Phone Etiquette!

Phone Etiquette!

by | Oct 14, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

They say first impressions say a lot about your business. For many potential new customers, they first interact with or meet your business when they call on the phone.

In today’s tech-savvy society, it seems a machine rather than a human answers more phone calls to businesses. The entire process of answering company phones, from how quickly you respond to how you conclude the call and what is said in between, either with a live person or a voice recording, can determine whether potential customers choose to do business with you… or not!

There’s a saying that goes, “Little things mean a lot”.  Far too many businesses take answering the phone for granted. After all, what is so hard about answering the phone? However, having a set policy and procedure for answering the phone not only ensures the phone is answered the way you want it to be, but it also implies to ALL employees that you are a professional organization in ALL areas of your company.

With today’s business climate of limited and multi-tasking staff, there is often little time to answer the phones appropriately. In this case, a professional voicemail should be used in place of a live voice.  Just because a customer isn’t able to reach you does not mean they cannot be greeted with a message and feeling that creates a positive impression.

Remember that when someone calls your business they want something and it’s typically an answer to a question. In the 15 Rules to Phone Call Etiquette, Rule #5 is, “Take Notes”. Even if you use a voicemail system, ask the caller if they would prefer to leave a message or be sent to the person’s voicemail.  “Little things” do mean a lot!

Having a policy and set procedure on how you expect your phones to be answered is a small but important part of operating a professional business.

If you’d like to see the 15 Rules to Phone Call Etiquette, click here.

What I just shared was from my Sound ADvice email newsletter that subscribers receive nearly every Wednesday.  If you’d like a free subscription, drop me a note to Scott@ScLoHo.net

By the way, back in 2003 when I was starting my advertising career in Fort Wayne, I was invited to speak to a group of building contractors at their weekly breakfast meeting.  They thought I was going to pitch them on radio advertising but instead, I helped them with the way they converted leads to build trust over the phone and the advice I gave them was very similar to what I just shared with you.

These were small contractors, maybe two or three, perhaps just a solo entrepreneur and caller ID wasn’t standard on cell phones two decades ago.  I asked them, “What do you say when you answer your phone?” Most of them said, “Hello”.

My simple advice was to answer it professionally.

Hi, this is Gene from Gene’s plumbing, how can I help you?

This tells the caller that they’ve reached the right number and they are talking to the right person too.  6 months later I visited that group again and asked how many of them changed the way they answered the phone and what the results were.

Those that followed my advice saw an increase in business because they were converting more incoming calls or leads.

Even if you are not a business owner, try that with your own phone too.  If you call me, I’ll usually say my name and ask how I can help you.

This advice also applies to your voicemail message too.

POSITIVE Lessons from Political Advertising

POSITIVE Lessons from Political Advertising

by | Oct 7, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

This was sent to my Sound ADvice Newsletter subscribers last week:

The world of political advertising is in a “world” all its own. The rules of traditional advertising are thrown out the window.

It’s a high-stakes game.  It’s estimated that during the 2024 presidential election, candidates will spend nearly $12.32 billion; that’s an increase of almost 30% from the 2020 election cycle.

While I have never met anyone who likes political advertising, there are some proven, and yes positive, tactics that can help you win the vote of public opinion in your business category. First, you must win their hearts and minds. Once you’ve accomplished that, you’ll win their wallets and purses.

Presidential Marketing Tactic Number Ten is to Develop a Proprietary Slogan.  In today’s competitive landscape, simply promoting your name is no longer sufficient to develop customer loyalty or attract new business. Your name must stand for something and be associated with an easy-to-remember benefit statement or slogan.

In a few short words, a slogan describes what your business stands for.  Whether they were your preferred candidate or not, Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again”, and Kamala Harris’ “We’re Not Going Back” or “When We Fight, We Win” are all compelling slogans.

There is, however, one tactic your advertising needs to adhere to that most political campaigns do not…Tell the Truth!

Don’t make promises you can’t keep if you want to be in business for more than one term.

Click here to see all fourteen Presidential Marketing Tactics that can help place your business at the top of your business category.
 
