ScLoHo’s Web World | The Genuine ScLoHo aka Scott Howard

What’s This GeoFencing Thing People Are Talking About?

by Scott Howard | Aug 9, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

GeoFencing is a term that I have used regularly and repeatedly for the past 3 years and apparently others in the advertising and marketing world have too.

But it has caused a ton of confusion because some people who are selling this service don’t understand how it works, what it does and so today I’m here to set the record straight.

Save this article or podcast as a reference so when someone tries to sell you GeoFencing, you know if they as much or more than they do.

Here’s a modern day explanation of GeoFencing:

GeoFencing is drawing a border or fence around a location that is then used to identify potential customers because they stepped inside the GeoFence.

Here’s how I offer GeoFencing as a digital marketing tool:

Along with the radio options I offer with WOWO Radio to invite potential customers to your business, I also have a number of online options I offer through the Federated Digital Solutions division of our company.

Custom Audience Targeting has been proven to be one of the most highly effective online options. We use Custom Audience Targeting to determine who to serve online digital banner ads to. Depending on the business, we will use a combination of the following 4 tools to find the right people.

Site Retargeting. This is serving ads to people who have visited your website. We know that they are potential customers because they have visited your website and we want to keep you Top Of Mind after they leave, because a majority of first time visitors don’t buy on the first visit.
Search Targeting. These people are qualified because they did an internet search for you or the products or services you offer. Search Targeting is an exclusive offered by our vendor partner for Digital Display Banner ads. Keywords are an important criteria in finding the right people using this tool.
Contexual Targeting. Also called Content Based Targeting. Potential customers are identified because of their browsing habits. The content someone reads online in an article or email has keywords and phrases that match the words and phrases for my advertising partner.
GeoFence Targeting. When someone enters a certain geographic zone, border or fence, they are qualified to receive your ads.

I don’t sell these four tools separately. We offer them as a complete solution, a Custom Audience Targeting solution to find the right people to serve ads to for your business to drive them to your website.

Here’s why we do it this way:

Each business is different and there is no “one size fits all” formula for using these 4 tools.

A business has to have enough organic traffic that it makes sense to allocate enough ads to the site retargeting tool and at the beginning of a campaign, many businesses don’t have enough.

That’s why the other 3 tools are also used. Or at least 2 of the tools are also used.

See, GeoFencing isn’t appropriate for all business either. Why?

Some business don’t have a physical location that their customers come to. A plumber for example. When you need a plumber, you don’t go visiting plumbers and ask them to follow you home. You call them and usually you have no idea where their shop or office is.

I do have a couple of examples of some really cool GeoFencing campaigns that were highly effective. One is a doctor who GeoFenced other doctors. My doctor has a different business model and the offices we GeoFenced were using the traditional business model. We were able to track new patients that came to my doctor after visiting the GeoFenced doctors.

Pretty cool, right?

How does your phone identify you as someone who qualifies to see these ads?

Simple answer: Location Services.

This is built into all of our smartphones and most of the apps on our phone use it.

Your phone’s technology is telling others where you are.

When you (your phone) goes certain places, you are being tracked.

Who is tracking you?

Facebook for one. Google for another. Any app that relies on knowing where you are to provide you with important information.

I just took a quick check of the apps on my android smartphone and some of the apps that are tracking me include:

My camera
Chrome web browser
My Contacts
Emergency Alerts
Facebook
my bank app
all things Google
my hair cutting app
Xfinity Hotspots app
iHeart Radio app
LinkedIn app
Google Maps (duh)
Facebook Messenger app
My car insurance app
Panera app
Starbucks app
Google Photos
Redbox app
Regal Cinema app
the Weather Channel app
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
Yelp
a couple of local news apps
a couple of national news apps

Turns out that nearly every app on my phone is tracking me. And the same is true for you.

The Location Services app built into your phone that communicates with the GPS systems that allows your phone and the apps to know where you are so your phone and the apps can tell you where the closest Starbucks or Panera is located without you having to know where exactly you are.

This location service also is important when there is bad weather heading our way to alert us, or if we are using our phone’s navigation service to guide us down the road. When you post on social media and it asks you if you want to include your location, that’s all possible due to this same technology.

