The Difference between Principles and Practices

The Difference between Principles and Practices

by | Jul 12, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

There are certain Principles that are Timeless.

There are certain Practices that have a limited lifespan.

We need both.

We also need to know and understand the differences.

I’ll use two different examples, one of which is my area of expertise, the other is simply an observation.

Personal Land Transportation is the example I’ll use for the latter.

The United States of America is just shy of 250 years old.  Our ancestors, the ones that arrived from other continents, came overseas way before the United States became a country.  Water travel, boats, ships with multiple people… it was a form of mass transportation.

On land, we have had, horses and other animals we could either ride or attach to something that was pulled.  Eventually bicycles became a popular form of Personal Land Transportation and then automobiles mostly powered by gasoline. Today the growth and popularity of electric vehicles continues to grow but it was be years before they replace gas powered personal land transportation automobiles.

I almost omitted rail transportation because it’s not a personal but a mass transportation system, however we as individuals have the freedom to use trains, subways and other rail based transportation to travel from one place to another over land.

The Principle is simple.  Get from one place to another over land.  It takes action and energy.

The Practices have evolved over time, and yet some of the early practices are still available.  The most independent is perhaps ourselves, walking.  All we need is fuel for our bodies and appropriate clothing.  You can go faster riding a horse or bike.  Motorized transportation is the Practice that most of us use these days to implement the Principle of getting from here to there.

Now I’ll apply this to my area of expertise, Advertising and Marketing using Human Relationship Principles.

The Principle is the closer you can spread the word about you and your business using what we as Humans respond to, the better.  Boiled down to a couple of words, it’s the Trust Factor.

The very basic is called Word of Mouth.  I ask you where to go for lunch and you recommend a place and tell me why.  Because I trust you, I trust what you tell me and I go there and spend my lunch money.   That Practice is probably equal to walking in my previous example.  Very effective, but a slow way to grow your business.

Signage is another practice.  If your business has no sign identifying it, I’m not going to trust I am at the right place. That kind of signage serves as an identifier of a physical location.  There is also the physical signage that is more closely though of us advertising. I’m talking about billboards that advertise your business. Or it could be a smaller sign I see somewhere.  Signage create a little bit of trust, but not as much as a friend telling me.  The benefits of signage is that one sign can inform many more people than word of mouth and it can be placed strategically to potential customers.

Other Practices for advertising and marketing your business is the traditional media models of newspapers, television and radio stations. Online we also have a multitude of ever evolving tech.

Some Practices work better than others and it’s due to the Human Relationship Principle, the Trust Factor and how closely it is applied. Some of the online practices have evolved to attempt to create a more personalized advertising experience. As you and I do ANYTHING online, we are adding to the meta-data that is used to serve us ads that are supposed to be more targeted and relatable to each of us.

This is where I want you to really pay attention to the Difference between Principles and Practices.

The Practice of personalized and targeted ads makes sense, but it does absolutely nothing when it comes to following the Human relationship Principle of the Trust Factor.

I’ll talk more about the what and why of creating the Trust Factor in your advertising and marketing in the weeks ahead but for now, please understand that just because the an ad message is targeted and personalized the way tech can do it with algorithms, doesn’t make it better if it ignores the Principle of Human Relationships.

You Can’t Whine & Win at the Same Time

You Can’t Whine & Win at the Same Time

by | Jul 5, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo Sales Tips, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Congratulations, you have successfully completed 6 months of 2022.

How do you feel about that?

Well first off, for making it this far this year, you and everyone else gets a participation trophy.

However the real trophies in life come from more than just showing up.

If this sounds like a little rant, it is, so buckle up.

We often hear news stories and articles talking about “the average” this and that.

You know what an average is right?

You take it all, the good, the bad and the stuff in-between; add it up and then divide by the number of figures you averaged.

There’s an old joke about three guys at a shooting range.  The first one misses his target by 6 inches to the left.  The next one also misses his target by 6 inches to the right.  The third guy happens to be a statistician and says, “Well I don’t even need to shoot, ’cause if you average out your two shots we got us a bulls-eye.”

No matter what you are doing, there is going to probably someone better than you and worse than you.

You certainly don’t want to be in the worst group, right?  In business those who are doing the worst are failing.

The next group, the one in the middle. These are the ones who are doing average work.  Their business is not quite failing or not making boat loads of money either.  They are just surviving, for now.  Or maybe they were surviving and then something happened and now they aren’t doing so well.