If you would like to receive my free Sound ADvice newsletter in your inbox every week, email me Scott@ScLoHo.net
Audio Advertising: Sports Talk on the Radio

Audio Advertising: Sports Talk on the Radio

by | Sep 30, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Continuing a short series focused on Audio Advertising as it’s sometimes called, this week I’m going to highlight a radio format we call Sports Talk.

As a radio veteran of a few decades and a radio listener for even longer, listening to sports on the radio was a part of the my life… forever.

A couple of recent studies present some fresh information on why sports radio is a great choice for businesses to advertise too.

First my personal listening history starting as a kid in the 1970’s…

My next door neighbor was a fan of the Cincinnati Reds and during the summer he blasted the game from 700 WLW as he worked in his backyard.  Johnny Bench and Pete Rose were familiar to me then because of the play by play games I heard from over the fence. In the colder months, I listened to the Boston Celtics with Larry Bird on WBZ as I layed in bed with my battery operated transistor radio. Fort Wayne’s WOWO radio, introduced me to the excitement of Komet Hockey with legendary broadcaster Bob Chase.  He was still calling the home games when I joined WOWO in 2013.

Another tradition listening to WOWO was Memorial Day weekend and the broadcast of the Indy 500 on Sunday afternoon.  Only once have I attended in person but nearly every year I heard the lap by lap coverage as A.J Foyt, Al Unser and Bobby Unser took the checkered flags during my youth.

High school sports on the radio were a mainstay at the first two stations I worked at full time in Marion and Kokomo Indiana.  During the time I lived in Detroit, I got to hear the late Ernie Harwell on WJR sharing the Tigers games and even got to meet Ernie when we had him as a guest on our stations Christian Talk Show.

Returning to Indiana and fast forwarding a few years to when my daughter played in the marching band for the Tippecanoe Valley Vikings and I lived about 90 minutes away, I’d listen to the game as I was driving into town to pick her up along with her brother and sister for the weekend as Rita Price did the play by play on WRSW.

I remember all these sports broadcasts clear as day even the ones that are decades old and I’m not a sports junkie.  It was exciting to hear the live drama as it happened in the moment.

In the past couple of decades, I’ve worked for stations that carry college sports, pro sports and high school games.  Many of the businesses that advertise do it as a passion play.  They are fans of a team because they are alumni, or their kid goes to school there.  Perhaps it’s the home town pride but there’s something beyond the recognition of having your business as a sports sponsor on the radio that doesn’t get talked about alot.

The ROI of Sports Talk Radio.  It’s not always easy, darn near impossible to measure the number of listeners to a specific game on a local radio station because that’s not how rating services work.  But there are plenty of antidotal stories from business owners of how advertising on sports talk radio boosts their business.

Here’s some data from a couple of studies that just came out this season.

An analysis of more than 50 locally and nationally advertised brands in seven major U.S. sports markets shows sports-formatted radio stations not only attract listeners who are active fans, but those who are aware of — and are more likely to interact with — advertisers on those stations.

That’s the opening paragraph from an article titled New Research Shows Sports Radio Is ‘A Game-Changer For Brands.’

Here’s more:

Participants in the study — conducted by Vision Insights in July among nearly 2,300 sports fans age 18+ in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York and San Francisco — give sports audio an advantage over other electronic media. The survey finds that while nine in 10 sports fans listen equally to sports talk and live game broadcasts, sports radio listeners are four times more likely to catch a brand’s message there than on TV, while 73% of fans spend more time following their favorite teams on sports audio than sports-related digital media.

Did you catch that?  Sports talk radio listeners are 4 times more likely to be paying attention to your ads compared to watching sports on TV.  Also over 70% of sports fans spend more time following their teams on the radio compared to other sports themed digital media.

There’s more great news for businesses who advertise on sports talk radio:

…the results of a larger-scale Vision Insights survey of more than 100,000 respondents age 13+ conducted between June 2023 and May 2024, showing that fans are four times more likely to trust brands that support their teams, and that brands doing do receive three times more positive feedback. In addition, fans are twice as enthusiastic about brands that align with their teams.

