Sound ADvice | The Genuine ScLoHo aka Scott Howard

Are You Using Your Coop Funds?

by Scott Howard | Mar 9, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Your suppliers or vendors have a vested interest in your success, and most of them have access to extraordinary marketing funds and resources beyond traditional co-op to help you sell more of their products.

The problem is, seldom does anyone ask for these funds! If you don’t access those funds, you are literally throwing money away, or worse yet, your competitors will scoop those funds and use them against you.

In our How to Leverage Your Suppliers’ Marketing Muscle, tactic number one is “Tender your Next Ad Campaign”. Present a written proposal for submissions for marketing support to all of your suppliers outlining your proposed advertising schedule and investment, along with any special displays, promotions, demonstrations, or other exposure the winning bidder will receive.

Many business owners believe their hands are tied to rigid manufacturers’ restrictions if they use manufacturers’ co-op advertising funds, but seldom is this the case. The squeaky wheel oftentimes gets the grease!

If you are an appliance dealer, for example, and you sell GE and Whirlpool, your GE representative has a vested interest in you featuring GE versus Whirlpool in your ad.

If you make a presentation outlining the kind of campaign you propose to sell more GE without using the standard GE script or ad copy that the manufacturer supplies, it will generally be approved by their office because they don’t want your campaign to feature their competitor.

Nearly every business that offers products has a supplier, and these manufacturers and suppliers want to sell more products. Give them an idea of how you can sell more and they just might come up with some money. But you have to ask for it!

Still, other businesses opt not to leverage their suppliers’ marketing muscle because it takes time and effort. In today’s competitive environment, you need to take advantage of every competitive edge you can.

At WOWO Radio, me and my team have helped our advertising partners find and use hundreds of thousands of coop advertising dollars that our advertising partners use to get the the word out about their business to invite our listeners to spend money with them over the past few years.

Click here to retrieve our FREE How to Leverage Your Suppliers’ Marketing Muscle.

And reach out to me directly at Scott@WOWO.com for help.

Compare With Caution

by Scott Howard | Mar 2, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo Sales Tips, Sound ADvice

Comparing one product or service or one business to another is always acceptable… when you are the consumer.

But as a business selling itself, comparing comes with caution! Make sure you’ve given deep consideration before you compare your product or service with your competition!

This word of caution holds true whether you are making a comparison in your advertising message, or communicating face to face with a customer.

Think back to the last time a salesperson was comparing his or her company, product, or service to their competitors’. If they went too far and made unsubstantiated claims, degraded the competition or its people, it can easily backfire. Instead of gaining confidence in the product, service, or company, they may end up losing credibility and therefore the sale.

In our Do’s and Don’ts of Comparative Advertising many of the rules that apply in advertising also apply when selling person to person.

This applies to major companies as well as small local businesses. In the famous “Get a Mac” advertising campaign, Apple gave great consideration to the possible retaliation that the PC manufacturers could re-attack with. If you are ever considering comparing your business to another, you should too.

Like dynamite, comparative selling and advertising can be a very powerful strategy, but it can also blow up in your face.

Proceed with Caution!

To see the complete list of the Do’s and Don’ts of Comparative Advertising, click here.

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America’s Payday 2021

by Scott Howard | Feb 23, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

Let the tax season begin! February 12^th was officially the first day of tax season 2021.

While it’s not actually a pay “day”, but more like a pay “period”, February 12th through April 15th and beyond. Take note, the 2021 tax season is 2 weeks shorter than both 2020 and 2019.

In 2020, 101.3 million Americans received a tax refund with an “average” refund of $2476.00. Do the math and you’ll discover over $250 billion will be injected into the U.S. economy in a matter of 12 weeks.

The graph below shows when people typically file their returns. As you can see, a large percentage procrastinate and file during the last week.

So, what do Americans do with all this money, and more importantly, are you prepared to capture your fair share of it? The graph below clearly shows that regardless of what type of business you own, you stand a decent chance of being on the receiving end of some of this refund bonanza. But, only if you ask!

While the graph above is from 2019, how people spend their 2020 refunds will remain relatively the same as in past years. This will vary only slightly due to the COVID pandemic and also the pending stimulus checks, but only slightly.

Regardless of your business category, there’s an opportunity to take advantage of the massive amount of money being pushed into the US economy.

Knowing this, we now know why so many companies are running tax refund events and promotions. Americans have a fist full of money and many of them want to spend it.

To increase your chances of getting your fair share, there are some key elements to consider when preparing and planning a successful tax refund sales event. Tip #1 is to have a theme that ties in the tax refund element. As corny as it may sound, telling and specifically asking for part or all of their refund is the best way to increase your chances of getting it!

If you would like to see all 14 Tips to a More Successful Tax Refund Sales Event, click here.

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Staying Connected in 2021

by Scott Howard | Jan 13, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Depending upon your business category, acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Knowing this, it only makes sense to do everything you can to maintain a relationship with your current customers, better known as Core Customers.

So, what exactly is a Core Customer? A Core Customer is someone that has done business with you in the past “X-period of time” and has the potential to do business with you again.

