The Power of Audio

The Power of Audio

by | Sep 17, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Which is more powerful…

Audio or video?

Is what you see more powerful than what you hear?

What stirs your heart, your emotions?

If you have never been asked these questions, you should take some time to contemplate the answer before we continue.

The visual  is thought to be more powerful than the audio but it’s just not true.

Earlier in my life, I was a radio disc jockey.  I was the voice between the songs that played on the radio.  This was before there was a TV channel devoted to playing music videos.

MTV was just that at the beginning. 24 hours a day on cable TV MTV played the Top 40 Contemporary Hit Music Videos with real live V-J’s (video jocks) doing the kind of stuff I did on the radio.  It was wildly successful at first.

But there’s a reason why MTV is not a 24 hour music video channel anymore.

It’s not that the music videos are not any good anymore.  Nope, there is another reason.

Video took away an important element from the music.

Music Video’s stripped away the personal imagination and personal emotion from the music.

Before music video’s became widespread, each of us had a more personal experience with the music when it came on the radio.

We created our own personal story.  A unique personal story, all ours, not shared with anyone because it was written in our imagination and our heart.

Now I’m going to jump 30+ years to today.

Pretend you were in a coma and suddenly you woke up 3 decades later.  Or perhaps you prefer a time machine, that sounds less scary.

As we prepare for the next decade of the 2020’s I have been noticing a trend to personalized experiences once again.

I’m referring to entertainment and information.  

Instead of watching a particular TV show on Tuesday nights at 8pm, we now watch on our time schedule.  A personalized schedule. 

This has contributed to the decline in traditional TV watching on broadcast and cable channels and the increase in viewership to services like Netflix and other streaming services.  Binge watching?  Yes, that’s part of it, but it has more to do with creating our own personalized schedule.

You may ask, “What’s this have to do with playing music on the radio or music videos?” , that I was talking about a few moments ago…

Personalized Audio experiences are also on the rise.  Here’s how and why:

The options of what to listen to continue to grow.  

Podcasting is not a foreign concept, it is mainstream.  

Now the content that you find in the podcast world ranges from one extreme to another, and the quality varies tremendously too.

There are a couple dozen podcast networks that you can use to listen to your favorite podcasts with the big three currently being:

  1. Apple or iTunes
  2. Google Play Podcasts
  3. and Spotify

If you are going to have a podcast, you want to make sure you are on those three platforms.

Something else that has lead to a resurgence in listening to audio is the growth of Smart Speakers.

This summer the Nielsen company released a couple reports that MarketingCharts.com shared that showed some interesting facts about all this.

A couple of key takeaways:

  • 92% of American Adults listen to the radio every week.  What I find interesting is that in reality, they could be listening to a local radio station on a traditional car radio, at home through their smart speaker, out and about listening on earbuds plugged into their phone, or streaming on their laptops… it all counts and the relevance of local radio stations continues to remain strong.
  • 2/3 of all “out of home listening” is in cars. The numbers show that the majority of our radio listening is done away from home. Also: For advertisers trying to get the attention of adults, the prime time for listening on the weekdays starts at about 7 a.m. and remains relatively steady until it reaches a peak between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. during drive time. I can verify this in the rating information I have access to for Fort Wayne, Indiana. 
  • 9 out of 10 Podcast Listeners are also Radio Listeners. Now we’re getting to the connection between radio and podcasts. My radio station, WOWO Radio in Fort Wayne Indiana is a news and talk formated station.  WOWO has the largest number of weekly listeners according to the latest independant rating survey.  

WOWO and our other local Federated Media radio stations take the content that was first heard live on the radio and we make it accessible to listeners anywhere and anytime as podcasts too.  Did you miss an interview with the Mayor this morning during Fort Wayne’s Morning News?  You can listen to it via the podcast.  Same with nearly any interview on WOWO and some of the morning show content from our music stations too.

We also have created podcast only shows that get a ton of listeners also.  Podcasting has helped make the entire radio experience a personalized experience. 

And remember what I said at the very beginning about listening to music and not just watching the music video?  That is why our radio stations still are so popular even today.

