Who Are We and What Can We Do For You?

We’re a team of designers and marketers who have no patience for pretty yet brain-dead marketing that can’t prove results.

Our Z-Process helps professionals, attorneys, and business owners get exactly what they need so they can create stunning marketing that gets results.

The marketing process is a journey.

As your business grows and matures, you build your marketing assets to accommodate your growth.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed, frustrated, and quit.

But, you don’t do everything at once. You create a foundation first and then build your arsenal to meet the needs and goals of your life, course-correcting as needed.

Our products and services are broken down so the process is clear and the results are evident and trackable.

Our expertise will guide you to give you clarity and focus to your ideas. Each of our marketing packages provide you with an actionable plan that brings the best ideas to life so your marketing does what you want it to do: generate more leads and convert prospects, all with a positive ROI.

Explore our services, and see where you fall in the marketing journey. If you’re not sure where to start, request a Marketing Assets Analysis  to do a deep dive into your marketing, your message, and your brand.

And remember, it never gets easier. You just get better.

Don’t Give Up. Do what it takes to succeed.

 Request a Marketing Assets Analysis  to do a deep dive into your marketing, your message, and your brand.

 

Ben Glass“Kia Arian is my first choice for local marketing ideas and design. She and her team are “rocket scientists” when it comes to marketing and advertising ideas. If you are looking for cheap, cheap, go to Fiverr. If you are looking to get more customers, patients or clients, go to Kia!”  Ben Glass – Author, Speaker, Marketing Consultant, and Founder of Ben Glass Law and Great Legal Marketing

 

The Z-Process

What Level Is Right For You?

The marketing journey can be a crazy roller coaster ride.

Regardless of whether you’re a beginner in this adventure or a seasoned expert, all marketers experience ups and downs, thrills and let downs, and successes and failures.

Our job is to help you ride this journey without throwing up.

The levels described below do not indicate how advanced you are in your marketing, or where you should start or end up.

They are here to help you get the right level of support from your creative team and create marketing that is correct and gets results.

They also support the growth of your own marketing and writing skills.


As Dan Kennedy says, the most valuable skill you have is your ability to gain wealth. And the ability to gain wealth begins with knowing how to market what you’re selling.

LEVEL 1  You provide the content. We create a stunning presentation that gets results.

This level of support is for marketers who have content that they’re happy with, and need someone to create marketing with it. They need minimal input on the content, but they want to make sure that the message is captured in an effective presentation that is consistent with their established brand.

Every marketing message has a certain vibe, tempo, emotion, and pattern. A skilled designer will ensure that energy is captured and not squashed with a fancy design that brings attention to itself instead of the message. 

At this level, you get professional design that not only protects your core message, but strengthens and enhances it.

 

LEVEL 2  You provide the content. We make it better, and create a stunning presentation that gets results.

This level of support is for marketers who are developing their copy writing skills or have new content, and stand to benefit from feedback and ideas from our marketing professionals.

Having an objective set of eyes review your content helps you uncover blind spots and add language and new ideas that someone outside of your industry can see.

Once the content if finalized, you get Level 1 support to create a beautiful marketing piece that gets results.

 

LEVEL 3  We curate and create the content, and create a stunning presentation that gets results.

This level of support is for marketers who have a healthy repository of good content. They don’t need new content for their marketing campaigns. They just need their existing content curated to create the marketing with occasional new content to fill any gaps. 

At Zine, we’re able to identify good copy from your website, books, newsletters, and other media.

We know what constitutes an effective ad or marketing piece, and are able create beautiful marketing and effective ads that correctly capture your brand and your message using results-driven strategies.

 

LEVEL 4  We work closely with you to develop a new brand message and strategy.

Your new brand is then established with ongoing marketing projects and campaigns that we help you create.

At this level, we first interview you to uncover your unique story, message, and voice.

We then provide a Brand Summary Report that is the basis of all the new marketing content you develop.

The new marketing content is used to create brochures, ads, and even update your website.

The end result is a clear, focused brand and a compelling and authentic message that gives you confidence to tell people about your products and services, and boldly sell to those who are willing and eager to buy from you.

 

If you’d like to go deeper, a Marketing Assets Analysis is a the best next step. Or schedule a 30-minute call with Kia to see what the next best step for you is. 

Do You Even Need Professional Graphic Design?

When we talk about “graphic design”, we’re not talking about just making things look good. Good graphic design will always make it look good—that’s a given.

But, professional graphic design will help you communicate. In other words, the design brings attention to your message, not to itself.

Most people just want their stuff to look really hot.

