by Scott Howard | Oct 9, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
I read a lot. Not as many books as I used to before the internet, but I read all kinds of stuff. I read everyday. I bet you do too.
Sometimes I am asked by business people, what is the best day to advertise? Everyday is my usual answer.
Recently I was reading an email update to a blog I subscribe to from the Zimmer Radio group of stations, headquartered in Joplin, Missouri. A dozen years ago I worked with someone who had come from that company and that’s how I became familiar with Zimmer. They don’t compete with me or WOWO Radio or any of the stations at Federated Media and they have some good marketing ideas.
The article that caught my attention this time is titled 3 Reasons Consistency Is Critical for Your Home Improvement Marketing. But the 3 Reasons apply to nearly any business.
Here they are:
- Consistency Builds Trust
- Consistent Advertising Spurs Customer Action
- Consistent Quality Service Drives Customer Loyalty
Let’s dig deeper and how this works with your advertising. Everyday that I hear your message on the radio, you are planting a seed. That seed, that nugget about you and your business gets stored away in my brain even when I am not needing your services.
Auto Collision Service in Fort Wayne is the first place I think of when someone asks me about an auto body shop. City Glass has top of mind awareness for custom glass in Fort Wayne, with me. I could continue but let me tell you why these businesses come to mind. First, they advertise consistently on WOWO radio which is not only the station I work for, I also spend more time listening to WOWO than any of the other 20 stations in Fort Wayne. I trust WOWO and I trust these local businesses because they have been consistent with their marketing messages on WOWO.
Customer Action due to consistent advertising, I see this over and over again. In my life I had our HVAC system, that’s our heat and air conditioning for our home, replaced by Doc Dancer Heating and Cooling because I heard Pat Miller talk about them week after week after week. I really didn’t have an immediate need to get it replaced, but the advertising prompted me to take action. Over time, your consistent advertising messages can do the same for your business.
Consistent Quality Service Drives Customer Loyalty is a part of your marketing that goes beyond the advertising world. I frequent a couple of local coffee shops every month. The Firefly on the northside of Fort Wayne and the Mocha Lounge on the southwest side. These two coffee shops have had tremendous changes over the years, it’s the nature of their business to have some staff turn over. But I must say, it is the consistent quality that keeps me coming back. Not just in the coffee, but in the way they treat their guests, their customers, like me.
My original statement, Everyday is the Best Day, applies to doing things consistently and continuously. The most successful advertisers on WOWO radio are the ones that start and don’t stop.
I can apply this principle to nearly any size advertising budget too, want to know how? Contact me.
by Scott Howard | Aug 8, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
It’s a perspective that I wish everyone had. The Lifetime Value of a Customer.
Or to take it from the customers perspective, What Am I Worth To You?
Two items inspired me to write and podcast on this topic. One was an article by Seth Godin. The other was a purchase I made recently.
And here’s what I want you to get out of this today…
Each individual customer is worth a heck of a lot more than you realize and the sooner we learn this the sooner we can make significant changes that will increase everyone’s value, including that of your business.
Here’s the quote from Seth:
We’re still clueless about lifetime value.
If an Apple upgrade breaks your phone and you switch to Android, it costs Apple more than $10,000.
If you switch supermarkets because a clerk was snide with you, it removes $50,000 from the store’s ongoing revenue.
If a kid has a lousy first grade teacher or is bullied throughout middle school, it might decrease his productivity for the rest of us by a million dollars.
Seth says it’s the little things that add up or more accurately multiply as either a gain or loss.
In 2001, my wife and I bought our first house together. The house did not have central air and so I called a couple of heating and cooling contractors for estimates. The first one sent a salesperson out who walked around our house, jotted down some notes and then sat down at our kitchen table and gave me his written estimate. The dude was pretty quiet, didn’t ask any questions that I remember and never followed up until about a month later!
The other heating and cooling company sent the owner over to give us our estimate for central air. He asked plenty of important questions and explained the process of what they would need to do since our house needed duct work for the central air. His price was more than the first quote, but I went with him because of the way he presented himself. I spent $8,000 on that central air job in 2001.
Four years later we moved and our new home had a combination hot water heater furnace that needed some repairs and eventually replacement. We spent another $2000 on heating and cooling services during our 8 years in that house.