The “X-period of time” depends upon the purchase cycle or how often purchases are made within each business category. For example, in the automotive category: A typical person purchases a vehicle every 3-½ years. In the plumbing business, less than 20% of the population uses a plumber every year and 50% of the population only needs a plumber every 4 to 6 years. In the hardware business, it can be 1 time per month or more.

If your current customers have purchased from you within your “purchase cycle” time frame, these people should be considered a “Core Customer”. As a business owner, you want to connect and reconnect with people between purchases until, at minimum, they are out of the “purchase cycle” period.

The other important question is, how often do you need to keep in contact? It can vary to some degree depending upon the buying cycle, but the rule of thumb is 3 to 5 times a year, with a minimum of twice.

The first thing you must do is identify your business’ buying cycle. Then, identify who your current Core Customers are.

If you do not have a list of your customers and their contact info, start to create one. The only info you need is the name, mailing address, email address, date of purchases, and if possible, what they purchased and the transaction amount.

Having this information is useless unless you USE it!

Statistics show that the success rate of selling to a new customer is somewhere between 5-20%. The success rate of selling to a Core Customer is 60-70%.

Keeping your current customers is one key to success, but we must understand that regardless of what you do, you stand to lose 20% of your customers each year due to attrition in one form or another. Therefore, it’s paramount that you continue to attract new customers that turn into Core Customers. Once you’ve created the relationship, do everything you can to stay connected!

Click here to read 8 Tips to Keep Connected with Your Core Customers and protect them from predators (your competition).

What I just shared with you is from my weekly Sound ADvice newsletter that you can get delivered to your email Wednesday mornings free of charge by signing up in the form below.

Yesterday I met with a business owner that understands the value of staying appropriately connected with his customers because he knows the lifetime value of his clients. He’s looking at doing something that perhaps you should do to.

I also have another way to help you keep connected with your core customers and invite people who are not your customers to become one this year. It’s an advertising and marketing program with WOWO radio.

Whether or not you do the steps I mentioned to keep connected in a personalized manner, by staying in front of your customers with marketing messages on WOWO radio, you are continuing to connect with them every time they hear your business on the radio.

Contact me, Scott@WOWO.com , and I’ll connect you with someone from my team that can show you how it works.

Caring For Your Customers

by Scott Howard | Dec 15, 2020 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

Do you appreciate your customers? Think about this for just a minute and then answer it honestly.

I’ll ask you again, do you appreciate your customers? I mean REALLY appreciate them!

We’ll assume that you answered yes. Now, here is the most important question. Do they KNOW that you appreciate them?

Appreciating your customers is one thing. Making sure they KNOW that you appreciate them can be the difference between keeping them as a customer and potentially losing them to a competitor the next time they need the product or service you offer.

There are 4 main reasons why customer retention is so important to a company’s success and growth.

Affordability: It’s 5-25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing company.
ROI: A 5% increase in customer retention can increase your revenue by 25% or more.
Loyalty: It goes without saying that retained customers buy more often and spend more than new customers.
Referrals: Word of Mouth is still the BEST and cheapest advertising.

This concept seems very logical and so simple that we would think every business would be doing it, right? Wrong! The truth is that most don’t.

Another truth is that making sure your customers know you appreciate them takes effort, and effort often-times means time and money, or both. But it’s worth it.

Tip #11 in the 11 Ways to Show Your Customers You Appreciate Them is “Create a Thank You Video”. Tip #6 is “Sending a Handwritten Note” and #7 is “Make a Personal Phone Call”. While both #6 and #7 are more personal, creating a video is unique and different and it can save you time. Create one video with one generic thank you message, and the rest is as easy as sending an email.

As competition continues to grow bigger and stronger, making sure your customers KNOW they are appreciated is key to continued growth. To see all of the 11 Ways to Show Your Customers You Appreciate Them, click here.

Top of Google or Top of Mind

by Scott Howard | Dec 8, 2020 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

In today’s changing media world, when it comes to your current customers and your future customers, is it more important to have Top of Mind Awareness or be at the top of the page on Google?

Of course, it’s great to be recognized by both customers and Google, but if your competition wins in your customers’ rankings, a good Google ranking for you won’t change their minds.

Study after study has proven that when searching on Google, people will click on a business that they “know” and are “familiar with” far more than clicking on a name they don’t know. In fact, 71% will click on a name they are familiar with before clicking on a name at the top of the page.

The purpose of advertising is to accomplish one of two things: sell products immediately or create brand awareness.

The best way to create brand awareness is to create stories that move customers from unawareness of you to awareness of you, and onto creating an emotional connection with your business or product, long before they need you. Then, and only then, can you be assured of having your name clicked on when they search for your product or service.

Einstein said, “Genius is making the complicated look simple.” Effective marketing need not be complicated.

A simple strategy of using broadcast to tell your story to create a pre-search preference for your business and using online to close the sale will create the revenue results you need to make your marketing more profitable.

Click here to receive our Ten Powerful Storytelling Tips to create stories that will have your customers choosing you when they search online.