Getting Your Business Priorities Aligned

Getting Your Business Priorities Aligned

by | Jan 15, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

What kind of disconnect in your business model do you need to fix this year?

4 years ago with the Covid-19 Pandemic shutdowns, there was a whole heck of a lot of disruptions as we were exploring the great unknown about a virus that we were told could wipe out a significant percent of our population.

Earlier this month I was at a conference and was reminded of some facts that I’d forgotten from history that occured around a hundred years ago.  Between the Spanish flu and World War One, we lost 10% of our population or more depending on the geographic parameters you look at.  In 2020, our governments and those around the world were looking to prevent a similar catastrophe and as a result we had a combination of business and supply chain shut downs along with increased adoption of emerging tech.

For example, the work from home business model that some companies used on a limited basis soon became mainstream with a lot of organizations.  Video meetings and platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom existed before 2020, but now everyone knows about them.

The use of apps to order food exploded and the adoption of many businesses to still provide products and services with less people pushed emerging tech to faster adoption than if we had not had the Covid Crisis.

I’m not talking about politics, I’m referring to reality which we can see with hindsight.

With the aging of the biggest population demographic, the Baby Boomers, and their retirement rates effectively reducing the working population before the pandemic (10,000 are turning 65 every day) we already had a growing labor shortage in many fields such as trucking and healthcare.  The Covid Crisis, while not as bad as 100 years ago, percentage wise, impacted us in this manner too.

Organization improvement by necessity is what kept most of the pre-pandemic businesses alive today while others never recovered.

There’s still more to do.

MarketingCharts.com released a study of Business to Business priorities that are equally important in the Business to Consumer world too.

The top priority for B2B go-to-market (GTM) teams in the year ahead is to strengthen marketing, sales, and customer success alignment according to the report.

I’ve seen this too many times in businesses and non-profits that there are too many silos.  Or to use a term my parents used, “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”

When I’m working with business owners and we launch an ad campaign, too many don’t tell or share with their teams what we are doing except for some very vague mention like, “we’re going to run some ads to increase sales.”

What is really needed is that everyone in the organization is made aware of just what is going on to promote your business.  From the person that answers the phone, to the front line customer service and tech people, even those mostly behind the scenes need to know what you are doing, what the details are, and why.  When you invest in promoting your business, make sure you have everyone in your organization, “in-the-know.”

When you do this, then most of the other priorities on this list can happen.  That includes:

  • Enhance Customer Experience and Engagement
  • Increase Brand Awareness
  • Increase Internal Process Efficiency

Which can set the stage for the last three on the list pertaining to growth and expansion.

How are you posed to improve and grow this year?  If you are in the area of Fort Wayne, Indiana, contact me and I can help you and your team begin the process outlined here.

The ROI Problem

The ROI Problem

by | Jan 8, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

I’m going to start off the new year with a story.

In 2023 I was invited to be a guest speaker at Trine University and ended up presenting information to a class in October and was invited back to be on the judges panel for the students final project.  The students had been divided into 4 groups and each group was a make believe advertising agency.  The judges were to evaluate each group including asking questions as if we were the company that was looking to hire one of these four ad agencies.

Students were given certain guidelines and requirements and along with the judges, Professor Snider was going to be grading their final project.

When it came time for me to ask the students a question, I asked the first three groups to explain the Return On Investment that I (as the business owner) would receive on their plan. This was kind of a trick question.  Each of those groups promised a dollar amount in sales volume.  But here’s why that was a trick question and why I didn’t ask that question to the 4th group.

The last group’s presentation started off with a keen understanding of the big picture goal and while they gave us specifics of how they were going to spend the money, they also created and shared a bigger picture plan that didn’t need to be justified in short term sales revenue.

The problem with justifying most advertising and marketing expenditures is that it’s simple impossible to accurately track even digital ads.

Readers of my Sound ADvice newsletter got a perspective recently on ROI that went like this: 

In normal day life, the meaning of “cause vs effect” is fairly simple. It’s the relationship between two things when one thing makes something else happen. For example, if we eat too much and do not exercise, we gain weight. Eating too much without exercise is the “cause”, and weight gain is the “effect”.

When it comes to advertising, it isn’t quite as simple, or is it?

The quest to measure advertising’s ROI (Return on Investment) and what was and wasn’t successful has been going on ever since the late 1800s when department store magnate John Wanamaker said, “I know half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

Over the years, businesses have put coupons in their newspaper ads, Yellow Pages and magazines have issued separate “traceable” phone numbers, and some misguided radio and TV stations have run ads that said, “Say you heard it here”, to prove the advertiser was getting a return on investment.

In the late 1990s, it was the dot com kids in Silicon Valley who made millions capitalizing on marketers’ thirst for measurable advertising results, promising measurable click-throughs and responses.

But online marketing expert, Ari Rosenberg, wisely says that online media taking credit for consumers’ actions is “like taking credit for the sale of coffee because you work the cash register at Starbucks.”  