That article concludes with this summary:

“Advertisers aren’t just background noise for sports listeners, they’re part of the action,” “Sports talk listeners pay attention to ads, unlike many TV viewers who scroll TikTok or go for snacks during ad breaks. This boosts awareness for both national and local brands, with fans finding sports talk ads more relevant, trustworthy, and memorable than TV ads.”

One more recent article that has a couple of quotes to share about sports talk and play by play on the radio:

Audio play-by-play listeners are far more sports engaged and passionate versus TV viewers

The TV and AM/FM radio NFL broadcasts have very different audience profiles. The TV audience consists of casual sports fans.

The AM/FM radio play-by-play audience is far more sports passionate and engaged. This distinction has a significant impact on advertising effectiveness.

What should you do with all this information?  Contact me Scott Howard because I happen to have access to the only local full time sports talk radio station in Fort Wayne Indiana, 1380 The Fan and we also carry some sports on our news talk station WOWO.  Email Scott@WOWO.com

 

Audio Advertising: Streaming Music versus Traditional Radio

Audio Advertising: Streaming Music versus Traditional Radio

by | Sep 23, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

I’ve been getting a lot of research and data coming my direction that I’ve decided to share with you in a series of articles I’m labeling Audio Advertising.  As a business owner or just a regular consumer, we hear and read various things that we might think are more true than they really are.

One of the ways to identify these types of mis-information is when they include absolute statements such as:

No one listens to music on the radio anymore.

Sports Fans watch all their games on TV or in person.

Podcasts are what everyone is listening to these days.

Or Radio is dead.

The past couple of weeks, I’ve addressed the Radio is Dead rumor with evidence that it’s not.  It’s alive and thriving.  If you missed those stories, go back and read or listen to the podcast episodes.

Before I joined News/Talk WOWO radio in 2013, I worked primarily for music stations.  The past couple of decades pundits were eager to declare that ad supported free AM/FM commercial radio was dying and people were now going to listen to their favorite songs via streaming services.  Pandora Music was one of thee first that has it’s roots going back to the year 2000.  It was September of 2005 that they officially launched as a subscription ad-free music service but then they added a free service that included advertising, similar to traditional radio.

According to Wikipedia, Pandora grew to around 70 million active monthly users worldwide, but that number comes from 2013.

What does this have to do with advertising?

A couple of things… 

Local businesses can pay to run ads on Pandora.  

Pandora is not the only music streaming service and others also offer ad placement, Spotify is the most recognized for home/office and Sirius XM for mobile listening in vehicles.

Pandora and these other streaming radio services never have had the number of listeners that traditional radio stations continue to have and a recent study shows that Pandora’s ability to reach local listeners with your advertising message has been declining for years.

Here are some highlights from a report from Westwood One titled What Ever Happened to Pandora:

Here are five key findings:

  1. Since consumer interest in Pandora Radio hit an all-time high in 2008, its audience and profile have significantly collapsed, according to Google Search trends.
  2. A brand-new Advertiser Perceptions study conducted in August 2024 reveals marketers and media agencies need to “take the me out of media” as they wildly overestimate Spotify and Pandora audiences and dramatically understate AM/FM radio’s shares.
  3. AM/FM radio represents the dominant ad-supported audio platform with a 69% overall share and a massive 86% in-car share.
  4. Podcast audiences soar. At a 19% share of ad-supported audio, podcasts now represent one out of every five minutes of U.S. ad-supported audio.
  5. Among registered voters, AM/FM radio leads in ad-supported audience share (69%), followed by podcasts (19%).

I’ll have more on the podcast growth trend in a few weeks.  For now, let’s dig into the Pandora data:

Ad-supported Pandora’s daily reach has been cut in half; AM/FM radio streaming is twice as big as ad-supported Pandora and ad-supported Spotify

Since 2017, Edison’s “Share of Ear” reports ad-supported Pandora’s daily reach has plunged from 12% to 6%. At a 63% daily reach, AM/FM radio’s audience is ten times larger than Pandora. Amazingly, the 11% daily reach of AM/FM radio streaming is double that of ad-supported Pandora (6%) and ad-supported Spotify (5%).

