Phil Bernstein – Page 50 – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

Lawn Sign Advertising — A Detective Story

Have you ever looked at a lawn sign ad — one for something other than a political candidate — and wondered how successful that marketing approach really is?

Me neither.

Robert J. Moore, on the other hand, got to wondering. While driving through Glassboro, New Jersey, he saw a lawn sign advertising an online dating service. After encountering similar signs in several other places, he decided to try to figure out where they all came from. The answer involves a variety of servers, internet addresses and companies stretching from Massachusetts to Texas to Panama and India.

Read about the whole thing on his blog. It’s more words than you ever thought you’d read about lawn signs, but it’s really fascinating stuff. What initially appeared to be the work of a little guy in a small town turns out to be a multimillion-dollar international industry.

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

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

How to Boost Your Ego… Free! 4 Easy Steps

Step 1: start a blog
Step 2: mention your own name in every post
Step 3: set up a free Google Alert for your name
Step 4: post regularly

I set my alert up a few weeks ago. Every day, Google’s spider sweeps through the Internet, spots my name, and sends me an email telling me that Phil Bernstein has made another appearance in cyberspace. The alert links to the new post. As a special bonus, when I click on the link, it counts as a pageview in my blog stats.

I’m just livin’ the dream.

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

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

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Somebody Is Still Making Money

It is easy, these days, to convince yourself that all the news is bad, and everybody’s losing money. So I was heartened to read the following message from Jim Taszarek in his TazMedia newsletter:

Here are some numbers out last week.

Verizon profits up 31% in Q3 ’08. Everything cellular is hot.

Honeywell profits up 16%. Everything high tech is hot.

Existing Home Sales post biggest gain since 2003, up 5.5% in Sept. Somebody is getting credit.

The price of oil has dropped to $65 a barrel, down from $147 last July.

High oil prices has caused a serious look at energy and the emerging Green industry.

Warren Buffet says “Buy now!”

There is always good news. You just need to look for it.

Whatever business you’re in, there are still potential customers making money. Fewer than before, but they’re out there. If you can solve a problem for them, they’ll share some of that money with you.

But only if they know who you are, how to find you, and why they should contact you.

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

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

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Recruiters Use Radio Advertising To Reach Passive Candidates

I’m working with a Portland insurance company on a radio-and-internet campaign that hit the airwaves this week. The recruiter needs salespeople, and this is what he told me:

Each year, he hires roughly 100 sales agents
50 of those agents will be gone before the end of their first year
Of the 50 who remain, 25 will leave the company before the end of Year 2.
In other words, 75% of the people he hires don’t last two years

He doesn’t have any trouble filling his openings. But he has trouble filling them with people who are good enough to make it work. That’s where radio can help.

Most of the traditional recruiting avenues – classified ads, job boards, etc – target people who are already actively searching for a job. They may already be unemployed, or failing at their current position.

There’s another, more desirable category of candidate – the person who has a job, isn’t thrilled with it, but would be open to another opportunity. Radio can reach that person in the car on the way to work, at their workstation, and in the car on the way home after a bad day.

The radio-and-internet campaign will give this recruiter access to people who may not have considered financial services as a career – and people who may have considered it, but may not be thinking about his company.

Does this mean that, as a human resources person or recruiter, you should stop all your traditional activity and do nothing but radio? No. You’ll still get some good people through those old methods. But if you’re not getting enough high-quality candidates with your current methods, it may be time to give radio a try.

___________________________________________________________________________________

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

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

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.