Category: Portland marketing

One Piece of Carry-On

I spend a lot of time working with business owners on the most persuasive way to tell their stories. One of the most common desires I encounter is the desire to talk about everything in the commercial.

It’s physically possible to talk about four different things in the same commercial. And give an address, web site, and phone number, too. As long as you don’t mind that your customers and prospects won’t remember anything about your message once the commercial’s over.

For 14 years, I’ve tried a variety of ways to convince my customers that keeping their messages simple will make them more memorable. This week, I’m going to borrow an image from Bill Schley.

Schley, author of “Why Johnny Can’t Brand”, and the forthcoming “The Micro-Script Rules”, was interviewed recently by Jim Doyle for his coaching program. In making an argument for simplicity in message, he used an image from the airline business:

One piece of carry-on.

Passengers boarding an airplane are allowed to carry on one piece of luggage. That piece must be small enough to fit in the overhead bin above the seat.

Schley says that your prospects, when they hear or see your ad, have the ability to retain one, and only one, piece of information. The customer’s mind is the “overhead bin”. The object of your commercial is to get the customer to place it in the overhead bin, and then act on it by  doing business with you,  repeating it to others, or both.

Stuff too much information into your commercial, and the message won’t stay in the overhead bin long enough for your prospect to pull it back out again.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – 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, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Contest: Can You Out-Market the W.H.O.?

From the world of medicine comes news that the World Health Organization will no longer use the term “swine flu”.

[W.H.O. spokesman Dick] Thompson said the flu name change comes after the agriculture industry and the U.N. food agency expressed concerns that the term “swine flu” was misleading consumers and needlessly causing countries to order the slaughter of pigs.

Makes sense to me, and as one of millions who read “Charlotte’s Web” as a child, I sympathize.

The object of the exercise, then, is to come up with another name for the general public to use instead. It’s got to be accurate, politically correct (this is the World Health Organization), and memorable so that it enters common usage.

So, what did you come up with, Mr. Thompson?

“Rather than calling this swine flu … we’re going to stick with the technical scientific name H1N1 influenza A,” he said.

I think my readers can do better than that. Frankly, my cat could do better. But I think you could do better than my cat. So here’s a little contest:

Come up with a replacement name for swine flu. Leave it in the comment field. The winning entry will receive my copy of Scott Ginsberg’s “How to Be That Guy”.

Phil Bernstein will be the sole judge. The winning entry must be catchy, reasonably clean, and not insulting to any ethnic group (for example, a local radio host has become fond of “Mexi-Flu”. We”re not going there).

Contest is open through Sunday, May 3. Leave your entry in the comments field.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

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, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

National Public Radio Wants You to Buy Radio Advertising

I’m not familiar with Warren Berger.

But if “All Things Considered” wants to run an interview with a guy who recommends buying radio commercials, I’m gonna post it.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

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, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

How Effective Is Your Website?

Your website should be more than just an online brochure. Designed and implemented properly, your site can act as a 24/7 marketing tool.

How effective is your site?  HubSpot, an internet marketing firm, claims they can tell you with a free online tool called the Website Grader. Enter your URL and your email address, and the Grader will take a look under the hood.

A few minutes later you’ll receive a report, and a grade on a scale of 1 to 100. The report has some specific suggestions for improving your score. In theory, at least, a higher score means that your website will do a better job of attracting business for you.

How good is it? I don’t know — I just stumbled onto it a few days ago. But you can’t beat the price. You can plug in your website, get your score, make some changes, and check it again, all without spending a dime. If you need more specific advice, I’m sure Hubspot will be happy to sell you some consulting — this is an excellent lead generator for them.

Give it a try, and email me your score. I’ll keep all scores confidential.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan — here

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, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

How to Get on Google’s Front Page

If you don’t appear on Google’s first page when people search for your name, it’s not just a blow to the ego — it can also be a business problem. Many searchers never go past Page 1, so a poor rank can cost you traffic, customers, and money.

Up until now, possessing a common name meant you were stuck. Google’s new Profile service gives you a chance to cut in line.

A recent Time Magazine article  explained the problem, and Google’s solution.

“The reason people search for themselves is that they’re curious about what other people see when they search for their name,” says Joe Kraus, Google’s director of product management. “One problem is they don’t have any control over the search results. Either they don’t like the search results, or what happens most of the time is, they’re not listed on the first page. If your name is Brian Jones and you’re not the deceased Rolling Stones guitarist, you don’t exist.”

To give people a bit more control over search results, Google introduced a new feature this week it calls a “Google profile” that users can create so that a thumbnail of personal information appears at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. Once users create a Google profile, their name, occupation, location (and photo if they choose), appears in a box on the first page of the search results for their name. Next to the thumbnail info, there’s a link to a full Google profile page that in many ways resembles a Facebook page.

I filled in my Google profile this morning. It’s a simple process, although there was one small shot to my ego — “philbernstein” wasn’t available for my profile URL.

So my profile URL is http://www.google.com/profiles/thegreatphilbernstein.

Create your own Google profile here: http://www.google.com/profiles

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page here

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, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.