Portland advertising – Page 15 – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

Duncan Interviews Bernstein III

In the third part of our conversation on Marketing in Progress, Brett Duncan and I talk about

some advantages to advertising on news/talk radio
the place of streaming audio in an advertising campaign
and my continuing quest to make blogging pay

If you want to go back to the beginning, all three parts of the Brett Duncan-Phil Bernstein interview are here.

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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.

Could Newspapers Go Web-Only?

My dad was for many years a highly-respected law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He also had a thriving side business as an arbitrator. At one point in his career, he took a leave of absence from the university to see if he could arbitrate full-time.

A year or so later, he went back to teaching. He later told me that arbitration jobs became much harder to get when he was no longer a university professor. Once he was back on campus, the demand for his arbitration services went right back up.

It turned out that in the arbitration community, “Professor Bernstein of Washington University” was a powerful brand. It gave him a significant competitive advantage in the marketplace.

I thought of that story today when I read Jeff Jarvis’ suggestion on Huffington Post that it may be time for the Los Angeles Times to turn off its printing presses and go online-only.

His reasoning is that the Times’ web revenue is apparently now greater than its newsroom payroll costs. Eliminate all the costs of printing and distributing a physical product, outsource the national and international reporting to the big national papers, (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc), focus all of your efforts and resources on local news, and you’ve got a profitable digital news operation.

As an advertising guy, I see some big questions:

1. How much of that online revenue will disappear when it’s not part of a print advertising package?

2. How important would the LA Times website be, as an advertising vehicle, if it’s not tied to LA Times, the paper? Will readers still go to that website if there’s no physical product to remind them? Will merchants still pay to advertise there if they’re not in the paper, too?

In my radio-and-online world, our websites are becoming increasingly important, to listeners and advertisers. But at least right now, it’s the “on-air” that drives traffic to our sites online. Much of the value advertisers see in being on www.1190kex.com is tied to the reputation and reach of KEX Radio, 1190 on the AM dial; and most of our online advertising is purchased in conjunction with an on-air radio campaign.

If you take away the physical paper, does “LA Times Dot Com” become a thriving online source of local news? Or is it just another web site?

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing 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.

Opportunity Missed

The cover story in the current Business Week contains a powerful photograph of a man in New York’s Times Square. I don’t know him or anything about his situation, and hope he finds a job soon. But I can’t help but lament the opportunity he may have missed.

Within that missed opportunity is a copywriting lesson for all advertisers.

0851_jobless1

In case the text is too small to read, here’s what the sign said:

Almost Homeless

Looking for Employment

Very Experienced Operations
and
Administration Manager

Desperately seeking full time
employment
with insurance benefits
for self and family
Disabled wife on 15 medications

Request a copy of my resume!

Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated

That sign was seen by hundreds, if not thousands, of people walking by as he stood on the street. This week, it will be seen by hundreds of thousands of business people who read the magazine. Some of those people might be in a position to hire him.

If only the sign had given those hiring managers a reason to interview him, and a way to get in touch.

The man has something of value to sell — his time and labor. He’s the advertiser, his sign is his advertising medium, and hiring managers are his prospects. Unfortunately, the copy is all about him, and not about his prospects.

That same sign could have contained some basic information about his experience and skills. It could have talked about the value he could deliver, and the problems he could solve, for a potential employer. It could have contained a phone number or email address — that contact information would now be in the hands of every Business Week reader.

I don’t mean to make light of his situation — I feel awful for him and his family, and sincerely hope that as I write this post, he’s getting ready for his first day at a new job.

Copywriting guru Dan O’Day puts it this way: “Don’t tell me about your grass seed. Tell me about my lawn.”

Your odds of success will increase when you make the message about your prospect, not about you.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing 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.

The Hardest-Working Item in Direct Mail…

… may be the lowly Post-It Note.

According to Roger Dooley’s Neuromarketing Blog, using a Post-It Note to personalize a sales letter can make a huge impact:

In Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, Robert Cialdini describes an interesting twist on the handwritten note. A survey was mailed with three cover letter configurations:
1) A printed letter.
2) A printed letter with a handwritten message.
3) A printed letter with a handwritten message on a Post-It note.

The response rate was a mere 36% for the plain printed cover letter. Adding the handwritten note improved the response rate by one third to 48%. The Post-It more than doubled the response to 75%. A second test to examine the possibility that some magic in the Post-It note itself was responsible for the higher response rate included cover letters with a blank sticky note attached. That approach generated only a slightly higher response rate of 42%.

Dooley’s thoughts as to why the note-on-a- Post-It technique worked so well make for interesting reading. Check out the full post here.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing 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.