By the way, these listeners to all this audio on the radio and podcasts are also consumers and I have ways for you to invite them to be your customers.  Contact me: Scott@WOWO.com 

Also sign up below to receive my free Sound ADvice Marketing Tips newsletter in the box below. 

 

 

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Avoid A Digital Disaster

Avoid A Digital Disaster

by | Sep 10, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

I walked in for my 1 o’clock meeting, and there was a strange kind of energy at their office.

I’m talking about energy in the air, the people were not their usual happy selves.

I asked if Doug was in and they pointed to his office and went back to their computer screens.

I climbed the steps to his office and he greets me and tells me what’s going on.

It turns out Facebook shut down his company Facebook page.

Now that may be no big deal to you and your company, but it was for Doug and his business.

If you are relying on some marketing platform like Facebook to keep your business alive, you are risking a Digital Disaster.

Long story short for Doug is that he lost a lot but his business will recover, but it is expensive in time and money.

You may not be so fortunate.

By the way, the story I am telling is true, but Doug is not the business owners real name.

Let’s dig into the details and see how you can avoid losing your business.

Lesson Number ONE, when you name your business, register that name with the proper authorities. That’s usually at the city, county or state level. Depending on what your business does and what marketing you do, you may even need to trademark it which is at the federal level.

Doug’s business page on Facebook was shut down by Facebook because the name he had been using was trademarked by another company hundreds of miles away.  Doug was unaware of this conflict when he selected the name of his company and it wasn’t until that Monday morning that he became aware of the problem this could cause.

Doug used Facebook as his primary marketing and lead generator. His second most successful lead generator was my radio station, WOWO and it reality we married the two of them as a marketing tactic. 

Doug’s business is a home improvement company and everyday his team would be taking pictures of the transformations they did at peoples homes and sharing them on Facebook which worked when you put a considerable amount of money behind those Facebook posts like Doug did.  He spent double on Facebook what he spent with my radio station, otherwise we would have been his top lead source.

Anyway, the mistake Doug made was that he trusted Facebook.  When they took down his business page, they did without warning and all the hundreds of pictures and success stories were not just gone, but lost.

Lesson Number TWO is to Keep Everything Yourself.  Doug and his team deleted their copies of the pictures and posts once they were on Facebook. Doug now saves all those pictures in the cloud on a space he controls.  

By Wednesday, Doug had moved on and decided to rename his business.  This time he did a more thorough check for conflicts and once he was satisfied he contacted me with the new name.  It was easy for me to help him with his rebranding to our radio listeners, that’s part of the beauty of radio, we can make changes often within 24 hours.  That’s not the case for TV or print advertising.

Over the next few days, Doug started his Facebook marketing from scratch.  He had plenty of jobs that he could post and share pictures of, just like he did before, but the Thousands, yes THOUSANDS of people who were connected to his old Facebook business page, were all gone.  So once again he poured money into promoting those Facebook posts and was able to get things up to a satisfactory level of activity in about a week.  He had one handicap with Facebook marketing however.  He could not mention his old company name or he would risk being shut down again.

WOWO radio to the rescue.  The tactic that we used for Doug when he started with us is live endorsement ads and the call to action was to call them and also visit their Facebook Page.  For the first two weeks since the Facebook page was gone, we continued to promote the old name and phone number since Doug still has the old website up.

This week and for the rest of the month, the radio ads will do something that Doug could not do on Facebook. 

We are promoting the name change on the air.  Both names are mentioned as a transition.  This keeps the reputation and good will that Doug has built with our radio audience and we are also telling people to check out the work at the new company Facebook page.  The only reason I didn’t make the switch earlier is I needed Doug to have at least a dozen completed jobs as Facebook Posts so our listeners would see that this is the real thing.

I mentioned that this is an expensive lesson for Doug.  Besides the money spent to handle all of this mess on Facebook, he also needs to spend money fixing everything else online.  That includes a new website, new email addresses, getting Google reviews built up for the new company name for example.  There is also the hard costs of changing everything else with the old company name to the new name including quote forms, bank accounts, business cards, embroidered shirts for everyone on his team, vehicle wraps for their fleet and work trailers. New logo design, and the list goes on and on.  Did I mention he spent a few thousand on a radio jingle that is now worthless?