The last group, those are the winners.  Above Average.  Top Performers.  They get more than a participation trophy, they get the prize money for coming in 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

You can tell alot by observing and listening to the people in these three groups.

At the bottom, there is often a lot of grumbling and blaming someone else or something else for their troubles.  Rarely do these people and their businesses succeed.  They are too busy whining and You Can’t Whine And Win At The Same Time..

In the middle you’ve got those that wish things were better but don’t commit to the changes needed.  Their businesses are built on Hope and Hope Alone.  “If the stars align…” Right.  Similar to the bottom group but at least they have ideas on how to get better.

Those at the top are a different breed.  They are not willing to settle for mediocre.  They don’t want to be average.

Of course there are fewer of these winners than the other two groups but they are also significantly outpacing the others.

And finally when I say, You Can’t Whine And Win At The Same Time, Winners also whine sometimes too.  But they don’t get stuck there and make whining a lifestyle.  Winners push thru the tough times and realize that they are not helpless victims of circumstances.  They adapt, they innovate, they create, they find a way to move forward and don’t let the set backs paralyze them forever.

If you run a business that wants to win and you are in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area, contact me.  I have some marketing wisdom to share.

If you are an individual with a winner’s heart and attitude, contact me too because I am always looking for that kind of person to consider for openings on the WOWO Radio Advertising Sales Team.

Scott@WOWO.com is my email or you can find me online by Googling ScLoHo.

 

Navigating The Economy & Making Money

Navigating The Economy & Making Money

by | Jun 28, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

If you are listening to, watching, or reading all the doom and gloom stories in the news right now…

Stop It.

My friends, instead of getting swallowed up in the bad news of rising prices, staffing and supply chain shortages and whatever else we have going on in the political world, take a look around.

People are still buying stuff.  It’s one of the reasons prices are going up. Not the only reason, but it’s the universal law of supply and demand.

I work in the media. Specifically as the General Sales Manager of the leading conservative talk radio station, I know our conservative talk show hosts point out how bad the liberals are and on TV at home I see the liberals talking about how bad the conservatives are.  It’s the nature of what political commentators do… point out the bad stuff the other side is doing and ignore the good anyone is doing.

However people are still spending money and your job is to adapt your business model to help them buy from you.

We did it a couple years ago in 2020 when we were told to shelter in place and stay home to stop the spread of Covid. Our country has lived thru other challenging times and come out stronger on the other side.  Wars, inflation, recessions, you name it, we’ve been thru it and those that adapt usually make it.

Here’s what I’m telling my advertising sales team to tell the businesses they work with…

You need to invite people to your business to spend money with you instead of pulling back and letting your competition scoop up all the customers.

Let’s put together an ad campaign and invite our listeners to spend with you.

It’s that simple.

 

No Short-Cuts

No Short-Cuts

by | Jun 21, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

There is a simple formula in advertising that seems to be accepted by nearly anyone that hears it:

The Right Message, presented to the Right People, the Right Number of Times = Results.

Yep, it take into consideration three “right” things and promises to work if you get those three “rights” right.

However, most businesses fail at at least one of those “right” things, and that diminishes the outcome.

Let’s say you are a financial planner and you want to grow your business.  The way most financial planners do this is by contacting all the friends and family they know and try and convince them to become their client.  Then as time passes, they get referrals from those clients and over time, they grow.

If there was only a short-cut to grow faster…

There is, and that is to expand the number of people you are inviting to do business with you at a faster pace than the organic model I just mentioned.

This is where some paid advertising and marketing come in.

I know of one financial planner that will buy a list of potential clients from a service that gathers this information and then mails them invitations to a lunch or dinner where the meal is free but you have to sit through some form of sales pitch presentation.  This used to work for some when it was introduced a couple of decades ago, but over time, the return on investment has been getting smaller.

The cost for one of these events is usually a few thousand dollars.  Between buying the list of prospects, doing the mailing, the cost for the dinner and all the assorted costs of the presentation, it ads up.  Then there is the follow up.  A small percent sign up at the meal, some might become your customer after a few follow ups, but financial planners are given a formula that tells them when to quit pursuing a potential client and move on.

This so-called short-cut has plenty of short-comings, let’s look at some of them.

The messaging in the invite is a thinly veiled “bait and switch” tactic.  The only reason it is legal is that the invite you recieve has plenty of disclosures printed on it and they do say you will learn about something financially related.

