by Scott Howard | Dec 20, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
I’m here to tell the story of WOWO Radio & The Christmas Coffee, that surprised even me this month.
And let’s clear up some conceptions about the power of advertising.
Advertising is not some magical superpower that will automatically convert those exposed to your ads to spend money with you if they are not at all interested in what you are selling.
For example, if I lived in an apartment, I would never be in the market to buy a fence. Or if I was allergic to shellfish, I would never buy lobster. (I used those two examples because I talked to someone who lives in an apartment and someone else who nearly died due to an allergic reaction after his girlfriend kissed him after eating lobster.)
There are just certain things that advertising cannot do.
Now perhaps if that apartment dweller decides to buy a house and needs a fence, then the advertising you bought over the years may have an eventual return on investment for that person. But in the meantime, there are plenty of others who qualify to buy a fence and qualify to buy lobster that your advertising can influence.
I drink coffee nearly everyday. I have the Starbucks app on my phone that I keep loaded with money that allows me to order instantly and pick up my drink when I show up.
The other day, WOWO radio’s Charly Butcher was talking with his morning news teammates about this years Starbucks Christmas cup controversy. Each year someone makes a big deal out of the design that Starbucks uses and this year is no different from years past.
Here’s how this played out that morning in my life. I had just left a meeting and was thinking about where I was going to go next. I almost visited a local coffee shop around the corner from where I was, but I didn’t have time to sit and enjoy before I would need to head out to my next meeting.
Instead, a few minutes after Charly was talking about Starbucks, I had a hot Starbucks drink in my hand.
WOWO radio, specifically the conversation about Starbucks had the triggering effect for me to pull out my phone and spend my money with them.
That’s the way a lot of advertising works. When we are in that moment of deciding where to buy something, and we hear someone we trust mention one of our options, it can push us over the edge to say YES to that advertiser and NO to the other options at the moment.
Now I realize that what I heard on WOWO that morning was not a commercial for Starbucks that made me buy their coffee. It was more powerful. It was a live conversation that was, for me at least, as powerful as the live ads that Charly, Pat Miller and Rick Wolf do on WOWO.
WOWO has built a loyal audience that trusts our show hosts and when they say good things, either off the cuff or in a live endorsement ad, listeners respond. That’s why my Christmas Coffee cup said Starbucks on it that morning.
Thanks WOWO.
Do you want to see if you qualify to be endorsed by Charly, Pat, or Rick on WOWO? Contact me.
by Scott Howard | Dec 11, 2017 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
It’s time for Penny Pitch and time to share with you what I know about The Heart of the WOWO Radio Listener.
First let me share with you what Penny Pitch is all about. Penny Pitch began in 1948, as a way for WOWO radio listeners to give to help those in need. It continues today with our two day radiothon Thursday and Friday, which I’ll tell you more about in a moment.
A couple of years ago, our WOWO Program Director at the time, Ryan Wrecker worked on creating a number of special events for WOWO’s 90th anniversary and some of the information is from that event that you can listen to here.
I’m also including some of the audio in the podcast version. Bob Chase tells the story of how WOWO’s Jay Gould got a letter from a mom of a handicapped son. There was a special typewriter that was very expensive at the time, about $1900 and that typewriter would be a real blessing to this young man. Jay read the letter on the air and told listeners that if they had a couple of pennies they could contribute to mail them in to WOWO. Pretty soon, they raised over $7000 and most of it was in pennies.
Over the years WOWO’s Penny Pitch Charity has raised a tremendous amount of money for wonderful families and fantastic local charities.
Penny Pitch is still going strong and has a separate board of volunteers that select each years local charity based on the applications we receive.
When I joined WOWO in December 2013, my first week was the week of WOWO’s gas station promotion for Penny Pitch. Pat Miller broadcasts his afternoon talk show from the Phil’s One Stop Marathon gas station in Georgetown Square and listeners drop off their pennies and folding money into the orange buckets. In 2013 Turnstone was the charity that would be getting all of the Penny Pitch donations and my eyes were opened to what made WOWO listeners different from the listeners of other stations I had worked for previously.
That difference was the heart of the listeners.
That December day in 2013 was miserable weather-wise. It was not only snowy but cold and windy. But in the last hour, I met a young man who made an extra special effort to join us that afternoon.
He and his wife were from Indianapolis and moved to Fort Wayne earlier that year when they discovered their young daughter needed special care. Friends told them about the services of Turnstone and they were blessed to get the help they needed. This young man, in his early 30’s was also a WOWO radio listener and when it was announced that Turnstone was going to be receiving the Penny Pitch donations in 2013, he started collecting funds on his own at his office.
When I met him that afternoon 4 years ago, he came with a huge jar stuffed with money that his friends, co-workers and acquaintances had donated. He drove across town in that lousy weather to personally thank Nancy, the executive director of Turnstone at the time and WOWO for selecting Turnstone for Penny Pitch. By the time he finished telling me and Nancy his story and handed over the jar filled with donations of love and money, everyone of us had tears streaming down our faces.
Here’s what stuck with me that day about the heart of the WOWO Radio Listener compared to what I saw at many of the radio stations I worked for previously. At the other stations, listeners tuned in to see what they could get by winning. WOWO listeners tuned in to see what they could give to help others.