The only reason that Doug is not out of business today is he has deep pockets because this has been a good first year for his company.  Also he was not solely relying on Facebook to keep his business leads coming in.  His relationship with me and my team at WOWO Radio has made this painful lesson just a crash, but not a crash and burn.  

Please, there are ways to avoid a Digital Disaster, and I can help.  The earlier I get involved the more likely we can prevent this from happening.  Contact me: Scott@WOWO.com.  And you can also get free weekly Sound ADvice marketing tips by signing up for my newsletter in the box below.

 

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How Much Should I Spend On Marketing?

How Much Should I Spend On Marketing?

by | Sep 3, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

It’s often the question that most business owners dread:

How Much Should I Spend On Marketing?

I have a fresh take on this using the words of Roy H. Williams:

  1. One of the most common mistakes in advertising is to spread your ad budget across several different media so that you “don’t leave anyone out.” But persuasion – in most instances – requires repetition and familiarity. Would you rather reach 100% of the people and convince them 10% of the way, or reach 10% of the people and convince them 100% of the way? Don’t spread your money too thinly by chasing the unicorn of “media mix.”

  2. Expensive rent = cheap advertising. Intrusive visibility – a landmark location with signage that’s noticed even when people aren’t looking for it – is the cheapest advertising money can buy.  This is true for service businesses, too, not just retail. The extra cost for this kind of location should be taken from the ad budget.

Roy’s first point is one that I’ve said repeatedly and his second one, well I can give you a real life example of it in action.

When I help my advertising partners schedule their ads on my radio station, WOWO radio, I do it the same way I advise people to buy television ads.

And that is to get ownership of an audience.

For people who want to buy TV ads, I tell them to do the opposite of what most TV ad salespeople try and sell.  The TV stations here are notorious for throw ads all over their station with very little frequency. Instead I tell them to concentrate on a couple of popular shows, even if it means they get less ads for their budget.

When it comes to the radio ads on WOWO which is a news/talk station, I employ a similar tactic. Between 5am and 6pm weekdays we have 4 distinct programs.  The day starts with our local Fort Wayne Morning News with Kayla Blakeslee.  Then national talk show host Glenn Beck comes on at 9am followed by Rush Limbaugh at 12noon.  From 3pm to 6pm, it’s all local again with the Pat Miller Program.

Every one of these 4 programs has a weekly audience of 40,000 to 70,000 listeners.  None of my advertising partners can handle half that amount coming to them in a week.  So what I do is take a look at the best 3 hour radio show to place my advertising partner.

What makes a show “the best”?  I look at competitors on the air, I look a little deeper at the personalities of the show and other aspects that I have insight on and we start with about 15 hours a week which is 3 hours a day times 5 days per week to place their ads.

As they build success on one WOWO radio show, we look at expanding to a second or third show, but the idea is to build positive Top Of Mind Awareness with a select group of people first.  I have ways to tweak this too, just ask me.

Now regarding Roy Williams comment about Real Estate being apart of your Marketing…. I say yes and no.  If you can secure a location and the signage at a well known spot in town, good for you.  This was the reason shopping malls used to attract tenants who paid extra high rent.  But now, it’s probably not needed as much.  With technology and smartphones being able to give us driving instructions, as long as you have your online listings current, I tend to disagree.

However there is a drug store chain that saw tremendous growth a few decades ago by taking the location factor as part of their marketing to heart.

I’m talking about Walgreens.  When I returned to Fort Wayne, 20 years ago, all the Walgreens were in a strip mall.  The one closest to me built a free standing store across the street from their old location and shut down the previous store.

You’ll probably notice that most Walgreens are located at an intersection where there is a traffic light.  Most also have an LED electronic message sign that has specials rotating that people see while they are waiting for the light to change from red to green.

This is by design.  This is brillant, but wait, there’s more.

As Walgreens was making this change in the placement and design of their stores, they also incorporated a new advertising slogan that most consumers didn’t overtly notice, but when I tell you, you see too the clever marketing tie-in.

Walgreens, at the corner of Happy & Healthy!

And yes, they are really at a real street corner. Plus everything they sell is designed to make you either healthy of happy or both.