I wonder if this tactic is reaching the Right People?  Years ago, I worked for a couple of radio stations that did live remote broadcasts at car dealers and gave away free pizza or hot dogs to listeners that came by.  Most of those listeners were not able to afford the higher priced cars the dealers were trying to sell.

When you are giving away a steak dinner as an incentive for financial planning advice, who are you really going to attract?  My guess is people without a lot to invest, or those who are looking for free stuff instead of value.

At the very beginning of a financial planners career, they invite people who know them to become their clients and those that do are doing it because they TRUST the financial planner.

Trust is the missing ingredient at these financial planner dinner schemes.

Trust has to be earned.  There are no short-cuts.

How do you earn trust?

Let’s look at that formula again and this time the focus is on the Right Number of Times.

Assume you’ve got an appropriate message and a way to target it to the Right People that are your ideal clients and customers.

The Right Number of Times an individual person is exposed to your offer is essentially the number of times it takes for that individual to Trust you and your business enough to spend with you.

This month, we had a Financial Planner come to us at WOWO radio and he wants to grow a become as well known and successful as our most well-known Financial Planners.  We were upfront and told him that it could cost him well over $100,000 per year, maybe double that to rise to the ranks of those he mentioned.

Why so much money? To big in the big leagues, you need to compete with enough right messages to reach and those numbers are what is working.  We did offer another option which is closer to $25,000 per year to get started that is very specifically targeted.  

However, when we met again and he gave us a starting budget of under $5000 per year, we almost told him no.  

I can’t offer him what he wants for that small of an investment.  His proposal to us was to spread out his messages each month and try and reach different people all month long.  I’m not sure how he got that idea, but it is the exact opposite of what he needs to do.  I asked him if he is willing to wait a year for his first potential client to contact him. (Yes, he might get it sooner than 12 months, but that’s just being hopeful and I prefer a plan over hope.)

When we meet again, we will offer him the opportunity to spend the budget he has given us to work with, but to do it wisely with a plan that will help him establish name recognition and trust with a group of our WOWO listeners that listen “when it’s dark outside”.  If he accepts, his ads will air late at night and overnight where the price for ads is low enough for him to get the right number of messages every month, not just over a year or longer.

No short-cuts to success is a lesson we all need to learn for all areas of our lives.  Also, if your Plan A is impossible, look for a Plan B, or C. And finally, 

The Right Message, presented to the Right People, the Right Number of Times = Results is a good rule to start with.

 

You Can Only Coast Downhill

You Can Only Coast Downhill

by | Jun 14, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

What are you doing to build your business right now?

It’s a question I ask when I am in front of a business owner.

Sadly, many don’t have a plan.

Or some are afraid of what the future might hold and they are behaving very cautiously.

Too cautious I dare to say.

“Oh, we’re going to take a few months off from advertising and see what happens”, is something I hear by many. 

Good luck with that I say.  Sometimes I say it to their face.  Sometimes I say it to myself and write them off.

We are going thru a time of uncertainty that some of you are experiencing for the very first time.  However there is plenty of history in the recent past that points to a positive outcome for those who are willing to step out instead of retreat.

About 14 years ago, in 2008 our economy was seeing economic collapse that created panic and downturns that were just as scary to the casual observer.  For years, lenders were taking us down a path that was going to create a crash, and basically in 2008, it all came crumbling down.  In a nutshell, lenders had been told to make it easier for people to buy a house.  Sub-prime loans were a part of this along with no-doc mortgages.

I saw first hand how the no-doc mortgage loan was abused.  I had a client that was running a mortgage company and we were supposed to meet about 1 o’clock one afternoon in 2008.  I got to his office before he returned from lunch and overheard one of his mortgage guys reviewing an application with a client over the phone.  As their customer told them their monthly income, the mortgage guy said, we’re going to bump that up so we can get you a lower interest rate. 

Afterward, I spoke to the owner of the mortgage company about what I heard and he told me that was common practice now since they didn’t need to provide any documentation to back up the figures they were putting on the loan applications.  Also they could get people into bigger, more expensive homes this way and the mortgage lender would make more money without risk because they were just a broker and these questionable loans were sold off and he had no liability as the mortgage broker.

I decided not to renew his advertising contract when it expired a few weeks later because I had a gut feeling that this was not right and I didn’t want my radio listeners to be taken advantage off by this company that was putting people’s finances in jeopardy in this manner.

When things took a crash in 2009, this guy’s mortgage company went out of business. That was a good thing.

There were other companies that went under back then but it wasn’t because they were crooked.  Many of them did what I see going on right now and they decided to be conservative and act like a scared turtle and hide in their shell, waiting for things to get better.

