Category: Marketing

“My Advertising Didn’t Work”

These words were spoken, I’ll wager, by a couple of companies who recently advertised in the Oregonian. And it wasn’t the O’s fault. Names are withheld in the hope that they decide to give radio a try — why embarrass them publicly when we could play the hero instead?

Advertiser #1 is a local clinic specializing in sclerotherapy — a treatment for spider veins. Their beautifully-laid-out display ad gave their web address in big, bold letters. Unfortunately, the address belonged to an identically-named business in Memphis, Tennessee. Two weeks later, it’s still not working properly.
      

      

Advertiser #2 is a practice specializing in elective surgery. Their ad, in a recent Sunday paper, said “To obtain information about this procedure, and the Portland-based surgeon who performs it, please call [phone number] or visit [web address].The web site had no information at all about the surgeon, and no contact information for the practice. It invited potential patients to come to a seminar, but there was no information on when or where the seminar would be. And if someone happened to call the phone number on Sunday or Monday, here’s the message they received, in its entirety:

“I am sorry, no one is here to take your call. Please leave a message.”  No business name given, or any other information at all. Not even a promise that someone would call back. Speaking as someone who recently spent some time talking to surgeons, I’d want a little more before I’d consider climbing onto the table.

Both of these businesses spent good money on advertising that might have generated results… but they forgot to check on the basics.

This is Mistake #6 in my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them. If you’d like to read about all seven, click the link at the bottom of this post and I’ll send you a copy.

As you get ready to launch a campaign, you need to take some time and check your sales funnel.

·        Is the phone number correct in your ad? Pick up the phone and dial it.

·        Do you have people in place to answer the phone or check the web inquiries? Have your ad rep make an inquiry and see how quickly someone responds.

·        Is someone responsible for following up each lead in a timely fashion? Make sure that person is held accountable.

·        Do the links work on your web site? Click on them!

·        Do your people know what’s in the commercial? Are you sure? Gather the staff together and play the ad for them before it hits the air.

·        Is the featured product in stock, on display, and marked at the correct price? Go through the store and check.

A good ad campaign with poor follow-up is money wasted.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

A Couple of Reasons Your Advertising Isn’t Working

These come courtesy of Roy Williams’ Monday Morning Memo, this week entitled “Blind Spots”. Just two points to consider — read the whole thing here.

 2. reputation.
Consider the people who don’t buy from you. Are they buying elsewhere because they haven’t heard about your company, or is it because they have? I’ve never met a business owner willing to believe their company had a bad reputation…
 

 7. media myths.
Are you anxious to find a more effective media? If so, you’ve got really bad ads. I’ve never seen a company fail because they were using the wrong media or reaching the wrong people. But I’ve seen thousands fail because they were saying the wrong things. A powerful message will produce results in any media.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

A Nifty Guerrilla Marketing Strategy

This week’s Portland Business Journal has a feature (subscription required to access the link) on Tom Rennie, who owns a chain of auto detailing shops called Autobella. Rennie’s come up with a very inexpensive way to grab market share as his industry shakes out:

Every week, Rennie pores over the Internet, calling detailing businesses he suspects are no longer in operation. When he finds one that’s disconnected, which he said is common, he calls his telephone carrier and secures the number.

To date, Autobella has about two dozen numbers from defunct competitors ringing into its two offices. Each costs $16 a month per line.

“It’s a smart, inexpensive way to get new business,” Rennie said.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Marketing Advice from the Attorney General

I spent four hours on Monday in a seminar about the new Oregon Administrative Rules on advertising and consumer fraud. Not exactly the most riveting topic, but in 20+ years of doing this, none of my clients has ever gone to jail because of advice I gave, and I aim to keep it that way.

During the seminar, Senior Assistant Attorney General Eugene Ebersole quoted his boss, Oregon AG Hardy Myers, on the subject of deceptive advertising and disclaimers:

“Don’t scream a lie and then whisper the truth.”

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Tapping into Consumer Anxiety

Perry Marshall likes to say that the object of marketing is to enter the conversation that the prospect is already having in his or her head. A great example of this is featured in the New York Times this weekend.

The item in question is called LENA (for “language environment analysis”). If you’re the parent of a young child and are wondering if your child’s language skills are progressing at an appropriate rate, this $400 device promises to answer the question.

The Times describes the inspiration for the device this way:

The man behind the vision, Infoture’s founder, Terrance Paul, has made a fortune selling software to assess children’s reading skills. His current venture was inspired by a well-known 1995 study that found that professional parents uttered more than three times as many words to their children as did parents who were on welfare. The children in the less talkative homes turned out to be less verbal and to have smaller vocabularies. Other studies have suggested that these gaps affect later professional success.

One way to close the language gap, Paul reasoned, would be to make early assessments of a child’s language world. Parents, he figured, could use the feedback to intervene and enrich their kids’ verbal environment as needed.

There would appear to be two markets for this — parents with legitimate worries about their kids’ development, and competitive parents looking for any edge they can get to give their children a head start in life. Both sets are wondering the same thing — “What’s really going on in my child’s mind?”

Whether LENA turns out to be an effective early-warning tool or just a source of unnecessary stress (The article points out that “some linguists worry that the technology is more likely to raise false anxieties than to assuage genuine ones,”) it’s a terrific example of a marketer stepping into a conversation the consumer’s already having.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.