Most businesses don’t have the deep pockets that Walgreens has to do a complete rebrand of that proportion.  However there are plenty of opportunities to use this kind of wisdom with the marketing and advertising of your business.

Want help?

Contact me:  Scott@WOWO.com

You can also review the entire list of 20 points Roy H. Williams made in Advertising Oversimplified by going here.

And fill in your information on the form below for my free weekly newsletter, Sound ADvice.

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Little Known Advertising Copy Secrets

Little Known Advertising Copy Secrets

by | Aug 27, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Want to know how to be ignored?

Be Predictable.

The Opposite is also true and we’ll learn some little known advertising copy secrets as we continue with part 8 of a 9 part series based on Roy H. Williams Advertising Oversimplified article he wrote a few months ago.

Roy says:

  1. Thirty-six years ago (1983) David Ogilvy was speaking of newspaper and magazine ads when he wrote, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” Now look at your open rate. What percentage of your online budget has been spent when you’ve written your subject line?

  2. If you have nothing to say, don’t let anyone convince you to say it. Boring, predictable messages make you seem smaller and duller and waste your money. Companies don’t fail due to “reaching the wrong people.” Companies fail due to saying the wrong things.

  3. Predictable ads are about you, your company, your product, your service. Persuasive ads are about the customer, and the transformation your product or service will bring to your customer’s life.

  4. “I, me, my, we, and our” are self-centered words.“You and your” are customer-centered words.

  5. Entertainment is the only currency that will purchase the time and attention of a busy public. Are your ads entertaining?

Depending on the type of ad you are planning on running, different points of what Roy said are important.

Take the entertainment factor for instance.  A common problem I see and hear with ads that are entertaining is that they lose the advertising message.  They may win creativity awards, but did they contribute to the growth of the company or brand?  Do you really need all the glitz and glamour and expense to create an ad that is not going to help you sell your stuff?

I’ve personally worked in all types of radio formats along with print ads and online advertising and there is no one strict formula that you should follow for all your ads everywhere.   

Take for example the length of your ads.  A few years ago, I developed my secret sauce as my co-workers now call it of using shorter live ads that had just as much or more impact as the traditional full length ads that were standard.  But this secret sauce formula is not for everyone and every situation.  Contact me and we can see if it should be used in your ad campaign.  Scott@WOWO.com

You can also get more marketing tips delivered to your email nearly every Wednesday when you subscribe to my Sound ADvice newsletter in the box below.

 

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One Size Does NOT Fit All

One Size Does NOT Fit All

by | Aug 7, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Sometimes business people want a proposal from me before we even talk about what they need or want.

That’s like going to a doctor and sayin, “Just give me some pills, the kind that everyone else is buying”.

That is more than ridiculous, it is stupid and dangerous.

But I don’t blame the business people who ask, I blame the advertising sales people who walk around selling packages.

Before I get to far ahead of myself, this is part of my continuing series I am doing this summer based on Roy H. Williams Advertising Oversimplified.

Today I am examining his 6th point:

Two ways to use mass media:(A.) Used consistently, mass media will cause your company to be the one customers think of immediately – and feel the best about – when they finally need what you sell.(B.) Used short-term, mass media will give urgency and importance to a special event when you purchase high repetition for a period of time, usually between 1 and 14 days.

I actually prefer to do the A Option because it is really what most businesses need.

However I can do Option B when it makes sense.

What’s the reasoning between the two?

Mass Media, or at least the mass media that I work with, WOWO Radio in Fort Wayne, has a larger mass of listeners than your business can handle.

But that’s okay because we as a group of people don’t really do most things at the same time.  We buy a car only when we want to buy a car or have to buy a car.  We buy gas for our cars only when we need to, not everyday, and not at the same place.  Advertising can not change this… usually.

So the purpose for advertising with the A Option is to create Top Of Mind Awareness for you and your business.  In nearly any buying opportunity, I have a choice of what to buy and where to buy.  

The last time we were selling our house, I had a problem because I knew 26 realtors, none of them were favorites of mine, so instead of listing our house with any of them, I invited all of them to find a buyer for my house.  The one who brought us a buyer, earned his commission.