That’s $10,000 in customer value in furnace and air conditioner services in 12 years. But wait, there’s more.
In 2014, we moved again and this house has a heat pump to take care of all of our heating and cooling needs. That summer, around the 4th of July, we noticed it was getting very warm inside our house. The last couple of experiences with our previous heating and air company were not the best so my wife suggested we contact one of the two we originally called in 2001.
The one that was able to make a service call right away got the job and it was the company that I did not use 13 years ago. They came prepared with the part to fix our heat pump and the tech was great, much better than my previous experience with their former salesperson. Over the past 4 years, I have spent a couple thousand dollars with them to fix some issues that ended up saving us money.
If you are counting, we are up to $12,000 that I’ve paid to various heating and cooling companies. However in June, I decided to replace our entire system that was 20 years old. That’s another $11,000.
My personal Lifetime Customer Value to heating and cooling companies has been $23,000 since 2001. I don’t expect to need to spend much more as long as we are in this house since I bought a top of the line heat pump that will take care of us for a long time.
That very first salesperson who was too quiet and lost the job never saw my Lifetime Customer Value. He may have just thought of me as the dollars he would earn as his commission, I really don’t know.
The heating and cooling company that earned my trust has also earned my recommendation over and over again. I know at least three of my co-workers are regular customers including one that just bought a new furnace and central air for his home. See, besides my personal Lifetime Customer Value, I also have value as a referral source for even more business.
So tell me, how do you assign worth and value to your potential customers? Does your staff understand this concept? Honestly, most don’t do they. But that can change and it starts with you just like it starts with me when I do my work.
What am I worth to you?
by Scott Howard | Aug 1, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
In my continuing informal series of information about advertising with the radio station I work for, WOWO, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I am going to share more research info that attempts to address the question some local business owners face:
Should I buy radio ads or television ads?
More specifically:
Should I use WOWO Radio or one of the Local TV stations?
I have access to local radio station ratings but not local TV station ratings, so I keep an eye out for research that fills in the gap of what I know.
Let’s start with WOWO Radio.
Overall, based on the population figures and the listenership numbers, I know that between 25 percent and 40 percent of the total Metro Fort Wayne population listens to WOWO every week. In the spring ratings report that was released, WOWO has the largest audience of all the Fort Wayne radio stations again.
As a news and talk radio station, WOWO’s audience is adults, or grown-ups as I like to say.
I also know that 80% of our 100,000 weekly listeners are age 45 and older.
Compare that to TV viewing.
Overall, screen-viewing has increased, but the way we watch and what we watch has changed dramatically in the past decade.
Cutting the cord, or not having a TV at all was the trend of Gen Z and it has been moving to older generations too.
My millennial kids don’t watch local TV. They get their news, weather, information and entertainment from a different kind of screen. Netflix is huge. So is YouTube. But local news? Nope.
Recently my wife and I were spending the evening with some older friends in their 60’s and they confessed the same thing. They watch more on their iPhones (including full length movies!) each week than they do live local television.
I don’t have the figures for local TV viewership like I do for local radio listenership, but I saw a report that shows that my antidotal observations are part of a trend that is not going away.
MarketingCharts.com reports that “Roughly Half of Households Headed by People Ages 55+ Stream Video”
Nearly 80% of 18 to 44 year olds watch streaming video, and while that is not surprising, the fact that older adults have moved to what I call “on-demand programming” has to be alarming to those in the television business. At least the local TV broadcasters.
So here’s what my assessment for businesses that are considering television advertising to invite Fort Wayne area consumers to do business with them….
Be very, very careful and cautious.
Local Newscasts and a few sporting events are about the only television programming that is exclusive to the TV stations. Everything else, we can time shift and watch on our own schedule. When I watch a show like NCIS after it originally was broadcast by my local CBS station, I don’t see your local TV ads.
Ask your television sales person, “How many people will see my TV ad?” Go deeper and ask them how they came up with that number.
If you want more help on deciding if an advertising campaign on TV is a good idea, contact me and I’ll gladly help you sort out the offer and teach you what to ask and look for.
Or better yet, let’s talk about inviting WOWO radio listeners to become your customers. We have 100,000 local listeners. How many do you want as your customers?
by Scott Howard | Jul 25, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
A study released this summer of over 500 consumers in the United States points out a reason why most advertising campaigns under perform.
