is reduced to chemical imbalances, diseases or other ambiguous impulses. Doctors David Tyler and Kurt Grady explore this further in their book, “Deceptive Diagnosis: When Sin is Called Sickness.” Dr. Dr. Ed Bulkley comments from the forward of the book are most appropriate: “The church has a growing tendency to pathologize every form of spiritual discomfort…, instead of seeking God’s definitions and explanations of human behavior, more and more pastors, elders, and congregations are accepting a secular world-view which is based on humanistic psychology rather than the Bible. The result is an increasingly weakened Church, no longer certain of its message, mission and calling.”