Looking at one of the charts, we see that AM/FM radio listenership either over the air or via a stream was 77% of daily listening in 2017 and in 2024 it’s 70%.  Meanwhile Pandora dropped from 12% down to 6%, Spotify went up 1% from 4 to 5 while Sirius remains flat at 5% of daily listening.

Most traditional AM/FM radio stations offer additional ways to listen to your favorite station along with a regular AM/FM radio and that’s where the streaming comes in.  In my home we have both Alexa and Google Home smart speakers which have replaced the radios in a couple of rooms in our house.  

As an experiment for this article, i listened to Pandora for about an hour and never heard any local ads.  When I looked at the display ads, again nothing local and nothing targeted to me despite the fact they have that meta data. The job I had before returning to radio in 2013 involved a lot of desk work and I would listen to Pandora for a portion of the work day.

Bottom line is in order to invite local consumers to your business, local radio is still an excellent choice you need to consider.

 

The State of WOWO Radio Fall 2024 Edition

The State of WOWO Radio Fall 2024 Edition

by | Sep 16, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

About once a year I share some insider information about the state of radio, specifically WOWO radio, the primary radio station I’ve represented since 2013.

Today’s the day for an update.

A lot has happened the past 11 years I’ve been here. WOWO  had their 90th birthday in 2015 and we turn 100 next year.  Most of those 100 years WOWO has been on 1190am and occasionally also on FM.  92.3 was the FM home for WOWO when I started and then we brought music back to 92.3 for a few years. Big 92.3 was a classic hits music station for a few years until May 2023 when WOWO returned to 92.3FM.

For close to 3 decades, WOWO has been a News/Talk radio station and when we put music on 92.3 a few years ago, we added two more ways to listen to WOWO on FM that are still available.  Some of you can pick up WOWO at 107.5FM, that’s a low power FM signal with limited range in the Fort Wayne Indiana area and as vehicles started adding HD radio, we also included WOWO programming on 97.3 HD2.

So ever since May 2023, we’ve got multiple ways for listeners to listen to the News/Talk programming on WOWO including:

1190am

92.3 FM

107.5 FM

97.3 HD2 FM

and the streaming platforms including the WOWO app, Alexa, Google Home, your laptop, and others like iHeart, Spotify, and TuneIn.

Let’s take a look at what’s going on now and I’ll start with some public information from Nielsen, the ratings company that measures all kinds of data including radio listenership.

In Fort Wayne, we have two annual rating periods, Spring and Fall and then it takes a few weeks to get the results.

The public data is picked up by various news sources and I saw this graphic from Radio Online dot com.

WOWO is listed as the number one radio station this year with a 9.5 share.  This means that of the 20+ radio stations listed nearly 1 out of ten people listen to WOWO.

Considering there are over 20, but I’m just going to count the top 20 stations, if listenership to each station was equal, each station would have a 5 share because when you do the math, 100 divided by 20 = 5.

According to this WOWO has nearly double the number of listeners, and when we step back to the Spring 2023 numbers, it’s an 86% improvement.

However, here’s what’s really important and while I can’t publish the numbers publically, I can share privately the exact data.

WOWO has 4 daytime shows we call primetime because the primetime for radio listening is during the day.

Fort Wayne’s Morning News with host Kayla Blakeslee continues to grow.  It was 6 years ago that Kayla took over after the unexpected passing of our legendary beloved morning host Charly Butcher in 2018.  Kayla has increased total number of listeners and they are tuned in longer compared to a year ago.

Next we have national syndicated hosts Glenn Beck and Dan Bongino in the middle of the day and they continue to win.  Glenn’s listeners from 9am to noon are growing and the same can be said for Dan’s show from noon to 3pm.

What’s new is WOWO’s long time afternoon host moved to a Saturday only show and around the 1st of February this year, Casey Hendrickson took over the 3pm to 6pm slot.  Casey is from our sister station in South Bend and currently does most of his shows from their studio but is increasing his time in Fort Wayne and using the WOWO studio to do his show that airs on both our stations.

