Sound ADvice | The Genuine ScLoHo aka Scott Howard

Compounding Your Brand

by Scott Howard | May 20, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

This month I’m featuring articles that were sent to subscribers of my weekly newsletter, Sound ADvice. If you’d like a free email copy send me an email to Scott@WOWO.com.

Albert Einstein said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it… he who doesn’t… pays it.”

But what does compounding interest have to do with marketing, advertising, and your brand? As it turns out, a lot!

They work under similar principles. If you invest even a small amount of money, over time, it compounds. While it may be small, it still grows. If you invest in your brand, over time, it grows too. While it may be small, it still builds. The more you invest, money or marketing, the greater it works and the more it compounds.

In branding, he who understands it earns it; he who doesn’t pays it. You see, in every business category within every market, there is only so much “branding” or “TOMA” (Top-Of-Mind-Awareness) to go around. In nearly every case, the share of mind you own is equivalent to your brand, which is equal to the percentage of business that you capture within your category.

Building and compounding your brand isn’t just for large national companies. It works exactly the same in every market.

There are several key areas to building and compounding your brand, but the most important element is consistency. Not only does this mean being consistent with your message, colors, sounds, and logos, but also with the way you approach business internally and externally. Like your customer service, return policies, guarantees, warranties, the physical appearance of your office, vehicles, and every other thing that represents your business.

Like compounding interest in money, if you stop and start, you lose or stall the potential that could have been compounding. Be consistent, be repetitive, and the compounding of your brand will take care of itself and build with time.

As your brand becomes larger, the more well-known it becomes and the more TOMA you create. From there it continues to compound. The more people know you, the more people they tell.

How important is a brand? A study conducted by Fleishman-Hillard for the World Economic Forum showed that 3 out 5 chief executives believe their corporate brand and reputation represent more than 40% of their companies’ market capitalization.

Whether you are planning on starting to brand your current business or a new business, click here to see nine tips to help get you started on building and compounding your brand.

Features Vs Benefits

by Scott Howard | May 13, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

This month of May I’m sharing a recent articles from my weekly Sound ADvice Newsletter. It’s free just for the asking and if you want to be added, drop me a note to Scott@ WOWO.com.

Every year there are millions of drills sold across North America. But here’s the crazy thing…not one person who bought a drill wanted a drill! What they really wanted were holes! If another tool would have made the holes faster, better, easier, or cheaper they would have bought that tool, not the drill.

In most business and product categories, including yours, the same is true. None of your customers want to buy your goods or services. They only want the “benefits” those goods and services deliver.

No one wants to buy insurance; they want to be protected. Nobody wants an aspirin; they want pain relief.

All traditional sales training courses address the need for selling benefits versus features. It’s pretty basic stuff, yet, we often expect our advertising to sell features to consumers who only care about benefits.

Here is the litmus test that distinguishes features from benefits: A feature remains true if the customer does not buy. For example: “John Deere tractors are built better”.

A benefit only occurs if the customer buys. For example: “Nothing runs like a Deere. Your tractor will have fewer breakdowns, saving you money and time”.

Here is another feature vs. benefit example for a regional auto parts store:

Feature: “A million different auto parts and accessories“.

Benefit: “You’ll get your parts in a day or less”.

Your benefit statement should always answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” from your customer’s perspective.

Look at your next radio script or ad proof. Are your ads only talking about features (you) and not telling what’s in it for them (benefit)? They don’t want a drill; they want a product that makes a hole!

Click here if you’d like me to work with you to uncover the best possible benefit statements for your next advertising campaign.

A Lesson on Advertising from Preachers and Teachers

by Scott Howard | May 6, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

For the month of May I’m sharing recent articles from my weekly Sound ADvice Newsletter. It’s free just for the asking and if you want to be added, drop me a note to Scott@ WOWO.com.

The goal of every preacher and teacher is to grab the attention of the people they are speaking to and make sure that they not only hear the message but also understand and retain the message.

So, what can preachers and teachers teach advertisers about advertising? The answer is a lot, if you pay attention to the formula preachers and teachers use to get their message across and make it stick!

Going back to the very early 1900s, though not taking credit for it, religious figure J. H. Jowett explained the process of preparing sermons, speaking to the crowd, and how to make sure the lesson was not only taught but understood. He said the three-part formula to help prepare sermons so the layperson could understand was this:

1. Tell them what you are going to tell them.

2. Then tell them.

3. Then tell them what you told them.

Modern-day teachers have been taught and still use this same method. They know that if their students do not get the message in this fashion, three times in a seven-day window, they won’t retain what they’ve learned and will probably fail the test.

Research has proven that your advertising must follow a similar formula. If you want your customers and prospects to retain and remember your advertising message, they must hear your message three times in any given seven-day window. In advertising, this formula is known as “a frequency of three” and it’s one of the 6 Steps to Ads That Stick.

If you think about it, advertising really is a little bit of preaching and a little bit of teaching! Use this formula and your ads will have a better chance of sticking in the listener’s mind.

Click here to read the rest of the 6 Steps to Ads That Stick and make your ads stick in the minds of your prospects.

Pitfalls of Pinpoint Targeting

by Scott Howard | Apr 15, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

A little of this and a little of that can work when making cookies in the kitchen. But when it comes to marketing your business, having the correct “Media Mix” is crucial to capturing your immediate sales, and more importantly, your future sales and market share.

