Stop the Ad-Speak

Stop the Ad-Speak

by | Mar 25, 2024 | Sound ADvice, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

The dictionary definition of cliché is, “a hackneyed or over-used expression which has literally become meaningless over time.”

Why would anyone invest their hard-earned advertising dollars in an expression that has literally become “meaningless?” In fact, clichés can literally kill any chance an ad has of creating a positive impact.

There’s an old saying in media, People don’t dislike ads, they dislike bad ads. Bad ads, typically, are filled with clichés. 

The average consumer today receives in excess of 3,600 advertising messages a day, including radio, TV, newspaper, packaging, signage, internet, and more.

Before today’s cluttered and competitive world, many advertisers succeeded with clichés and by simply keeping their name in front of the public. Today, it’s much more competitive, and simple name recognition and repetition are not enough to ensure a return on your advertising investment. You need to brand your business before the consumer is in the market for your products or services.

Branding, by definition, necessitates differentiating yourself from your competition. Being different cannot be accomplished by saying the same thing as your competitors or using the same tired clichés used by other marketers.

Whether in your advertising or when having conversations with customers, make sure the words you use aren’t the same words that all your competitors are using!

The bad news is that there are way too many ads both national and local that are filled with too many clichés. The good news is… they are easy to fix!

We have developed a list of clichés that should be avoided if your advertising is to stand out among the crowd and be remembered. To see the complete list of clichés, click here.

Narrow Minded Marketing

Narrow Minded Marketing

by | Mar 18, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

The goal of your advertising should be to increase both your sales and your brand identity. But all too often we overly focus on analytics or demographics when creating our media plans.  Narrowly targeting often means you are missing the much larger population of people not in your core demographic.

As the “New Media” (digital and social) emerged, many businesses, large and small, made the move to these platforms believing that laser-focused targeting was the answer to their advertising dreams.

Wrong!  In fact, Tide, the #1 selling laundry detergent, found that while they were focusing on the people who fit their “typical profile”, they were missing the much larger target of those who were not using their product. In other words, they were eroding their brand’s awareness and missing the target of “new and future” users. Ultimately, their sales started to decline.

In a swift move, they moved the majority of their budget back to traditional media, and sales and brand identity rebounded.

In another example, it might not seem unreasonable for a baby-products retailer to target “women 18-49 with infants”, but according to the market research firm Scarborough, nearly half of those who bought infants’ clothing, roughly 47%, were from households without children.

The same research from Scarborough found that nearly a quarter of all women’s cosmetics and perfumes, 23.5%, were bought by men.

In Roy Williams’ Twelve Causes of Advertising Failure, #9 is Overconfidence in Qualitative Data. “In reality, saying the wrong thing has killed far more ad campaigns than reaching the wrong people. It is amazing how many people become the ‘Right People’ when you are saying the right thing.”

Being too narrow-minded and focusing on only the core audience is actually eroding your brand. Hundreds and thousands of people are not in the market for your product or service today, or even soon, but someday they will be.

Thinking beyond the traditional demographics your competitors are targeting with their advertising can help you reach untapped markets to increase your sales well into the future.

Click here to read how to reach and influence “purchasers” rather than “demographics”.
 
 
Now I’ve worked in both mass media and niche media.  I’ve done mass appeal and hyper-targeted campaigns.  I would welcome the opportunity to review any advertising proposals that a typical ad salesperson presents to you to see exactly what the focus is and if it’s a good match for what you want to accomplish.
The Danger of Relying on Facebook

The Danger of Relying on Facebook

by | Mar 11, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Last Tuesday, the world freaked out because of a glitch in the internet.

Specifically Facebook’s parent company Meta, and most of their affiliated social and internet related sites and features became inoperable starting around 10am eastern time.

I am actually writing this on Tuesday March 5th, two hours later and it’s still down on laptops, but currently working on my phone via the app.

The ramifications for the ordinary, everyday user is just an inconvenience.  I can live without Facebook, Instagram, Threads even though I post daily, it’s not like a primary source of marketing or making money for me personally.

However, for others, this kind of thing is costly.  Imagine not being able to do business because people could not reach you.  It will be interesting to see if there will be an estimate of the millions of dollars lost due to the Meta platforms being down for a few hours.  Considering the size of Facebook alone, I imagine over a billion dollars in lost revenue.  