There are over a million advertising and marketing messages that we are exposed to each year and most of them are missing something.
What is that something that is missing?
Trust is the Missing Link.
According to the ExpertVoice Consumer Trust Panel, only 4% of consumers trust celebrity endorsements, while over 80% trust the recommendations from friends and family. In today’s overcrowded marketplace, consumers are searching for trusted recommendations before making a purchase, says the report. Those so called social media influencers, they only earn the trust of 6% of consumers. Yet the influencer marketing industry expected to reach $10 billion by the year 2020.
Those are huge numbers. I’m going to bring it down to earth and tell you what I discovered a few years ago when I joined the advertising sales team at WOWO radio in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
WOWO is a news talk radio station with live, local newscasts starting at 5 in the morning, all the way up to 6 at night. Two local newscast every hour, except the first four hours, when the news team does 4 local newscasts in the morning. As a local news and talk radio station, WOWO also has two local radio personalities, Charly Butcher and Pat Miller who host mornings and afternoons. They are our version of celebrity, but not really.
Let me explain.
Because of the nature of our talk format at WOWO, Charly and Pat share their personalities with listeners. People don’t tune in to WOWO in the afternoon to hear the latest news, they tune in to hear what their friend Pat Miller is talking about with regards to what’s going on in the news. Pat and Charly become friends to their listeners. This is critically important to know, because remember the trust factor of family and friends tops 80% compared to anyone else when you are looking for advice on what to buy or whom to buy it from? Pat and Charly have credibility with their listeners.
There’s another statistic from this national trust survey I want to address. A significant reason why celebrity endorsements aren’t trusted by us everyday consumers is because we know that those movie, music and TV stars are paid big bucks to slap their name on those celebrity endorsed products. Here’s the quote from the report:
…the greatest concern for consumers regarding celebrity, athlete and influencer recommendations is the monetary compensation given to the individual from the brands they’re promoting. Additionally…many consumers expressed concern over what knowledge a celebrity possesses regarding the product they’re being paid to endorse.
Here’s how the live endorsements work with Charly and Pat at WOWO. When they do a full blown, live 60 second endorsement for an advertising partner, Pat or Charly do get paid a fee. The radio station gets paid for the 60 seconds of advertising time and Pat or Charly are paid an additional endorsement fee. These are the highest priced ads you will hear on WOWO. I call them the Platinum Option.
If you and your business wanted this live endorsement 60 second advertisement program from Charly or Pat, you have to qualify. You must be a person of your word. We understand that mistakes can happen but we want to make sure you are honest. When Charly Butcher was promoting Collins Flags as an Indiana company selling American Made Flags, you bet he checked them out before he agreed to endorse them. Same thing with Pat Miller’s endorsement of Doc Dancer heating and cooling. Pat has gotten to know the owners and has used them for his own home. Pat and Charly have veto power too. If they are asked to do live ads for a business that has a questionable reputation, they can and will say no. They have their trusted reputation to protect.
And speaking of protection, when you hire Pat to be your spokesperson for your business with these live 60 second endorsement ads, you are protected from Pat also endorsing your competition. Same thing with Charly. Ask me about this if you want to know more.
by Scott Howard | May 24, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
As we head into the unofficial summer season of June, July and August, the three months between Memorial Day and Labor Day, I want to address a headline I saw again and give you an insiders perspective on The Decline of Mass Media.
Why talk about it now? Well, television viewing habits in years past were different during summer time, with the major networks showing summer reruns instead of new episodes. But hang on because I’m getting ahead of myself.
What is mass media anyway? Perhaps traditional media is a better term. Television, Radio, Newspapers and Magazines are the traditional media that have been the mainstay since the 1950’s and before.
Newspapers are continuing to struggle. Lay offs and shut downs have been occurring for nearly two decades, due to the rise of the internet. One story I read this month blamed the owners for cutting staffs.
The Denver Post cut the newsroom from 184 journalists to 99, according to the story. Other cuts at other newspapers were also harsh. 73 reporters down to 10 while another paper went 45 to 12 journalists. Locally in Fort Wayne, the afternoon paper ceased publication, and instead gets one sheet in the morning paper and an online edition. I saw friends of mine in the newspaper business in town leave either on their own or due to cutbacks. I was once tempted about 8 years ago to work for their online division but am grateful I stayed put.
