First on Race Day

First on Race Day

by | May 27, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

All month long, I’ve been featuring articles I first sent out in my weekly Sound ADvice newsletter and this one was sent to subscribers last fall.  If you’d like to get them delivered to your inbox each week, just send an email to Scott@WOWO.com and I’ll add you to my list of free subscribers.

Marketing, or at least marketing that has impact, doesn’t deal with the world of reality; it deals with the world of perceptions. The perception your prospects have of your business is formed more by feelings than by facts.

A look at market share, for example, may lead one to feel that Heinz makes a better ketchup, and consumers who feel Heinz is a superior ketchup may actually feel short-changed in a restaurant that serves another “cheaper” brand.

The reality is that the ketchup perception is formed more by what kind of ketchup your mom served when you were a kid than by the actual recipe or ingredients in the ketchup.

Died in the wool Ford fans will tell you that Ford is an acronym for “First On Race Day”, while opposing Chevy believers will joke that Ford stands for “Fix Or Repair Daily”. Both sides may try and argue the facts, but more often than not, it’s the emotions that drive the perception.

While your customers want great “value”, their perception of the value you deliver is affected as much by the way your prospects perceive or feel about you as it is about the actual price of your goods or services.

Over time, the perception of your business is a product of the five “P”s in the marketing mix. You must have:

1. The right Product. Is there a demand, or can you create a demand, for what you sell?

2. In the right Place. Location. Location. Location.

3. At the right Price. Does your price match customer perception and is it profitable?

4. Delivered by the right People. Are your people trained to provide customer satisfaction? Can they walk the talk?

5. With the right Promotion. Have you created the right feeling for your business before your prospects are in the market and before they have preconceived perceptions of you or your competitors?

Your Promotional “P” can be the icing on your marketing cake. Just as there are five P’s in the marketing mix, there are another five P’s in effective promotional mixes. Click here to see the Five P’s of Successful Promotions. It’s free!

Compounding Your Brand

Compounding Your Brand

by | May 20, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

This month I’m featuring articles that were sent to subscribers of my weekly newsletter, Sound ADvice.  If you’d like a free email copy send me an email to Scott@WOWO.com.

Albert Einstein said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it… he who doesn’t… pays it.”

But what does compounding interest have to do with marketing, advertising, and your brand? As it turns out, a lot!

They work under similar principles. If you invest even a small amount of money, over time, it compounds. While it may be small, it still grows. If you invest in your brand, over time, it grows too. While it may be small, it still builds. The more you invest, money or marketing, the greater it works and the more it compounds.

In branding, he who understands it earns it; he who doesn’t pays it. You see, in every business category within every market, there is only so much “branding” or “TOMA” (Top-Of-Mind-Awareness) to go around. In nearly every case, the share of mind you own is equivalent to your brand, which is equal to the percentage of business that you capture within your category. 

Building and compounding your brand isn’t just for large national companies. It works exactly the same in every market.

There are several key areas to building and compounding your brand, but the most important element is consistency.  Not only does this mean being consistent with your message, colors, sounds, and logos, but also with the way you approach business internally and externally.  Like your customer service, return policies, guarantees, warranties, the physical appearance of your office, vehicles, and every other thing that represents your business. 

Like compounding interest in money, if you stop and start, you lose or stall the potential that could have been compounding. Be consistent, be repetitive, and the compounding of your brand will take care of itself and build with time.

As your brand becomes larger, the more well-known it becomes and the more TOMA you create. From there it continues to compound. The more people know you, the more people they tell. 

How important is a brand? A study conducted by Fleishman-Hillard for the World Economic Forum showed that 3 out 5 chief executives believe their corporate brand and reputation represent more than 40% of their companies’ market capitalization.

Whether you are planning on starting to brand your current business or a new business, click here to see nine tips to help get you started on building and compounding your brand.

Features Vs Benefits

Features Vs Benefits

by | May 13, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

This month of May I’m sharing a recent articles from my weekly Sound ADvice Newsletter.  It’s free just for the asking and if you want to be added, drop me a note to Scott@ WOWO.com.

Every year there are millions of drills sold across North America. But here’s the crazy thing…not one person who bought a drill wanted a drill! What they really wanted were holes!  If another tool would have made the holes faster, better, easier, or cheaper they would have bought that tool, not the drill.