Human action is always preceded by a complex chain of influences that take place over time, long before action is actually taken. Before any action or purchase, our minds travel from unawareness of a product to awareness, from awareness to interest, from interest to liking, from liking to preference, and on to finally actually taking action.

The dangerous and underestimated irony in this process is that the closer we get to measurable action or response, the less opportunity marketers have to influence or change that action. 

Marketing and business consultants agree, “Once the consumer has clicked on the Ford truck website or has their checkbook out to buy the Ford truck, it is difficult to persuade them that the Chevy might be a better truck.”

Our problem is that consumers don’t really know why they do the things they do, so the last point of contact, a Google search for a product or service, or a search for a specific business website, receives credit for the purchase decision. Again, it’s like giving the person at Starbucks’ cash register credit for the coffee sale.

There is an old saying, “The game never changes, only the names of the players.” 

The marketing game really has not changed since Wanamaker’s famous quote, only the names of the media available to advertisers have changed. But it is a chain of players and platforms during the game that results in a goal. And the player that scores that goal could not have done it without the other players on the team.

If you would like to discuss how to build a marketing chain that covers the entire decision-making process from pre-awareness to measurable results, contact me.

Send me an email to start getting your weekly copy of my Sound ADvice newsletter.  My email is Scott@WOWO.com

Business Lessons from “A Christmas Story”

Business Lessons from “A Christmas Story”

by | Dec 25, 2023 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

With Christmas and New Years days falling on Monday’s this season, I am going to take a couple weeks off from the podcast and even publishing next week  Both will be updated with fresh material on January 8, 2024.

In the meantime, I am sharing the content from last weeks Sound ADvice newsletter that you can get free from me by sending me an email to Scott@WOWO.com

Have a very Merry, Blessed and Happy Christmas and Holiday season!

I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to the thousands of business owners and managers all across the United States who read SoundADvice each week.

My hope and our goals are that you find the articles worthwhile and that they help provide some thought-provoking ideas on how you can run your business more smoothly and more efficiently.

As we did last year, again this year in the spirit of Christmas we will lighten the topic, while still hopefully providing some valuable business and marketing lessons.

As a reminder, last year we wrote about The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus. Santa is a great leader, and his leadership lessons not only work in the North Pole but will work in any business as well.

While researching for this year’s Christmas edition of SoundADvice, I stumbled upon a newsletter published by Forbes in December 2014. The lessons are from one of the all-time great Christmas movies, “The Christmas Story”. If you recall, this beloved holiday movie follows the exploits of Ralphie Parker who spends most of his time dodging his nemesis and bully Scut Farkus. In the movie, Ralphie’s only wish for his Christmas gift is a “Red Ryder Air Rifle”.  The movie takes you through the trials and tribulations of his quest for the perfect gift.

The business lessons that can be taken from the movie, while somewhat simple, can also be impactful.

Lesson #2 – Don’t Bow to Pressure. Competitors, colleagues, and economic pressures find ways of triple-dog daring businesspeople into making poor decisions. Lowering standards to compete or ride out an economic rough patch, for example, can sometimes seem like the only option. But it rarely is the right one.

To see all Five Business Lessons Learned from “A Christmas Story”, click here.

In the end, Ralphie gets his Red Ryder Air Rifle and learns many valuable lessons along the way.

As we wrap up 2023, we hope that SoundADvice has and will continue to provide you with valuable lessons so that you too can reach your goals.

From all of us here, we wish you a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy, and Successful 2024.

Are You Open to Ideas

Are You Open to Ideas

by | Dec 18, 2023 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

How was your year?

Are you excited about next year?

As a business owner, or manager or even someone without a title, every once in awhile we should stop and plan for the future.  Problem is many people do it alone, or with limited input.

Last week subscribers of my Sound ADvice weekly newsletter got some advice that I’m sharing today including a link for more tips.  If you would like to receive this newsletter free of charge, send me an email to Scott@WOWO.com and simply ask for the newsletter.  It arrives every Wednesday morning except for holiday weeks.

Here’s the Sound ADvice for planning your new year:

Before you owned or were managing a business, you may have been on the other side as an employee, and you probably had a lot of ideas on how you could improve your employers’ businesses.

There’s an old saying, “None of us is as smart as all of us”, or, “Both of us are smarter than one of us.” 

Guess what, like you, your staff just may have some ideas on how to improve your business. They’re in the trenches facing customer complaints and questions every day and oftentimes may have thoughts on how and what it would take to create happier customers.

There are several ways you can benefit from inviting more staff input on how to grow your business:

1.) Odds are some of your staff are from a younger generation than you and may be better at coming up with ideas that appeal to their generation.

2.) People whose opinions are solicited and respected are likely to respond positively and be better employees.

3.) When you act upon a suggestion made by your employees, they have a moral obligation to see that initiative through to success.

