by Scott Howard | Apr 4, 2016 | ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
I’m going to take a second and talk to you about websites and your business marketing.
A dozen years ago, the rage was for your business to hop on the website bandwagon. A marketing friend of mine and I were talking about how having a website was fine and dandy, but how are consumers going to find you online? 
Since my friend and I worked in radio, we began urging our radio advertisers to include their website address in their ads.
Similar things were done in all mass media marketing including print and television ads. Eventually people thought that the key was to be found by Google.
I even left the radio world for awhile a few years ago and worked for a website development company that talked about the reasons for and methods to use to be found online organically with something you’ve probably heard about: S.E.O.
S.E.O. stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s basically the stuff you do to your website to Optimize it so the Search Engine’s (Google, Yahoo & Bing) can find you. The concept is that if your site is optimized then when people are looking for what you have to sell, your website will show up when people are searching online.
This is not a job for amateurs, and not all professionals are equally skilled at S.E.O.
But before I lose you in all this tech talk, let me use some terminology that you as a business owner understand.
Think of your website as a storefront. It is a capital expense of doing business. You can’t really measure the direct return on investment in your website alone, just like you can’t measure the direct R.O.I. of having buying a truck for your business.
Just because you now have a “storefront online” (website), your business is not going to automatically be found by potential customers. All you have done so far is open your store.
Next you need to do what every business needs to do: Invite People.
There are multiple ways of doing this, and part of my job at WOWO Radio is to offer all kinds of appropriate online marketing solutions through our Federated Digital Solutions division.
I am amazed at the results I have seen several of my advertising partners receive, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The first step in working with me is to determine what the end result is that needs to be accomplished and that usually takes a meeting or two. Contact me and we can set that up.
But I want you to remember today that just because you now have a website, you still need a strategic marketing plan to invite people to spend money with you. I can help.
by Scott Howard | Mar 23, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Continuing the conversation about Mass Media from the other day…
50 years ago it was easy to decide where to advertise. There were fewer options and each option had a significant audience. Today there is no one media that reaches everyone and each media outlet reaches less than any one did 50 years ago. 
Sure, “radio” reaches 93% of all Americans age 12 and older each week, but there are hundreds of radio stations. That’s a useless statistic for advertisers.
(By the way, my examples today are going to be using the two medias I work in and can help you with… radio and digital.)
The question is Should You Market to the Masses?
90% of the businesses should not.
9% could.
1% does.
The most recognized businesses in the United States include:
McDonald’s
Walmart
Amazon
Apple
Google
Microsoft
and a few more.
Each of those businesses can serve massive amounts of people each week and they fit that 10% category.
Today I’ll focus on McDonald’s. I have studied them for years and worked with them locally for the past 10 years. McDonald’s does not market to the masses, not in the way they did 50 years ago.
Each year McDonald’s decides where to spend their advertising dollars based to which segment of the masses they want to reach. Then they buy accordingly. One year their focus was 35 to 65 year olds. This year they switched it to 18 to 50 year olds. They used traditional mass media (radio) to invite people each year, but they targeted the people listening to stations that fit the age demographic profiles of those stations.
Google is in the 1% that wants everyone and markets to everyone. But they do it with a boatload of products and services including the Google Search Engine, Gmail, and the Android smartphone platform that powers more mobile devices than any other.
But let’s bring things down to earth and the local level. The 90% of businesses that should not market to the masses.
There is a health food shop that has been around for over 40 years that uses targeted marketing. They have a limited capacity and also a niche customer base. While there is some overlap between them and the McDonald’s clientele, it’s not the same target.
That brings me to what the 90% of most businesses should do instead of old fashioned mass media marketing.
Targeted media marketing. This requires some thought and research along with planning and strategic planning. More on targeted media marketing next time.
by Scott Howard | Mar 21, 2016 | 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
It’s a fascinating discussion when I ask people about their media habits in 2016. A lot has changed over the years with more options than ever and sometimes people ask me a variation of this question,
Is Mass Media Dead or Thriving?
It is actually thriving but in ways different than before.
Mass Media by definition is considered a form of media that is consumed by a large number of people. While that definition hasn’t changed in the past 100 years, the way that media is delivered and consumed has changed over the past 25 years.
For my purposes today, I’m going to address this from a marketing standpoint.