I pulled some numbers from the website, The Social Sheperd that say there are over 3 Billion monthly Facebook users world-wide. 2 Billion people are on Facebook daily.  In the United States, over half the population has a Facebook account and 7 out of 10 Americans who use the internet are on Facebook too.   I have a couple of coworkers that fall into the category of internet users but not on Facebook.

From a business standpoint, I had a client a few years ago that lost at least a weeks worth of revenue what Facebook decided to shut down his business account.  He was spending $20,000 a month just on Facebook ads and getting a 4 to 1 return.  Fortunately he was able to scramble and rebrand his business and build it up again with money he had saved up, but many business people that place such a heavy emphasis on marketing platforms they can’t control are stuck when that platform fails like Facebook did

My advice has always been to create your own spot on the web, something you own.  Your own website, not just a social media page.  I know it’s tempting to just rely on the easy way but if it’s also a lazy way, you could be sunk.

One more success story to share with you, and this is about an HVAC company that has been around for 10 years without a website or social media.  I met with the owner recently because he is looking to invite WOWO radio listeners to become his customers.  I asked him the secret to his successful growth over the past decade without the usual online presence and it came down to having good relationships with a few key people in town that have kept him and his company busy.  The good old fashioned trusted word of mouth that you earn when you run your business right.

Now in order to invite our listeners to become his customers, he’s going to invest in a basic website which we can direct listeners to and will give his company credibility to those that don’t know him yet.

What about you?  Are you needing some guidance and help on how to market your business?  Contact me and let’s talk.

Reintroducing ScLoHo

Reintroducing ScLoHo

by | Mar 4, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Last week, when I was recording the podcast version of my weekly update I mentioned briefly what a ScLoHo is. Today, that is the focus of both this article and podcast episode.

If this is the very first time you’ve listened to the Scott Howard Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast, welcome aboard.  If it’s the first time you’ve read an article I’ve published on this website, come on in.

Today I’m reintroducing myself, Scott Howard also known as ScLoHo.

I’ve been podcasting nearly every week since March 2017, so this is the beginning of my eighth year hosting a podcast.

I also checked my blogging history and I launched my first blog in 2004, 20 years ago.

The ScLoHo nickname began even before that as an email address because there are many Scott Howard’s out there and I needed something unique.

ScLoHo is a mash-up using the first two letters of my first name, Scott, first two letters of my middle name, Louis, and first two letters of my last name, Howard.

When you take those 6 letters and try and pronounce them, it becomes two syllables because there are only two vowels. Sclo (Sclow)- Ho (Hoe).

In 2004, I launched a couple of blogs, one was a personal blog, the other a media and marketing blog using Google’s old Blogger.com platform and eventually launched a few more blogs, all of them under the ScLoHo online persona.  At one point, for a couple of years, I was posting over 30 times a week on all of these blogs and this was not my fulltime job.  I was working for a group of radio stations from 2003 thru 2011 and blogging was just an unpaid side passion.

However, the ScLoHo name became pretty well known both locally and online.  I have used ScLoHo as a Twitter or X handle, along with nearly all my other social media profiles.  My personal email is @ScLoHo.net; I own the ScLoHo.com and .net domains and basically it use to be if you Googled ScLoHo, you’d find me.

Interestingly there were some people who knew me as ScLoHo and others who only knew me as Scott.  In the  summer of 2010, I was walking at the Tincaps baseball game, taking a lab around the stadium, when a group of friends from an advertising agency saw me and shouted my name.  Except, some yelled ScLoHo, and the others shouted Scott.

In 2011, I left radio for 10 months and worked for a website development company where a friend of my challenged me to merge the two and launched the ScottHoward.me website.  The dot me domain was not due to my ego, it’s because both the dot com and dot net domains were taken by other Scott Howard’s.

I imported over a thousand stories to this website from my blogs and eventually scaled down my updates from several a day to one a day to once a week.  The only time I’ve done less than a weekly update was a few months in 2022 and 2023 when my duties at the radio stations as a sales manager overseeing 4 stations and 8 salespeople needed my attention more than this. At the time, I also figured after 300 podcasts and over 1500 articles, I pretty much had shared everything there was to know and media and marketing.  I did monthly updates.  My focus was to help my team grow and to take the spotlight off me and on them.

However at the end of last summer, things changed.  I decided to step back from management and rehire myself as a member of the WOWO radio sales team.  With that change, I decided to return to weekly updates and to get back out in the community again instead of behind the scenes like I had been doing for nearly 4 years as a manager.