It’s an ego thing. If their marketing looks good, then they look good. Who cares whether or not it makes them any money or says anything useful? They just want to look hot! That’s perfectly fine. There’s a time and place for that, and we understand completely.

If you want your print marketing to just look really awesome, we can certainly do that.

But the more we do these kinds of designs, the more painful it is for us. Even though it looks really awesome, it has no brains, it fails to communicate anything, and we just end up feeling sorry for the awesome design.

“What did ‘ya call me!??”

Do you know what we call a hot-looking ad or a sleek postcard that lacks a strong, compelling message? We call it  “an impotent ad.”

It sounds sad, but, it doesn’t have to be that way. The better way is to give your designs some brains by crafting a compelling message to go with that great design.

But it’s not just great design.

It is design that brings attention to your message, makes it clearly understood, and connects with the reader.

Making that connection can be a thousand times more effective when you provide a visual experience and control the way they absorb the information in order to get the desired response.

Are we just full of hot air?

That may sound like fluff to you. But trust me, it isn’t. In fact, it’s a proven area of study that the way people experience things aesthetically can have a powerful influence on them. (Check out one of our favorite books on this subject)

What’s our point?

What this all means for you is that if your message is accompanied by a consistent and professional look that guides the reader in an organized and compelling way, then your message will be all the more powerful and memorable.

So do you need professional graphic design?

If you have a great message but poor presentation, then yes, get professional design. A good designer will help you evoke the desired reaction from your audience.

But be warned, most graphic designers will want to strip down your great message to make it submit to their design idea. They’ll argue with you that you can’t say this and that, and bore you to tears about the importance of white space, bullet points, and minimalism. Don’t let them.

If you have no message but a great looking design, think about what you want to communicate, and add it in without sacrificing your look (hey, we like to look good too!).

The Truth: Content is King.
The Secret Truth: Content with BLING* is Even MORE KING™

Every design element in a marketing piece should have a specific purpose. The primary purpose of every design element is to bring attention to the message.

So, the question isn’t really, “Do I need professional graphic design?” The question is, “Do I have a strong message and is it communicated with a powerful design?”

A great message communicated in a great design gives your marketing double the power.

For help on crafting your marketing message, check out our free book, “Designers Gone Wild: The Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Print Marketing”

 

Happy Designs to You,

Kia Arian Kia Arian and the Zine Design Team

*Bling: flashy, adorned, high-class, wealthy.

Helpful Links
The Top Ten Mistakes Small Business Owners Make in Their Marketing
Designers Gone Wild: The Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Print Marketing

Breathe life…

The One Thing

 

In his book, The One Thing, Gary Keller talks about discovering your “Big Why.” He says that discovering what drives you, what gets you up in the morning, and keeps you going when things are tough is an important part of achieving happiness and success.

Living with purpose—it’s all the rage. You know that already. Then you should also know that it is way too easy to drift and get off course, and it happens more than any of us would like to admit.

That’s why living with purpose requires more than just an occasional dose of motivation and happy quotes on your Facebook newsfeed. It needs to be thought out and expressed with words, (preferably in writing), and frequently referred to. Then you can assess whether your actions align with the big picture purpose of your life.

For example, if your purpose is to accumulate as much wealth as possible, then your actions are along the lines of learning about wealth and money and success, and associating with successful people who you can emulate and learn from. (However, Keller warns not to make your purpose a bottomless pit of desire where what you achieve or acquire is never enough, or only provides temporary satisfaction.)

Our One Thing

If you’ve received any of our marketing swag, you would have quickly noticed our slogan: Breathe LIFE into your DESIGN.

Breathe LifeFor us it is a simple reminder to always do our work with purpose. When you breathe life into something, you give it purpose, value, and meaning.

As living, breathing creatures endowed with eternal qualities, we have the power to give meaning and purpose to not only our own lives, but to anything and anyone we interact with.

In our corner of the world here at Zine, the work that we do is not just about “making the next buck.”

Sure we need to make a living, but more importantly, we want to make a positive impact on the lives of everyone who deals with us, including our clients, our vendors, our employees, the UPS delivery guy, and anyone else who interacts with us. This is defined more precisely in our Vision and Mission Statement.

It is our “big picture,” our governing philosophy that determines the “why” and “what” of our daily activities.

What is your overriding purpose? Your governing philosophy? Your Big Why? And more importantly, does it determine your daily actions and priorities?

Our lives are driven by the purpose we give it. Without purpose, your decisions are haphazard, your path is unclear, and your future is out of your control.

I hope our slogan serves as a little reminder to “Breathe Life” and give meaning and purpose into everything you do.