The company I work, Federated Media sold the one newspaper they owned a couple years ago because it was nearly impossible to be profitable.
When I say the internet is the reason for the decline in print, it’s really a combination of things related to the internet.
Accessibility for one. 20 years ago most of us owned a desktop computer with a dial-up modem at home, if we had a home computer. 12 years ago laptops took over as the primary personal computer device. And did you realize that the first iPhone debuted in 2007, ushering in the smartphone revolution?
Online Content is the other contributing factor. No need to wait for the morning paper to check the weather or the score. Newspapers have tried to replace their dwindling subscriber numbers with paywall subscriptions, but the math doesn’t work. If you don’t have the readers, the advertisers will also go away and the decline has been going on for too long.
Declines in the magazine publishing industry are similar. What seems to have survived in print is specialized publications. Smaller but targeted readership than mass media.
Another way the internet has changed the media is the television industry. The New York Times featured a story that I read online about the future of broadcasting: Why Traditional TV Is in Trouble.
Here’s a few quotes:
Ratings are on the decline, especially among young people, some of whom don’t even own televisions. It’s hard to keep up with the many devices and apps people now use to watch shows. And there is a host of material from Silicon Valley that is competing for viewers’ attention, including Google’s YouTube, Facebook and Netflix. It all adds up to a precarious situation for broadcast TV.
Advertising on TV has long been the best way for marketers to reach a large number of people at one time. And it is still a formidable medium. But cracks are showing.
and:
The hottest shows on TV networks — which command the highest ad prices — are attracting older viewers, which is a challenge for brands that want to reach millennials and teens. For instance, this season’s top-rated show, the revival of “Roseanne,” has a median viewer age of 52.9 years. The network show with the lowest median age is “Riverdale” on the CW, at 37.2.
The TV networks will be able to survive by reinventing themselves much like radio stations did when television became a media force last century. But the local TV stations? My advice if you want to reach anyone younger than Baby Boomers, good luck. All of my kids are in their 30’s and none of them are watching broadcast TV, some don’t even own a television. They get their video content online. Even my wife and I watch just as much video content on something other than a TV or if we do, often it’s days later and the local ads are not even seen.
So what is taking the place of traditional broadcast TV as a mass media?
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, to name a few. Alternatives to cable like Sling, Hulu and Roku. These are all offering the best of both worlds for advertisers. You get to reach people watching video content but you get to target your ads to specific audiences, one of the technical marvels of the internet.
Here’s a quote from a newsletter I received from Google:
More than half of 18 to 49-year-olds in the U.S. either don’t watch a lot of TV or do not subscribe to TV. But that doesn’t mean TV content and TV screens are on their way out. In fact, the TV screen is the fastest growing screen for YouTube content, with 70% growth in the last two years.
Let me address the radio broadcasting industry too. It was the first broadcast mass media and WOWO radio, the station I work for is over 90 years old. There are two categories of traditional broadcast radio stations these days, and I’m not talking about AM and FM. The two categories I am referring to are talk based programming and music based programming.
Radio broadcasting started out with network radio shows from NBC, CBS, ABC and the Mutual Broadcasting System and eventually they evolved to what we have today.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, there are 37 radio stations within close listening range. Some are duplicates of the same programming on different signals, like WOWO 1190 AM is the same as WOWO 107.5 FM, so let’s say there are 25 separate and individual choices. This is also a way of targeting your advertising. The best local radio stations keep an emphasis on local content, stuff you can’t get by listening to Spotify or Pandora.
Federated Media has 6 stations in Fort Wayne, four are music based, two are talk. I work for the talk stations, WOWO and our ESPN affiliated station. Both offer a combination of local and national programs. There are specific characteristics of WOWO listeners that help me determine if advertising on WOWO would be a good idea. Want to reach grown-ups? Let’s talk. Want to reach teenagers? I’ll connect you with someone who works for one of our music stations.
Not all radio stations and radio broadcasting companies are the same. Overall radio listenership has remained pretty steady for the past decade. Over 90% of everyone age 12 and older listens every week. However smart radio stations and companies are staying ahead of the trends that we see going on around us.
For years, radio stations like WOWO offered a way for you to listen via the internet. Go to WOWO.com and click on the listen now tab and you can stream WOWO on your computer. There are plenty of apps that offer access to radio stations like WOWO, and some people listen to WOWO via the WOWO app itself.
