Category: Portland marketing

One Way to Get New Customers Fast — And Keep Them

While most of you were out having a wild Saturday night, I was home reading one of Dan Kennedy’s marketing newsletters.

Go ahead. Envy me.

In the newsletter, Dan described the “dry cleaner’s secret” — a method that a dry cleaning franchise operation used to ramp up its business, quickly.

Using a series of carefully-designed marketing steps, the franchise owner was able to attract a large number of new customers in a short time,  and turn them into profitable regular clients.

Although this particular entrepreneur was in the dry-cleaning business, his marketing method can transfer over to any business that depends on customers coming in several times a year or more. Examples that come to mind include:

  • Aesthetic medicine practice — Botox, laser hair removal, mesotherapy, lipodissolve, etc.
  • Cosmetic dentist
  • Garden store or nursery
  • Pet supply store
  • Yarn store
  • And, yes, a multi-location dry cleaner.

What’s the method? I’m not going to tell you here.

But if you’re a Portland or Vancouver-area business owner, I’ll be happy to describe it to you in person.

I can tell you that to make it work, you’ll need to make an investment in advertising. That investment does not necessarily have to be with me, but you’ll need to do it somewhere.

This won’t pencil out for everybody, but it might for you. If it does, you’ll gain a lot of profitable new customers fast. And you’ll be able to track the results right down to the penny.

Isn’t that what marketing is supposed to do?

Interested in learning more? Call me at 503-323-6553, or email me here.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

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.

Gitomer’s Gauge of Customer Loyalty

“You rarely see anyone with your company’s name tattooed on their ass.”

— Jeffrey Gitomer to his Portland sales seminar audience, justifying his assertion that the company with the most loyal customer base is Harley Davidson.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

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.

Girl Scout Cookies Online — Good Entrepreneurship, or Sign of the Apocalypse?

My son Tyler won his Cub Scout Pack wreath-selling championship three years in a row. He did it the old-fashioned way — by personally calling his relatives and parents’ friends, and personally touring his dad’s office every year asking for the order. His younger brother Ryan followed that up by winning the Pack wreath sale trophy twice more.

The most innovative technology they had available to them was the telephone.

So it was with great interest that I read Newsweek’s article on 8-year-old Wild Freeborn, a Girl Scout in North Carolina. With her father’s help, Wild set up an online cookie sales operation, complete with YouTube video.

In a short time, she received 700 online orders for cookies. And, of course, other parents complained to the authorities. It turns out that the Girl Scouts prohibit online cookie sales.

There are several conflicting interests at work here: There is a great deal of value in teaching kids how to sell face-to-face or on the phone. That’s a skill that, if learned properly, will serve them all their lives. And some issues of fairness exist as well, since some families don’t have access to the technology that would allow online sales.

The other side of the argument was offered in the article:

“First of all, selling things online is no less safe,” says Peter Fader, a director of the Interactive Media Initiative at Wharton, the business school at the University of Pennsylvania. “And if we want to teach our kids to be able to operate in society as responsible adults, online savviness is going to be part of the overall portfolio.”

In addition to losing a teaching moment, Fader says the Girl Scouts are missing out on a sales opportunity. “It wouldn’t even be a transition—it’d be an expansion,” he says, noting that the program could allow cookie sales online through personal Web pages hosted by area councils. With some troops reporting sales down by as much as 19 percent this year, getting online would be a simple step that could invigorate the locally minded fundraising goals of the program.

My kids are long past their wreath-selling years, so I don’t have a personal rooting interest in this. But I’m interested in your thoughts.

Should the Girl Scouts, and other fundraising organizations, allow online sales? Why or why not?

Please leave your thoughts in the comment field below.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

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.

FedEx Office Wins Word-of-Mouth With Kindness

Many in the marketing community have criticized FedEx for buying Kinko’s and changing its name (to FedEx Office) and culture.

So it’s only fair to praise them for a very smart piece of word-of-mouth marketing. As I write this on Tuesday, March 10, FedEx Office stores across the country are printing resumes at no charge for anyone who walks in. People don’t have to purchase anything to have their resumes printed — there are no strings attached.

If they’ve purchased any advertising for this, I haven’t seen or heard it. But FedEx has gotten a huge amount of news coverage (Google “Fedex resume” and you’ll encounter more than a hundred articles).

In a very rough job market, FedEx Office has extended a hand to many thousands who need help. In the short term, it’s gotten them a lot of publicity. In the long term, some of the people who take advantage of this offer will wind up in the executive ranks — and they’ll remember FedEx Office with fondness.

 

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

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.

Become Known For What You Know

If I were asked to give one piece of advice to someone considering a career in media sales, it would be this:

Please find something else to do. I don’t need the competition.

If, on the other hand, I could offer two pieces of advice, the second one would be: learn something valuable that most of your colleagues don’t know.

I may have saved a client several thousand dollars the other day with that kind of knowledge. He is the General Manager of a local auto dealership. He worked for a long time in the Portland car business, moved to California for several years, and recently returned to Oregon.

He emailed me the other day because he was planning to launch a new used-car promotion. He has a selection of pre-owned vehicles priced at half their original MSRP, and wanted to feature them in his radio advertising.

What he didn’t know is that while he was in California, the state of Oregon made it illegal to compare a used vehicle’s price to the MSRP in an ad. The official commentary accompanying that section of the law (technically an Administrative Rule) explains that MRSP is a term reserved strictly for new vehicles. Because so many factors (mileage, wear and tear, accidents, etc) affect the price of a used car, the law forbids using an MSRP in any way when referring to anything pre-owned.

I know this because a little more than a year ago, I was the only Portland broadcast rep to drive to Salem for a seminar on the new laws. So I was able to warn my client away from a strategy that would have earned him a substantial fine from the state.

My clients know I’ve taken the time to learn the rules, that I’ve got copies of all the relevant consumer protection laws, and that I check with my contacts at the Oregon Department of Justice if I’m not sure of something.

They also know that my competitors weren’t at the seminar, and may not know the law as well as I do (I’ve been known to bring that up in conversation). So I get phone calls, and business, from advertisers who might otherwise take their money to another station.

The extra income this brings me stops briefly in my bank account, until my wife decides she needs something like new lamps for the living room. The lamps are pretty nice, actually.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

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.