What’s my backstory?  Well first of all I never wanted to do sales.

In high school, my first venture into radio was on the air.  After graduation, I was on the air at radio stations full time in Marion and Kokomo Indiana and then returned to my hometown of Fort Wayne and was on the air at WMEE.  WMEE has always been owned by Federated Media and in the 1980’s WOWO was our competition, owned by another company.  WOWO was the big dog, the radio station that had the highest ratings and most listeners for decades.  However in the early 80’s I was part of the WMEE air team that finally beat WOWO and became the most listened to radio station according to the ratings.

Next stop was back to Kokomo and Indianapolis before taking my growing family to Detroit.  Up until I moved to Michigan at the ripe old age of 26 with 10 years of on-air experience, I had only voiced radio commercials, but never wrote and produced advertising campaigns.  The company I joined in Detroit was different and awakened a curiosity in me to figure out how to communicate and motivate people with a radio commercial to spend their money with a particular business.  I learned how to create ad campaigns that were distinct and unique, and most importantly, created top of mind awareness of a business so that consumers would eventually need them, those businesses were already Top Of Mind.

While in Detroit at Crawford Broadcasting and station WMUZ, I grew our production department, did a stint as fill-in host and eventually hosted the morning show for awhile and also took my first advertising sales position.

In my mid-30’s, we moved my family back to Indiana, I returned to working on the radio at WFWI in Fort Wayne and then took a hiatus and worked outside of media.  Finally in 2003, it was back to radio full-time for good, all most.  Eight and a half successful years with a group of Ft. Wayne radio stations, followed by full time at a website development company, another radio station and as the Social Media Guru for a multimillion dollar eCommerce company and then back to Federated Media in 2013.

Nearly 30 years between my first time with Fed Med as a WMEE Disc Jockey to my current position on the WOWO Sales Team.  I also spent close to 4 years as the General Sales Manager of WOWO and a year on an interim basis as sales manager of 3 other stations.

I’ve been a guest speaker with Huntington University a couple of times, Ivy Tech Fort Wayne, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne and this year will be making my second appearance speaking at Trine University.

I’ve worked with over a hundred companies and organizations and consulted around a thousand in both formal and casual settings to help them become better with their media, marketing, public relations and internal sales and marketing.  Just in my 10+ years with WOWO have won a few achievement awards, called Feddies for Federated Media and even my own website won a best of contest by a competing media outlet.  Awards are nice, but what really motivates me is to have the opportunity to help others and share the wisdom and knowledge I’ve picked up over the last few decades and I’m continuing to learn as a life-long student.

Teaching, Training, Motivating and Encouraging has been a lot of what I do.  Helping people make wise spending decisions with their advertising and marketing is my bread and butter.  Being a dad, husband and grandparent keeps me grounded as well as my Christian faith.

There’s a philosophy about marketing and advertising that I call using Human Relationship Principles that I’ll review in the near future, but for now, you now know a lot more about this Scott Howard aka ScLoHo then you did 10 minutes ago.

 

Lure Them In

Lure Them In

by | Feb 26, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, Sound ADvice

The dictionary defines the word lure when used as a verb as, “tempt (a person or animal) to do something or to go somewhere, especially by offering some form of reward”.

Lure can be a negative word, but whether it’s fishing, hunting, selling, or advertising, setting the bait is key to alluring or attracting what you are trying to capture.  

In advertising, we are attempting to attract and allure a specific audience.

Since the beginning of time, it’s been known that you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression and regardless of if it’s a fish, wild game, or humans, you don’t have very long to capture their attention. Equally, it doesn’t take much to scare them off.

Your advertising message faces the same challenge. What your ads say, how they sound, and how they are delivered in the first few seconds, dictates whether your potential prospects will tune in or tune out to your message, or continue to read the message. 

Reporters and authors have long known that the headline and the first sentence are what dictate whether the reader tunes in and continues with the rest of the story, or tunes out. In an effort to develop the all-important “creative hook” at the top of your ads on websites, many headlines end up with more “creative” than “hook”.  

In order to get the maximum effect out of your ads, we recommend you carefully consider the first few seconds of every ad, blog, text, email, or post that you create. 

Here’s a bonus tip.  Often, you will find that the best line of any ad or letter, or the best words/sentence, is in the middle.  When you find it, move it to the first line, or use it as the headline.  

To read the 8 power openings you can use to capture more attention for your marketing efforts, click here.