Digital media has made it possible to narrowly target, locate, and reach those precise prospects who are “ready to buy” today but many businesses have fallen victim to the pitfalls of micro-targeting.

People who only promote “micro-targeting” strategies suggest that advertising that reaches the broader market with mass media is a waste of time and money. They claim that if you are not in the market to purchase today, you’re not worth talking to.

But here’s the thing…What if your competitor has been using mass media effectively to establish a brand and create a pre-need preference for their business over yours before the consumer is ready to buy? Waiting to reach your prospects until they are ready to buy can be too little too late.

The world’s largest advertiser Proctor and Gamble discovered this the hard way. They learned that by targeting, or niche marketing, via digital and social platforms, they were not reaching their potential future customers. Therefore, they were actually losing brand identity and ultimately market share. They quickly re-adjusted their media mix to include even more traditional media (Radio/TV) which turned the tide and grew their sales. (No pun intended as Tide Detergent is a P&G product!)

Last year I was part of a radio masters sales summit conference in Cincinnati, Ohio and one of the presenters was the man who worked for Proctor and Gamble who saw the error of their ways and saved the company by returning to radio and TV. He has since retired but he is a huge advocate for radio to build and sustain your brand image.

Human beings are stubborn animals. Reaching them when they are ready to buy is of little use, especially when they are biased towards your competitor or unfamiliar with you.

Conversely, if you have created a strong pre-need preference for your business, your competitors’ online and search efforts will be in vain.

Like cookies with added preservatives, the good ole’ traditional advertising (Radio/TV) is what makes your advertising investment last longer. Of course, it’s not wrong to reach consumers when they are ready to buy, particularly if they are already familiar with you, trust you, and prefer you.

To see what the Advertising Research Foundation (a media-neutral organization) says about the right media ingredients, click here. If you would like to visit about your media mix, give me a call and we can visit. I’ll bring the mixing bowl!

What you just read was sent to subscribers of my weekly Sound ADvice newsletter. Contact me if you would like a free, no-obligation subscription too.

Stop the Ad-Speak

by Scott Howard | Mar 25, 2024 | Sound ADvice, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

The dictionary definition of cliché is, “a hackneyed or over-used expression which has literally become meaningless over time.”

Why would anyone invest their hard-earned advertising dollars in an expression that has literally become “meaningless?” In fact, clichés can literally kill any chance an ad has of creating a positive impact.

There’s an old saying in media, People don’t dislike ads, they dislike bad ads. Bad ads, typically, are filled with clichés.

The average consumer today receives in excess of 3,600 advertising messages a day, including radio, TV, newspaper, packaging, signage, internet, and more.

Before today’s cluttered and competitive world, many advertisers succeeded with clichés and by simply keeping their name in front of the public. Today, it’s much more competitive, and simple name recognition and repetition are not enough to ensure a return on your advertising investment. You need to brand your business before the consumer is in the market for your products or services.

Branding, by definition, necessitates differentiating yourself from your competition. Being different cannot be accomplished by saying the same thing as your competitors or using the same tired clichés used by other marketers.

Whether in your advertising or when having conversations with customers, make sure the words you use aren’t the same words that all your competitors are using!

The bad news is that there are way too many ads both national and local that are filled with too many clichés. The good news is… they are easy to fix!

We have developed a list of clichés that should be avoided if your advertising is to stand out among the crowd and be remembered. To see the complete list of clichés, click here.

Narrow Minded Marketing

by Scott Howard | Mar 18, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

The goal of your advertising should be to increase both your sales and your brand identity. But all too often we overly focus on analytics or demographics when creating our media plans. Narrowly targeting often means you are missing the much larger population of people not in your core demographic.

As the “New Media” (digital and social) emerged, many businesses, large and small, made the move to these platforms believing that laser-focused targeting was the answer to their advertising dreams.

Wrong! In fact, Tide, the #1 selling laundry detergent, found that while they were focusing on the people who fit their “typical profile”, they were missing the much larger target of those who were not using their product. In other words, they were eroding their brand’s awareness and missing the target of “new and future” users. Ultimately, their sales started to decline.

In a swift move, they moved the majority of their budget back to traditional media, and sales and brand identity rebounded.

In another example, it might not seem unreasonable for a baby-products retailer to target “women 18-49 with infants”, but according to the market research firm Scarborough, nearly half of those who bought infants’ clothing, roughly 47%, were from households without children.

The same research from Scarborough found that nearly a quarter of all women’s cosmetics and perfumes, 23.5%, were bought by men.

In Roy Williams’ Twelve Causes of Advertising Failure, #9 is Overconfidence in Qualitative Data. “In reality, saying the wrong thing has killed far more ad campaigns than reaching the wrong people. It is amazing how many people become the ‘Right People’ when you are saying the right thing.”

Being too narrow-minded and focusing on only the core audience is actually eroding your brand. Hundreds and thousands of people are not in the market for your product or service today, or even soon, but someday they will be.

Thinking beyond the traditional demographics your competitors are targeting with their advertising can help you reach untapped markets to increase your sales well into the future.

Click here to read how to reach and influence “purchasers” rather than “demographics”.

Now I’ve worked in both mass media and niche media. I’ve done mass appeal and hyper-targeted campaigns. I would welcome the opportunity to review any advertising proposals that a typical ad salesperson presents to you to see exactly what the focus is and if it’s a good match for what you want to accomplish.