Advertising and Doggie Doo: Like a Horse and Carriage?

Richard Laurence Baron’s Signalwriter Blog tipped me off to the fact that in the Czech Republic, they’re putting advertising on dog poop bags.

If the radio/online thing doesn’t work out for me, it’s good to know what the next step will be on my career path…

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Portland Small Business Networking Series Kicks Off

If you own or run a small business, and you want to compare or commiserate with your peers, Portland attorney and fellow blogger Kevin Spence has an event for you. He calls it “No Pitch Coffee Networking”, and the inaugural edition kicks off Wednesday morning, June 11.

Kevin describes it this way:

Remember, if you are trying to sell something or sign new clients this is probably not the place for you. If you have questions about running a small business and would like to meet other small business owners who have undoubtedly run into similar problems, show up. Think of it as a small business support group without a 12-step plan.

Interested? You’ll find full details here.

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Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

Holes in Your Sales Funnel = Wasted Advertising Dollars

If your advertising isn’t getting you the results you want, there are a couple of possibilities to consider:

1. There’s something wrong with the advertising, or

2. The advertising’s fine, and something’s wrong at your business. prospects are entering your sales funnel, but you’re letting them slip away before they become customers.

The story below illustrates the second possibility. I’ll preface it by saying that if you’re in the home improvement business, my wife and I are great customers:

  • Our house is old, so things break all the time
  • We have no mechanical skills whatsoever, so we’ll pay to have someone else do the work
  • My wife takes care of the details, and hates to negotiate, so most jobs are quite profitable for the contractor.

We needed a new backyard fence. My wife called Company #1, a semi-regular advertiser with my company. A salesman came out, took some measurements, and promised to call with an estimate. We never heard from him again.

So she called Company #2, who has also advertised with my company. The receptionist took her name and number. Nobody ever called back.

Company #3 doesn’t do any radio — just newspaper. But we needed a fence. A call to Company #3 brought a salesman to our house. He took the measurements, went through all of our options with us on the spot, got the order, scheduled the job, and walked away with our deposit check. He’ll get the rest of the money on Thursday when his crew installs the fence.

Companies 1 and 2 may decide that the economy sucks, radio doesn’t work, or both. But either of them could have had our money if they’d practiced the most basic follow-up strategy. How many other jobs did they lose because they weren’t paying attention?

How many jobs are YOU losing?

If you’ve got a sales funnel story — a hole you found and plugged in your own system, or a problem you had with a vendor who didn’t seem to want your money — I’d love to hear it. Leave a comment below.

 

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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.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

Jott Blogging

The previous post was a test of a service called Jott. The service (no charge during beta — like crack on the playground, the first taste is free) converts voice into text, and then delivers that text. The “voice” part comes from your cell phone. The text can be delivered to an individual via email or text message. It can also send it to your blog, as the example below shows, or to Twitter. And since both Twitter and my blog go to my Facebook page, my profound wisdom will wind up there as well.

I called Jott on my cell phone, and an automated voices asked “Who do you want to Jott?” I said “WordPress” (I’d filled out an online form with my URL and password). I spoke a few words, the voice said “Got it!”, and minutes later I had a blog post. Except for the Phil-fill issue, they got it right.

Of course, they make sure a link back to Jott appears on the post, so in addition to using me as a guinea pig, Jott gets free advertising out of the deal.

As a free service, this is a no-brainer, but eventually they’re going to have to figure out a way to make money. Will subscribers pay enough to make the company profitable? Will they be able to sell advertising? This will be interesting to watch.

 

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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.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.