As the new year is approaching, now is a wonderful time to set in motion ways to improve your business in 2024.  Start by including your trusted employees in a brainstorming session.

If you want to make 2024 better than 2023, click here to read some helpful tips on how to set up, implement, and execute a successful brainstorming session.

64 years ago

64 years ago

by | Dec 11, 2023 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

It’s birthday week for yours truly.

And there’s not much that I want, because if I really want it, I usually buy it myself.

Of course the best things in life aren’t things that you can buy anyway.

I’ve been doing a lot more reflecting on things lately, compared to a few decades ago, even more than 5 years ago.

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 kind of turned some of us to become more introspective because at the beginning, there was so much unknown and conflicting information.  We were told that we just needed to stay home to flatten the curve for a few weeks and then as weeks became months, well you were there too.

25 years ago, I returned to Fort Wayne, Indiana to help my Mom downsize after the death of my Dad.   I was just 38 that summer and my Mom had just turned 65.  I’ll be that age next year, but my health is much better than hers was back then.

Last month, I happened to visit the radio station that gave me my first full-time on-air job as a teenager, and low and behold, there was a guy named Jim who had worked there all those years ago and he was there when I visited.  He was having a birthday that week and turning 75, and still working in sales and on the air.

A few days later, I had coffee with my friend Lee to talk about a client.  Lee’s a few years older than me and I’ve known him since I worked on the air at WMEE in my early 20’s.

And one more connection to my past happened back in October when I spoke to a college class at Trine University at the invitation of an old acquaintance of mine that I met nearly 20 years ago.  He’s a professor now and invited me to speak to his class.

There’s also been the death’s of a few friends and family members in the past few years that have made me introspective and finally, I think one of the last items that has influenced what I’m sharing today was the role I had in our company from early 2020 until a couple months ago.  I was the General Sales Manager of WOWO radio and then also a few other stations before returning to active sales a few weeks ago.   As the General Sales Manager, a big part of my role was to hire, coach, train, and mentor my team.  Now I get to lead by example again.

My desire is to pass along knowledge.  It’s kind of weird, because I’m a curious person looking to learn myself and so as I talk to my elders, I want to know what they can teach me.  And I’m at that age where I’m passing along and passing down what I’ve learned too.   In a moment I’m going to share with you some resources that helped me and could help you too.

But first I recall when I was about 30 years old and creating advertising campaigns for businesses in Detroit.  I had clients in numerous and varied businesses and I took what I learned from observation, from conversations and from experimentation, using their money and improved all of them.  There was a guy Steve who had a transmission shop, a doctor named Tim who was working with his wife to build a health care practice, another man named Mike who ran a rental car business until we transformed it into the best used car dealership in the area and another favorite was a family headed up by Ed and his wife Sharon who created a small mortgage company with their daughters and we transformed it into a debt-reduction vehicle for thousands of homeowners.

This website started out years ago as a blog to save stories and articles online in case my laptop crashed and burned, and has become a resource for others as well as a creative outlet still for me.

So besides this website which will live as long as I pay the hosting fees, there are a few others that I recommend.

I also need to add this disclaimer that I read a lot less books than I did 30 years ago.  Instead I listen, watch and research.  With podcasts and online videos being available in much greater accessibility that 30 years ago, you may find a format other than paper books to be a preferred resource too.

Here we go with authors whose books I’ve bought and read and recommend to others:

Sales Leadership: Mike Weinberg.  I’ve read three of his books and was a regular listener to his podcast when I was a sales manager.  I was part of his launch team for his latest book, First Time Manager: Sales.  Check him out here: https://mikeweinberg.com/  

Marketing guru Seth Godin.  A thought leader and I see he also has a podcast that I’m going to subscribe to:  https://www.sethgodin.com/   

Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads, besides his books on marketing, he publishes a weekly newsletter called the Monday Morning Memo that includes a rabbit hole that often is fun and intriguing. http://www.rhw.com/youll-laugh-youll-cry/ is the link to his books and here’s the link to his MMM: https://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/

Art Sobczak has sales books that I’ve bought along with a podcast and blog at: https://businessbyphone.com/

There are three others that I’m going to recommend that had an impact on my 20, even 30 years ago:

Harvey MacKay https://harveymackay.com/   Harvey’s first two books on sales were so influential that my first year as sales manager I gave my team their own copy of them for their own use.

Trout & Ries.  Al Ries and Jack Trout launched a series of books on Branding and Marketing in the 1970’s that I discovered when I started in the ad world in 1986.  Al passed away just last year and his partner and daughter continues his work. https://www.ries.com/books/

The last recommendation is a book that I re-read every few years as a reminder of how to approach sales. Frank Bettger penned the book How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in the 1940’s and here’s an Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Raised-Myself-Failure-Success-Selling/dp/067179437X 

I urge you to be curious no matter how young or old you are and continue to seek knowledge and share with others too.