SMARTDRAW IN MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS:

Fast-Growing Marketing Company Saves Time, Enhances Client Communications with SmartDraw

Michael Turner is CEO of Marketing Max, www.marketingmax.com, a company that offers affordable outsourced marketing and PR solutions to small and large businesses alike. Turner was looking for an easy way to visually communicate project plans, strategies, and various marketing ideas to his many clients, in addition to improving internal workflow and communications.

"We use flowcharts and mind maps to create marketing and PR strategies for our clients," said Turner. "Many of these are used internally, but some are passed to the client. We use them to improve workflow and create 'what if' scenarios."

Turner knew that a fast, user-friendly program for creating mind maps and flowcharts would save a lot of time and improve client communications.

"Many of our clients are small businesses with very little marketing experience," said Turner. "Visually showing them how the process works and what to expect can save many hours of phone time."

His company had an old version of Visio^®, but he didn't think it was up to the task. He downloaded the free trial of SmartDraw software. "We ran a trial of SmartDraw, and knew in 10 minutes it was a better program," said Turner. "SmartDraw is amazing compared to other business graphics programs."

SmartDraw is a helpful software program used by more than 10 million people to create clear, compelling business graphics quickly and easily. Unlike other programs that provide a blank page and expect the user to start from scratch, SmartDraw contains hundreds of helpful SmartTemplates that come pre-loaded with a command set specific to each diagram type. SmartDraw contains more than 20,000 symbols and images, making easy work out of any flowchart, mind map, project maps, business forms, fliers, and much more.

In addition, Turner discovered that the program contains many eye-catching examples helping to get the ideas really flowing.

"We were pleasantly surprised to see some examples that had nothing to do with flowcharts—business forms, fliers, etc," said Turner. "Those samples gave us lots of cool ideas regarding how we can utilize SmartDraw for much more than just flowcharts."

In addition, SmartDraw features one-click exporting into programs commonly used by marketing professionals like PDF, Microsoft WORD^® and PowerPoint^®, allowing for easy sharing between staff and clients.

According to Turner, SmartDraw will help Marketing Max win new clients and enhance relationships with current ones.

"For existing clients, SmartDraw will make explaining project plans much easier and I'm betting our clients will love to visually see what's happening with their project rather than simply reading a bulleted outline," said Turner. "For new clients, Marketing Max will use SmartDraw to map out our workflow and processes so prospects have a clear, visual understanding of how we work."

In addition, SmartDraw will also help Marketing Max control internal workflow through detailed project maps, according to Turner. "Too often, people are either working on the wrong part of the project or performing their part too early or too late. Flowcharts help to create checkpoints for our workflow."

The bottom line?

"Mapping our projects into manageable chunks and formulating a path-or workflow-saves many hours, if not days, and can often mean the difference in meeting or missing deadlines. Designing strategies, plans and workflows graphically makes it much, much easier to share those ideas both internally and with clients."

To learn more and to download a free trial, visit www.smartdraw.com