That’s not the way it should work.

Go back to the car buying situation and I have had a favorite used car dealer that I have bought a half dozen cars from.  He usually gets the first opportunity to sell me my next car.  Dale is Top Of Mind with us.  However the last two cars I purchased from someone else because Dale, my favorite used car dealer did not have what I wanted.  The last two cars I bought from other dealers that I also trusted, but it was a combination of the right car from a reputable dealer that got me into those last two cars.

Top Of Mind Awareness and Preference is what you build with a regular advertising schedule on mass media like WOWO Radio.  It’s up to you to be able to convert the people we send you into paying customers.

Option B that Roy talks about I also use when appropriate.  A great example is a concert.   Right now I have a concert promoter from Canada that is bringing in a group next month and once the concert is over, there in no need for them to advertise.  So we have a more focused short term game plan in place.

A problem I see with many of the advertising sales people out there is that they don’t understand what I just shared with you regarding when to use Option A and when to use Option B.

In many cases, the best is a combination of the two options, and that takes strategic thinking, research and planning.  Very few of the ad sales people that try and get you to buy their “packages” go through this planning and thinking process.

I do.

And I can help you.

Just contact me:  Scott@WOWO.com

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Why We Don’t Have Phone Books Anymore

Why We Don’t Have Phone Books Anymore

by | Jul 31, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

I could have titled this:

Dead Advertising Mediums.

Read this from Roy H. Williams:

Google is the new phone book. Like the Yellow Pages of yesterday, it is the principal resource for buyers who are currently, consciously in the market for a product or service and have no preferred provider. Like the White Pages of yesterday, Google delivers your telephone number, street address, (and business hours) to customers who have already chosen you as their preferred provider.

 

Customers who come to you through mass media will often be credited to your digital efforts due to the “White Pages” function of Google. They had already chosen you as their preferred provider, but were looking online for your street address, phone number, or business hours.

 

That is the 7th and 8th points from a newsletter that Roy H. Williams wrote earlier this year that I’m doing a series on right now as a ScLoHo extra.  Go here to read all 20 points.

Advertising in the phone book is a complete waste of money in the United States of America.  

I’ve been preaching this for years.

I have nothing against printed ads, it’s just, like Roy says, not needed at least in the phone book.

I have nothing to add to what Roy said, except an observation from earlier this month.

On Wednesday July 3rd, I was in the waiting room of a service department getting my car’s air conditioning back in shape for the 90+ degree temps and here’s what I observed.

About a dozen people ranging in age from about 8 to 80 were also in the waiting room.  One was reading a book, everyone else had a mobile phone or tablet that they were using.

A TV was on, but was being ignored by most everyone.

There were also two newspapers that sat untouched on a table until I opened them up.

The Wall Street Journal and our local morning paper the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

The Wall Street Journal had 28 pages total and an appropriate number of ads, but they could have had a few more.

But 28 pages, that is pretty slim for a national newspaper.  Kind of sad.

What was worse was the local paper.

24 total pages.  Maybe 4 pages worth of ads plus the classifieds.  They could not make money with this pitiful amount of paid ads.  This was the day before the 4th of July and a few decades ago it would have been stuffed full of ads for holiday sales and now… nothing.

Sadly for the future of these papers, no one cared to even read the paper.

As a kid, I used to be a paperboy, delivering every afternoon when I got home from school.

These days, no one seems to read the daily newspapers and with a lack of readers the advertisers ads are not getting seen.

Everyone sitting in the waiting room was watching and reading their own personal screens.

Is it any wonder that there are so few ads and so few pages printed?

Mass media isn’t dead, but certain mediums are.

Contrast the phone book and newspapers with the data about the mass media I work in.

Radio.  Surveys continue to show that over 90% of people in the United States of America listen every week.

We got the results for radio listening in Fort Wayne and my station, WOWO radio has the largest weekly audience with over 140,000 people choosing to listen to WOWO every week.  Unlike the newspaper that just sits there untouched.  Or the phone books that get tossed in the recycling bins the day they are delivered.

If you are paying to advertise in the phone book or a newspaper, let’s talk.  Email me: Scott@WOWO.com

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