GeoFencing by itself is not a marketing solution. But it is a marketing tool that when used properly can be pretty powerful at finding the right people to target your online ads to.

Before wrapping this up, I’m going to clear up a couple more misconceptions about GeoFencing and the rest of this Custom Audience Targeting that I offer.

Everyone that walks into your GeoFence is not necessarily going to start receiving your ads. You are buying a certain quantity of ad impressions and there are usually going to be more people who enter your GeoFence than you have bought ads for. I can show you the formula we use that estimates the number of people you will reach with your ads.
The ads don’t just pop up all over your phone instantly. That would be annoying. However there are plenty of apps that are advertising supported along with websites that have space for ads and that’s where your ads show up.
There is a Huge Difference in the methods and capabilities of both the companies and the sales people that offer digital advertising campaigns. I have seen the programs offered by local Fort Wayne radio stations, the “phone book companies (Dex & Hibu) and independent digital advertising agencies, even some long standing traditional ad agencies and through thorough research and verification by myself and other experts, in nearly every case, no one was able to provide a better service than what I have with the Custom Audience Targeting Digital Ad Solution with Federated Digital.

That’s enough for now, want to know more and see if this is appropriate for your company? Reach out to me and let’s talk.

How I Can Help You Invite People To Give You Money

by Scott Howard | May 18, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

About 18 months ago I wrote a list of some of the advertising options I offered as a member of the WOWO Radio Advertising Sales Team.

Time for a fresh spin and update and if you want to listen to the podcast version instead, click here or scroll down to the end of this article.

Today let’s cut to the chase of what I do and why we should talk…

How Scott Howard Can Help You Invite People To Give You Money would be the title, but I prefer not talking about myself in the third person.

How I Can Help You Invite People To Give You Money is more my style.

On the surface, I sell radio advertising on WOWO Radio in Fort Wayne, Indiana which is pretty cool.

Some people I sell ads to just want that. I want to buy some radio commercials, they say. That’s it, nothing more, just tell me how much it will cost and let’s get to work.

I can do that and I will do that if that is really what they want. It all depends on the person at the other end.

If they are a media buyer or marketing director for a big company and they know what they are doing with advertising and marketing, then I’ll give them what they want with some insider knowledge about the characteristics of the WOWO audience.

However 90% of the time, the real issue is not that simple.

Business owners want customers and they are willing to do almost anything, including having a guy dress up in a dirty chicken costume, standing at the side of the road, waving at passing cars just to attract attention in the hopes that some of those people will pull over and buy something. If you missed that story, here’s a link.

Radio advertising on WOWO is a different animal than radio advertising on most other stations. Why?

WOWO is a news/talk formatted radio station and most of the others are music formatted radio stations. Listeners to news/talk are less irritated by commercials than music station listeners for one. I also have more options and opportunities to create a bond between the listeners and the local personalities on WOWO and I can leverage that bond to include the businesses that advertise on WOWO.

One day I’ll dig further into how that works, but after 3 1/2 years as a WOWO insider, I have seen and heard some amazing things pertaining to the effectiveness of WOWO radio ads that blows me away.

Remember, the topic today is: How I Can Help You Invite People To Give You Money.

We’re not limited to just the people who listen to the radio commercials on WOWO because our parent company, Federated Media has also invested in the digital world of advertising and marketing too with our Federated Digital Solutions division.

Honestly, I took a skeptic stance at our digital division when I joined a few years ago because I have experience in the online world, both in website design and development and the social media side too.

I wanted to make sure that anything I offered was the best for the investment spent for the companies I was talking with. And I have discovered some more pretty cool things we offer in the digital world that allow me to Help You Invite People To Give You Money.

On the digital side, I am running campaigns that reach across the country and some are pinpointed to specific cities that are beyond the reach of WOWO Radio, but are targeted to the right people in the location that my advertising partners wants to invite to give him money.

I have the success stories to back this up too whether it’s radio or digital or a combination.

One thing I offer that is unique among my WOWO Radio sales team coworkers is the connections to others that can help with your business marketing outside of what you can buy from me. My connections seem to go pretty deep and wide and beyond just marketing services but into other aspects of running your company.

Oh and there is another category of marketing tools I have at my finger tips that can actually create a list of Hot Leads, people who have given us their contact information because they have Opted In to be contacted and yes, they want to give you money.

