The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

January1996

Eight Ways (Con't from page 4)

press. Think big. Sure, the media gets plenty of press

releases every day. But if you make yours stand out — it

will be used. Be sure to send news releases for your

upcoming seminars and for all those free brochures.

8 Send A Newsletter

Send a newsletter to all of your prospects and custom-

ers. (Why do you think you built that mailing list?) Use

your newsletter to set yourself apart from your competi-

tion. A newsletter can be as short as one page or as long

as you want to make it. The important thing is to send

issues on a regular basis — at least once every six

weeks. Your newsletter keeps your company’s name in

front of your existing customers. And it gives your pros-

pects another opportunity to think about you when it’s

time to buy.

Produce your newsletter in-house with desktop publish-

ing software. Contract with a design house or advertising

firm to produce one. Or use a pre-printed newsletter,

customized with your name and logo. The method you

choose should fit well with your resources and abilities.

Without being obvious, your newsletter is the perfect

vehicle for your sales message. (If you use a pre-printed

newsletter, insert a sales letter or flyer.) Use your news-

letter to announce your new products, the places and

times of your upcoming seminars, and to highlight ways

that your business can help your readers work smarter

or save money.

Always provide your readers with useful information

about computers and how to use computers in their

business. The best newsletters are interesting, informa-

tive and entertaining. Remember, your newsletter is your

primary communication tool — make the most of it!

These ideas have been used successfully by thousands

of businesses. Use them wisely and they will work for

your computer business, too. Select the promotion

methods most appropriate to your own personal style

and use them on a regular basis. Remember, the key to

successful promotion is consistency over a long period

of time.

[Copyright (C) 1994 by John Martin. ALL RIGHTS

RESERVED. Yes, John earns a living as a marketing

consultant. John Martin has been an entrepreneur in

Houston since 1979. As the owner of a computer parts

(Con't, page 9)

Out and About (Con't. from page 2)

provide the information by signing in on the attendance

sheets at the next meeting.

Mike Meer, LA Fox member and VP of Microcomputer

Engineering Services, has an article appearing in the

latest Pinter FoxPro Letter, titled “The Secrets of

LOOKUPO”. It’s about the under-utilized and under-

documented LOOKUPO function hidden in FoxPro 2.6.

After a brief explanation of thefunction, he writes a UDF

(user-defined function) that tests and compares the

difference between LOOKUPO and SEEKO. Bottom

line “LOOKUPO executes much faster than any code

you could write yourself.”

Newsletter/Article Exchange Update. The newsletter

article exchange, announced at OCFDG and LA Fox

three months ago, is an unqualified success. For those

of you who missed it, here’s how it works. Submit an

article to the editor (me) for inclusion in either newsletter.

(Editor reserves the right to edit or offer constructive

comments concerning submitted articles and accepted

articles shall be considered to be in the public domain.)

Articles are then ZIP’d as individual Word documents and

forwarded to user groups all over the country. Most

recently, we added the Potomac Area Fox User Group,

and the UK Fox Developers Group . Now anyone sub-

mitting an article to either newsletter (OC or LA) has

pretty good chances of also being published in the Rocky

Mountain States, the Midwest, the East Coast, or Great

Britain. These articles can then be accessed by other

newsletter editors for inclusion in their respective news-

letters. It works sort of like a chain letter, but serves a

much more useful purpose, in that each group’s newslet-

ters stay “fresh”. If you’ll notice, several articles in this

newsletter are from other groups.

Elsewhere

Application Developers Training Company (ADTC)

has announced their training schedule through July.

Their VFP courses (Introduction, Intermediate, and

Advanced) will be run in Los Angeles January 15-19, April

1-5, May 6-10, June 10-14, and July 15-19. Instructors

include many of the luminaries within the Fox community:

David Anderson (1st President of OC Fox), John MIller

(2nd President of OC Fox), Jim Booth, Eldor Gemst,

Andy Griebel, and many others. Those interested can

contact ADTC at 800/578-2062.

Data Warehousing, Costa Mesa, CA, January 18-19,

1996. Two-day interactive seminar, sponsored by Ad-

vanced Information Technologies. Cost of the seminar is

(Con’t, page 8)

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