Originally there was some loyal listener push back.  Pat has been doing afternoons on WOWO for over a two decades and Casey also has been with Federated Media, our parent company for 13 years.  When one of them would take vacation days, we would broadcast the other persons show for the last 10 years, so our WOWO listeners had a little bit of familiarity of Casey.

During the last couple of years of Pat’s afternoon show, there was some declines but he had a very loyal fanbase.  When we got the rating information for Casey in the afternoon on WOWO this summer, it conformed that this was the right move to make.  Listenership is up and like the rest of WOWO, loyalty measured by the amount of Time Spent Listening is also up.

WOWO continues to be a dominate radio station for listenership and also for advertising.  The advertising is what pays everyone to keep doing their jobs and in turn the advertising has to produce a Return On Investment for the businesses that invite WOWO listeners to become their customers.

What’s the Value of Your Name?

What’s the Value of Your Name?

by | Sep 12, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Just a quick word of caution today about your company name… it’s more valuable than you think.

A story about the Campbell Soup Company wanting to change their name after 155 years hit my inbox this week and I hope that they handle this carefully.

Mediapost.com’s headline: Campbell’s Soup Aims To Drop ‘Soup’

and the story:

After 155 years, an iconic and historic brand is considering a name change that will help communicate the diversity of its product offerings. 

“At an investor event Tuesday, Chief Executive Mark Clouse revealed that the storied company would ask shareholders to approve a name change, from Campbell Soup Company to The Campbell’s Company. It is a significant shift that underscores how much transformation has occurred since Clouse took over in January 2019,” according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Nearly half the company’s sales come from snacks, including such brands as Goldfish crackers and Kettle chips.

“Clouse told Wall Street at its investor day that Campbell’s is focusing on 16 top brands across its meals and beverages and snacking division including Goldfish, V8 beverages and Prego sauces,” according to Reuters. 

A Campbell’s representative tells Today.com that, if approved, its current web address — which still contains the word “soup” — will also change, but that doesn’t mean it’s forgetting the source of Andy Warhol’s inspiration. The representative also confirms that, despite the proposed name change, the company will still be known as “Campbell’s.”

“Last year, Campbell’s snack sales grew 13%, while its soups grew 3%,” reports CNN Business. “Legacy food companies like Campbell are pivoting to gain a larger share of the snack market, valued at more than $200 billion by market research firm Circana. Nearly half of Americans say they eat at least three snacks a day, according to Circana.”

Campbell recently acquired Sovos Brands, which includes Rao’s sauces, Michael Angelo’s frozen entrees and Noosa’s Yoghurt.

“The $2.7 billion deal will bolster Campbell’s food and beverage line in which soup remains important but is a smaller portion of the portfolio,” according to USA Today. 

If this name change is only at a corporate level and not a rebranding marketing plan too, then this isn’t all that important to their sales and future branding.  Some companies have done this successfully such as Google became Alphabet and Facebook became Meta.  What’s important is both Google and Facebook continued with their original brand names despite having a new corporate identity.  Other companies such as Twitter threw away their identity with the renaming to X.  Of course Elon Musk’s involvement changed the whole identity of Twitter and X is very different from the Twitter platform I first joined in 2008.

Some brands name change evolved more organically, as Chevrolet earned the Chevy nickname decades ago.  Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC when Americans were told that we should not eat fried foods, but some people already referred to them as KFC before they officially rebranded to just the three KFC letters.

The smart thing for the new Campbells company to do is to retain the legendary brand names that they now own and continue to promote those.  That’s what Proctor and Gamble has done.  The dumb thing would be to rebrand those iconic brands like Goldfish, V8 and Prego, dropping those names and replacing them with the Campbell name.  Those names have value and despite a corporate name change Campbell means soup to the consumer.

If you’re considering a name change for your business or starting a business and need to pick a name, contact me first.  I’ve seen multiple successes and a few failures in this area and can help guide you.