2018 however is the break thru year for Alexa and Google Home smart speaker systems. We are seeing a resurgence in radio listening simply by telling the smart speakers to play WOWO and poof, there’s Pat Miller in the afternoon or Charly Butcher in the morning, in your kitchen, just like 40 years ago when I was a kid and my parents had clock radios in their house.
One last way radio stations like WOWO are staying on top of the trends is podcasting. WOWO and our other Federated Media stations share both content from our live shows online in podcast form, but also we have some podcast only shows that are available via iTunes or what ever your favorite podcasting player is. Podcasting is huge and we can connect businesses to podcast listeners too.
The title of this today was The Decline Of Mass Media. As I’ve laid out what’s going on in print and broadcasting in response to the web connected world we live in, I hope you see as I do, these are exciting times. The traditional mass medias that are adapting are going to done fine while the others struggle and will be a mere shadow of their former selves.
Fortunately, I get to work with a company that continues to be on the leading edge and I get to offer advertising and marketing solutions that work using WOWO radio and our digital marketing division of Federated Media.
Want to see how I can help your business grow this year and next? Contact me.
One final piece that I’m going to share because it was posted on LinkedIn by Ben Saurer, WOWO radio’s General Sales Manager that demonstrates how WOWO truly is a leader. Ben’s job is to hire, coach and lead an advertising sales team. Quite frankly, most media companies struggle with this, but as you will see, WOWO is different, in a good way. Here’s what an excerpt from what Ben wrote:
All my people earn above the industry average. Client retention is high. Everyone on my staff is generating more revenue than last year. We’ve had ZERO sales staff turnover in 2+ years while having our market’s largest sales staff. People perform and like working here.
Remember the story I shared about the newspapers cutting their staffs to try and save themselves from going under? Completely different story here at WOWO.
by Scott Howard | May 21, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
What’s a ScLoHo Insider Extra?
It’s an extra article that I (ScLoHo) published that is not going to be available on the Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast. That’s the Extra part. You as a follower, are an Insider. Before I began the podcast in 2017, I would publish at least once a week, but sometimes more often. I still will write these Extra stories on occasion, so let’s dig in.
Awhile ago, I wrote about knowing the difference between Marketing Trends and Marketing Fads. Trends are long-term sustainable and even though they may go out of style, they are worth consideration. Fads on the other hand are dangerous and you need to be cautious if you are thinking of investing time or money in them.
Social Media has been filled with both Fads and Trends and marketing people are always attempting to be on top of both. I went to a Social Media & Marketing Breakfast in Fort Wayne last year that was devoted to Snapchat. I had mixed thoughts on Snapchat as a marketing platform before and after the event.
Granted, I’m not in the target demo for using Snapchat, but never-the-less, I’m a marketing dude who understands the big picture and the human relationship principles of marketing and advertising.
Turns out that Snapchat is falling out of favor with Social Media Marketers.
This is from Mediaposts Marketing Charts:
What’s trending in social media marketing? The latest annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner, based on a survey of more than 5,700 participants around the world, offers some insights into marketers’ preferences surrounding social media platforms and content.
It’s worth noting at the outset that the majority of respondents are from small businesses (1-10 employees), so this report is likely not a reflection of the activities of larger enterprise businesses.
(I work with small and medium sized businesses for the most part.)
The first chart is shows where Social Media Marketers are going to spend their time with organic posts. This next chart shows where they plan on spending their marketing money:
Facebook and Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) are winners in both organic and paid activity. By the way, think of Organic as an investment in time and Paid as an investment in money. Having been a full time Social Media Marketing Manager in my previous full-time employment, I have the credentials to speak from experience.
When I had a budget for Twitter and Pinterest, I actually moved those funds to Facebook paid promotion instead. Also I personally don’t use Pinterest, but 5 years ago it outperformed Facebook for trackable sales for the B2C internet retailer I worked for.
I found the better use for Twitter was for customer service and turned our account over to that department to use.
Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram all require someone to run your marketing campaign that really knows what they are doing and are staying on top of the changes that are going on. None of this social media marketing should be left in the hands of amateurs if you really want to use social media to market your business.
Reach out to me if you have questions or want recommendations.
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