They decided to coast for awhile.

Problem is, you can only coast downhill.

Sure if you have enough momentum you will continue to be fine for a bit.

But if you stop inviting people to do business with you, eventually they will stop doing business with you.

And that’s all that advertising really is… a paid invitation from you and your company to potential customers to consider you when they are going to buy.

Some of your best customers will eventually decrease their spending or stop.  It may have nothing to do with you, just circumstances in their life.  For this reason alone, the average business will need to replace 20% of last years customers with brand new customers just to stay even.

That 20% number fluctuates greatly depending on the type of business you are in.

We have roofers advertising on my radio station that offer lifetime warranties.  That means they will never be able to sell that customer another roof until the customer moves to a new house.  Roofers like that have to replace nearly 100% of their customers every year!

Besides the business owners that say they are going to coast for awhile, there are others that are in the start-up or growth phase of their business plan and those are going to advertise.  They are going to earn the trust of your potential customers now and once a consumer buys from someone else, they are out of the market to buy from you.

I actually don’t mind the fact that some businesses are going to coast for now because it makes room for those that want to grow and those are the ones me and my team enjoy working with.

I’ll boil it down to this:

If you want to grow, contact me.

If you are considering coasting, contact me and we’ll continue this discussion.

If you have already made up your mind to pull back and coast, thank you for making it easier for your competition that I’ll be working with to take your place.

 

Getting Linked

Getting Linked

by | Jun 7, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Among the one-liners of business success, there’s one that I’ve noticed has been critical and it has to do with connections.

I’m going to focus on LinkedIn, but first here’s the one-liner:

“It’s not who you know, but who knows you that determines your success”

This is why I highly recommend using the power of social media to build a network.

In the 1990’s as a young advertising sales guy in Detroit, I was tasked with making cold calls to find businesses to advertise. It wasn’t fun and I actually quit.  Since I was not from the area, I had only a few connections and none were business owners.  Armed with a phone book and a car, well that was about it.  There was no social media in the 1990’s. MySpace launched in 2003 and Facebook after that.

But did you know that LinkedIn also launched way back then, in the early 2000’s?

LinkedIn used to be thought of as a place to find a job.  You’d fill out your employment history and it sort of functioned as an online CV or resume.

It has become much more than that.

LinkedIn promotes itself as a social network for professionals for professional connecting which is pretty much true.  I also recall the debates over who to connect with.

“Should I only Link to those people I know?”

Well, that is a good start and some of you haven’t even done that.

Please do that first.  Then it’s time to really grow your network.

Anyone that you are connected to has connections and while LinkedIn will tell you whom you share connections with, it will also show you something called 2nd degree connections.

These 2nd degree connections are where the real potential value is, I’ve discovered.

It’s the Kevin Bacon Effect.  The Kevin Bacon Effect was a fun gun to play to see who was connected to whom and how many people you had to go thru to connect to Kevin.  Look it up if you care.

Before I was preparing this article, I had no idea how many 1st degree connections I had. Just glancing at my profile, says 500+ which seems like a lot.  But when I dug deeper, I saw I have over 3,000 first degree connections!

Here’s the fun part, and I’m going to scale it down using a low number of connections.

100.

If I had just 100 connections, and each of my 100 connections had 100 connections, that means in theory I have 10,000 second degree connections.

Move that number up to 400 and do the math and that adds up to 160,000 connections.

Of course there are a lot of variables but according to LinkedIn, the average number of 1st degree connections is between 500 and 999 for active LinkedIn Profile users.  When I looked at my co-workers, I saw most having less than 500 which means they are missing out.

What are they missing out on?  And what are you missing if you aren’t active on LinkedIn?

When I am doing research on a company or a potential contact, LinkedIn is one of the top 5 searches I do.   My role with my radio station includes looking for potential candidates to hire for positions that may open up.  I also do some research on companies that might be a good fit as an advertising partner.  Besides the 1st degree connections, I can also reach out to 2nd degree connections.  And I do this free.

Yes, I don’t pay a dime for my LinkedIn account, and I usually don’t advise people to get a paid account either.  If you instead build your contacts and connections, you will grow it over time and it will become a valuable resource.

Finally here’s the added benefit that has been happening a lot, and that is people reaching out to me.  Every single week.  Some just want to connect for networking but others are seeking me out because they want to consider buying what I have to sell them.

Would you like people contacting you like that?  What are you waiting for?  Get Linked!