While we have seen the decline of newspapers and magazines, those that have survived have done so by reinventing themselves to appeal to a niche audience. It’s doubtful that we’ll ever have the dominance of a major print publication, even on the local level except where there are no other media options available. But then there’s the internet…
Television was dominated by ABC, CBS, NBC and then PBS and Fox came along to provide a few more viewing options. Unless you recorded a show on your own, you had to watch it live. This was an excellent way for advertisers to reach a bunch of people simultaneously with their commercials as we sat “glued to the tube”. Then with the expansion of networks and the ability to time shift and watch what ever we wanted, when ever we wanted, the simultaneous viewing of commercials began declining. But then there’s the internet…
Radio stations that play music have always had competition. As consumers we could buy the music and listen when ever we wanted to what ever we wanted. Music radio stations have always had competition for music listenership that went beyond other radio stations. Then with the expansion of choices including the internet…
Talk Radio stations have had a mix bag of competition. When I first started listening to WJR and WWJ in Detroit 30 years ago, I tuned it for information. Some talk stations don’t offer the information that listeners want and they have lost listeners because their are plenty of options including the internet…
As a side note, I looked at the listenership of the Fort Wayne radio stations and 4 of the top 5 stations have incredibly large audiences of over 100,000 weekly listeners. That’s 20% to 30% of the population, each of those stations reaches individually. WOWO, my station, and 3 of our sister stations that play music are in that top 5, out of over 25 stations in the Fort Wayne metro area.
The concept of Mass Media has changed. When there were fewer options, each option had more people reading/listening/viewing. Now we have the ability to personalize our media habits as consumers and as marketers.
I don’t need a newspaper subscription to read the local news. I can get the information online. I don’t need to watch CBS on Tuesday night at 8pm to see the latest episode of NCIS. I can watch it later On Demand with Comcast on my TV, laptop or smartphone. I don’t need many of the old medias on a daily basis the way my parents did.
Instead we get to choose. I can listen to the radio as I am driving to work to get the news, weather, sports and other information. A lot of people still do this. Even teens do this. Maybe not as many as their grandparents generation, but they still do.
For businesses that want to reach the masses, it’s do-able. We have plenty of options and we’ll look at those options next time.
by Scott Howard | Feb 16, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, ScLoHo's Media, ScLoHo's Web World, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
My radio station WOWO Radio in Fort Wayne, Indiana, just released a new smartphone app as one of our improvements for 2016. You can find it here for Android and for those of you Apple fans, go here.
We just revised our website this year too with a cleaner, less cluttered look than our previous site. The WOWO App and the website are continuously updated with the stories and interviews minutes after they first appear on the air at WOWO radio. You can also listen online from the website or the WOWO App.
Why the changes?
Multiple reasons but a big one is the continued growth of smartphones, both iPhones and Androids. Nearly 80% of us have one now.
This means if your website is not mobile friendly, you are annoying, no, let me say it stronger, you are pissing off 4 out of 5 people because you are behind the times.
Need help with an upgrade? Contact me. Like Yesterday.
by Scott Howard | Dec 30, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
It’s that week when things are either very slow or very busy. However next week will really be busy with the start of 2016 in full swing.
That’s why it is urgent that you do this today.
Google wants to help your business be found and they have a quick and easy tool that you can use even if you are one of those “hunt and peck two fingered typists”.
Click on this and get started.
Just do it, okay?
by Scott Howard | Nov 13, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Tuesday I was meeting with an advertising partner and were we looking at some data I gathered from Google Analytics.
Not sure what Google Analytics is? Take a look at their site. Or I can give you a layman’s overviews.
Google Analytics is a free service from Google that you install on your website that can tell you all kinds of things about people who visit your website. What pages they visit, when they visit, where they came from, and so much more. If you sell stuff on your website, you can track it too. Just take my word for it…install Google Analytics on your website now.
Back to my meeting on Tuesday. This advertising partner has a website but we are not doing any digital online marketing for him, yet. We just helped him set up Google Analytics 2 months ago. That’s when we tripled his radio advertising.
I see you scratching your head. Hang on.
We are actually tracking the response to his radio ads with Google Analytics.
How? The call to action in his radio ads is to visit his website. No phone number, no storefront, just his website.
WOWO radio has been his sole source of advertising since May. He previously did some newspaper and some targeted direct mail and those methods worked for him, but not to the degree that advertising on WOWO has worked this year.
When I showed him some of the findings that I discovered with Google Analytics, he was very happy and wanted to know more. So next month when we meet, I’ll share with him more information about people visiting his website. We both recognize that there are some limitations to any tracking system so he is also asking people how they found him and is tracking those responses as well.
Unlike some people who sell advertising, I want to know as much as possible about the effectiveness. I want to work hand in hand with you to make sure the money you are spending is an investment, not an expense. We’ll talk more about that next week.
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