By the way the whole premise of people giving you money in this article is not necessarily money for nothing, it’s people who want to buy what you have to sell.

Ready to see how this could work for you?

Want to see specifically How I Can Help You Invite People To Give You Money?

Let’s talk.

It’s Media Report Card Time!

by Scott Howard | May 16, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, ScLoHo's Media, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Yesterday I was reading an article from MarketingCharts.com so you don’t have to, no, really I do enjoy looking at this kind of stuff and pulling out some of the highlights.

It relates to an upcoming podcast episode and article I wrote that will be debuting in a couple days, too.

Here’s the highlights:

We are spending more time with “Media” than ever before. Over 12 hours a day. Technically this would have been impossible a few years ago, but not now. Which brings us to the second highlight:
Multi-tasking is in full swing and for media that means watching more than one screen at the same time. Those smartphones are being used by more and more of us instead of staring at the TV screen like zombies when the commercials come on.
Print Media is shrinking. Not just the number of pages or the number of readers, but the time spent reading newspapers and magazines by each person is dropping. Over the last 5 years, each of us who still read print spend 15 minutes less every day.
Radio listening, according to the report is steady. More on this in a second.
Time spent with Digital media continues to grow. No surprise to any of us right?

Those last two items, Radio and Digital are the two areas that I work in and can help you craft an effective plan to use radio and digital to grow your business. Want to know more? Ask me. Also check out this weeks Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast episode Thursday on this website. Here’s a link.

Is Your Business Homeless?

by Scott Howard | May 4, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Today we’re going to talk about your business credibility, or at least a part of it.

Is Your Business Homeless?

Before the internet, most businesses had what are known as brick and mortar locations, a storefront or at least a physical location. There were some exceptions, but for the vast majority of businesses, your physical location was a key component of establishing credibility.

Then the internet came along and has slowly been changing our world. I recall the Windows 95 computer operating system and dial up internet connections that used a hardwired telephone landline to connect to the World Wide Web and it was pretty cool to be visit websites from that big clunky computer at home.

Enough reminiscing, those were not really the good old days of the internet. Although every month I run into business people who are seemingly stuck back in those days.

Your business needs a website.

I’ve been saying that for over a dozen years.

There are some businesses that still don’t have a website.

Your business not having a website is the equivalent of your business being homeless.

If your potential customers cannot find you online with a simple Google search, your business does not exist. Say you are a plumber. If I ask Siri to find me a plumber and you don’t have a website, according to Siri, you don’t exist, but your competitors do.

Personally my phone is not an iPhone but an Android and I can talk to it and it does the same, maybe better than Siri.

For those of you who are stubbornly resisting getting a website for your business, you might as well sell your business to someone who will bring it up to speed before your business dies a slow agonizing death.

Next, I want to talk to those of you who have not updated your website in the past 5 years. Your business may not be “homeless” online, but your business presence is most likely obsolete.

You are not alone. I see dozens of outdated websites every month. This is hurting you more than you realize.

First off, if I find your business website and it looks dated, you are losing credibility simply because of the first impression your old website presents. Even if you are the very best at what you do, if your website looks like it hasn’t been kept up to date, I don’t know if your business is trustworthy. This judgement call isn’t even a conscious one we make.

Another way your old website is hurting your business credibility is that Google and the other search engines will penalize your business website if it does not meet the standards that they deem are important.

Google uses two primary criteria to decide which webpages show up when we search and one of those is the technology that powers your website. Starting in April 2015, if your website was not mobile friendly, Google began rolling out an algorithm that made your site less visible to people searching for what you offer.

Right now Google is in the process of another algorithm update for those of us that use the Chrome browser which is powered by Google. If your website does not have a security certificate, Google may warn and block users from visiting your business website. This is used as an assurance that any information we give a website is securely managed.

Please, if you have not updated your business website to make it secure and mobile friendly, make that a priority.

Before we wrap this up, I want to address those of you who are attempting a work-around, and avoiding having your own website and instead relying on Social Media accounts like Facebook to be you online business presence.

It’s not legit. It’s not a real website and it’s not adding to your business credibility. Besides, since you don’t own Facebook, Facebook can basically do what ever they want and change the rules of how you can use their platform. It’s all in those pesky “terms of service” updates that all of us, me include ignore and blindly agree to when they come our way.