In most business and product categories, including yours, the same is true. None of your customers want to buy your goods or services. They only want the “benefits” those goods and services deliver.

No one wants to buy insurance; they want to be protected.  Nobody wants an aspirin; they want pain relief.

All traditional sales training courses address the need for selling benefits versus features. It’s pretty basic stuff, yet, we often expect our advertising to sell features to consumers who only care about benefits.

Here is the litmus test that distinguishes features from benefits:  A feature remains true if the customer does not buy.  For example: “John Deere tractors are built better”.

A benefit only occurs if the customer buys.  For example: “Nothing runs like a Deere. Your tractor will have fewer breakdowns, saving you money and time”.

Here is another feature vs. benefit example for a regional auto parts store:

Feature: “A million different auto parts and accessories“.

Benefit: “You’ll get your parts in a day or less”.

Your benefit statement should always answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” from your customer’s perspective.

Look at your next radio script or ad proof. Are your ads only talking about features (you) and not telling what’s in it for them (benefit)? They don’t want a drill; they want a product that makes a hole!

Click here if you’d like me to work with you to uncover the best possible benefit statements for your next advertising campaign.
A Lesson on Advertising from Preachers and Teachers

A Lesson on Advertising from Preachers and Teachers

by | May 6, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

For the month of May I’m sharing recent articles from my weekly Sound ADvice Newsletter.  It’s free just for the asking and if you want to be added, drop me a note to Scott@ WOWO.com.

The goal of every preacher and teacher is to grab the attention of the people they are speaking to and make sure that they not only hear the message but also understand and retain the message.

So, what can preachers and teachers teach advertisers about advertising? The answer is a lot, if you pay attention to the formula preachers and teachers use to get their message across and make it stick!

Going back to the very early 1900s, though not taking credit for it, religious figure J. H. Jowett explained the process of preparing sermons, speaking to the crowd, and how to make sure the lesson was not only taught but understood. He said the three-part formula to help prepare sermons so the layperson could understand was this:

1. Tell them what you are going to tell them.

2. Then tell them.

3. Then tell them what you told them.

Modern-day teachers have been taught and still use this same method. They know that if their students do not get the message in this fashion, three times in a seven-day window, they won’t retain what they’ve learned and will probably fail the test.

Research has proven that your advertising must follow a similar formula. If you want your customers and prospects to retain and remember your advertising message, they must hear your message three times in any given seven-day window. In advertising, this formula is known as “a frequency of three” and it’s one of the 6 Steps to Ads That Stick.

If you think about it, advertising really is a little bit of preaching and a little bit of teaching! Use this formula and your ads will have a better chance of sticking in the listener’s mind.

Click here to read the rest of the 6 Steps to Ads That Stick and make your ads stick in the minds of your prospects.
Once in a Lifetime Eclipse

Once in a Lifetime Eclipse

by | Apr 29, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

It’s been a few weeks but on April 8th millions of us in the United States were in the path of a solar eclipse.

Here in Indiana, the main event was shortly after 3pm as the moon blocked the light from the sun for a few minutes.

Where I live, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, we were in the 99.9% of total blackout and I was going to attend a rooftop viewing party locally.

However a few days before, my daughter who lives in Colorado told me she and her husband and kids were making the trek back home to witness it first hand and they were going to a rural spot south of Ft. Wayne where her in-laws lived and could we join them?

Yes was the answer and like many others we made a drive to see the world go dark in the middle of the afternoon.

It was a cool experience and likely the last solar eclipse I will witness first hand in my lifetime considering the next one for where I live is in 2099 and I’d be well over 100 years+ old.

There were plenty of crazy people predicting the 2nd coming of Jesus, or the rapture, or other things that most of us ignored.   For the most part, this was an event for the masses without any political division or any other of the things that can divide people.

Instead, it was a day where all people could enjoy the same thing without a lot of spin.  Oh there was a lot of hype and some news organizations went overboard warning people to be prepared for the worst.

But it really was nothing more than a natural, predictable occurrence that was available for anyone to witness first hand either in person like we did or on screens like many others did.

And that my friends, was a refreshing change from the multiple divisions this world seems to foster.

I’ll toss in a marketing tidbit… Be honest about how you promote things in your business.  Once in a Lifetime can only occur once every 75 years or so.  And remember the old adage of Underpromise and Overdeliver.  This year’s eclipse was like that for me and hopefully you too.