Yes, Social Media including Facebook is recommended for most businesses, but only in conjunction with your own up to date, secure and mobile friendly website.

Want to talk about this or need more details? Let’s connect.

You can also listen to this as a podcast each week:

Facebook Hacking or Twinning?

by Scott Howard | Feb 27, 2017 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

The term Hacking or Hacked is getting a bad rap.

And a lot of times the term is misused.

Today, I have a quick tip and explanation of something lots of people call Facebook Hacking.

(It’s not really hacking, but I’ll get to that in a moment.)

It happened to me the other day. As I was starting my day, I got a notification that Scott Howard wanted to be my friend on Facebook.

Cool, someone with my name wants to be my friend! But not really, because the clown looks just like me.

This should be called Facebook Twinning.

(I do know another Scott Howard in Fort Wayne and we don’t look alike.)

So, what to do, what to do…

I stopped what I was doing on my phone and powered up the laptop.

I went to the email notification and clicked on the profile name to open up the twin profile. So far 20 minutes have passed since the FAKE Scott Howard had added a cover photo and profile picture to the TWIN account.

I posted on my real Facebook page:

This was to stop people from accepting friend request from my TWIN since it was not me, but a FAKE.

Then I reported it to Facebook and shared on my page:

Seconds later in my email, Facebook notified me that they were looking into it.

Within 30 minutes from the time the TWIN account was created, it was shut down.

When this happens to you, odds are your Facebook account wasn’t hacked. Your password wasn’t compromised or stolen. Mine wasn’t.

What happened is someone simply downloaded some images from your account and created the FAKE account that looks like a TWIN of your real account except it’s brand new and doesn’t have all the posts and friends and stuff that your real Facebook account has.

Why do they do this? It is the same reason email spammers are out there. They know that every once in awhile someone will fall for the scam and they can impersonate you, gain the trust of your family or friends (because they think they are really communicating with YOU.)

Then they can start getting personal info about your friends through those conversations and well all kinds of bad things can happen.

So, here’s what to do if you have been Twinned on Facebook.

Follow the steps I just described above. No need to change your password in most cases since you were not really hacked.

And if you ever get a friend request from someone you are already friends with on Facebook, don’t automatically accept it. Check it out first.

Technology Doesn’t Matter, Sort of

by Scott Howard | Feb 15, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Man, am I going to catch some heat on this one.

Unless you read all the way through this piece.

But if you are all about the tech and ignore the rest, you may win for a moment, but not forever.

What am I talking about?

My usual stuff, marketing, media, advertising and wait for it…

Human Relationships.

The question I get asked either directly or it’s implied is, “What is the best way for my business to spend money to get new customers?”

That’s not a bad question, but it’s usually the wrong question when it’s asked.

It’s 2017, the smartphone revolution isn’t going away. The idea that we would walk around with a phone attached was a crazy idea a years ago.

Fortunately having a phone strapped to your head isn’t really like this,

But now we are a few years into the mobile revolution and the small screens have taken over. Nearly anything you want to know or do is available with an app on your phone or tablet.

If you were to try and reach new customers by chasing after the latest and greatest technology, you’d likely be losing money and frustrated.

I am going to date myself here, but I remember when my father in law had a dial-up phone connection to get online with his Gateway computer that had less tech power than my last couple of phones.

Recently I was at the Fort Wayne Social Media and Marketing Breakfast and the topic was Snapchat. How to use it and not abuse it.

As I looked around the room, I saw a whole bunch of business people who were frustrated because now here’s another platform they have to start using to get customers.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

I just told an advertising partner of mine that it was okay to stop tweeting.

You really don’t need to follow the crowd and do everything.

You need to pick and decide what ways you are going to market your business.

Those choices should not be based on the hottest trends.

They should be geared to how is the best way to reach out to your current and potential customers, and how to engage with them both online and offline. In person and over the phone.

Before you decide to jump on the next new thing, talk to someone who can help you look at the big picture and do some long range planning. (When I do it, I become your marketing coach.)

Now I’m not saying ignore technology, but you need to have your priorities in order.

Let me leave you with a simple, “starter” technology checklist.