I’m going to wrap this up with an opportunity to join us for this years Penny Pitch Radiothon.
December 14th and December 15th… Thursday and Friday, Fort Wayne’s Morning News with Charly Butcher and the Pat Miller Program in the afternoon will be devoted to raising funds for Shepherd’s House in Fort Wayne. Listen all day and tell your friends and family. We know the WOWO Radio Listener Family will give generously like you have for decades. Thank you for your support and involvement.
by Scott Howard | Dec 6, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Why do I say Your Digital Marketing Is Bologna?
Especially because I actually sell online digital marketing solutions along with the more traditional radio advertising solutions?
Because it hit me the other day, that those people who only sell digital marketing are often selling the same line of bull, excuse me, bologna that Yellow Pages people used to sell to prove they were a good advertising investment.
Laura from Bain and Company was quoted in an article from Google:
We need to move away from last-click attribution models to something that better reflects a consumer journey, which is nonlinear and has gaps in the data.
In order to tell you why this is important, we’re going to take a minute and explain the old phone book advertising sales technique. I learned this years ago from a co-worker who used to sell yellow pages advertising before he made the conversion to radio advertising sales.
This is what a phone book used to look like
The phone book advertising sales people would tell the businesses that advertise to track their advertising by asking some variation of this simple question:
How did you get our (business) phone number?
More than half the time, sometimes as much as 90% of the time, the customer on the other end of the phone would say:
I got your number from the phone book.
Which was probably true. I mean, they had no reason to lie, and yes they really did get your number from the phone book.
But that’s not the right question to ask to track your advertising.
Depending on the other advertising and marketing that the business was doing, along with their word of mouth reputation, the really successful businesses already were being considered by the customer and the phone book was simply a tool to get the phone number to call the business.
The phone book does absolutely nothing to brand a business, it’s just the way we get the phone number. That’s what I used to say all the time until Google changed the internet and Facebook changed our social communication.
Since the advent of the internet and the demise of the paper-published-phone-book-yellow-pages-directory, the phone books are a lot skinnier.
Only old people have a phone book anymore. And by old, I’m saying 85 year olds.
Those last couple of statements are broad generalizations. Yes, there are some 70 year olds who still have a phone book in their junk drawer in their kitchen and a few other people too.
Digital marketers for the last several years have adopted the tactic that the old yellow page advertising sales people used to use to claim credit for making your business phone ring, or any of the other ways your future customers can contact you.
C. T. R. which stands for Click Thru Rate which is the digital equivalent of asking where do you get our phone number.
Both only measure the last action taken and totally disregard all the previous marketing and advertising efforts that led to that last action or conversion.
We are not robots, we are humans. That’s why I look at all this marketing and advertising from a human relationship standpoint that takes all of the influencing factors into consideration.
I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that I sell both radio and online advertising solutions with WOWO radio and Federated Media Digital Solutions and often use a combination of these to drive more business to my advertising partners.
While it is possible to look at Click Thru Rates and other tracking with your online and digital efforts, if I were to tell you that was the only way to determine your success, it would be a lie. That’s why I say Your Digital Marketing Is Bologna. There is really nothing wrong with it, just the way you are being sold and I’m sure you prefer an honest approach right?
Talk to me if you want to… talk.
by Scott Howard | Nov 28, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
The question that every business owner has to come to grips with, “Is Advertising an Expense or an Investment?”, because it can determine the success or failure of your business.
Your view towards advertising is one of the keys to success.
Let’s jump in and take a look at these two expenditures.
The term investment implies that you are going to earn money back. Even if it is a 5% increase or 1% increase. You give me $100 and I give you $101 dollars in return. You give me 100,000 dollars and I give you all your money back plus an extra thousand bucks. That’s what a 1% return on your investment would look like.
The opposite is an expense. You give me $100 and I give you $95 back. You just lost 5%. The challenge is knowing if your advertising is an expense or an investment and honestly it is impossible to know with absolute certainty the complete answer.
And that’s okay.
We can’t measure the true return on everything we spend money on. You pay the electric bill in your business because you need power to light up your store or office. You need power to operate your computer. Those expenses are really impossible to measure your return on because you need power, right?
But advertising and marketing, those are also important. Those are the tools to invite people to spend money with you. Unless people spend money with you, you are not likely to last very long.
I originally wrote most of this article in 2015 and I included a couple of stories from that year which I’ll update right now. I had just finished helping a 70 year old company organize their $100,000 plus advertising budget for 2016. They are now looking at it strategically, with a method to measure every advertising offer someone tries to sell them to see if it fits. But as we reviewed the previous 5 years they had set a budget each of those years too. But instead of spending all of it, they looked at the money they didn’t spend as savings. They were looking at advertising as an expense because they didn’t have a plan. It was just something they knew they were supposed to do like pay the electric bill. 2016 was different because know they committed to spending what they said they were going to spend because then know when to say yes and when to hold off. I serve as their marketing coach and review every couple of months everything they are doing. 2017 was a bigger year than previous years and as we plan for 2018, there is more growth because we now have a marketing strategy that guides us.
The other story from 2015 is a small company that was only advertising when he needed new leads. Throw out a bunch of postcards or newspaper ads every once in awhile and then do it again a few months later. He decided to invest the money he would have spend on some of those ads and mailers and use WOWO radio on a consistent basis. When he started, I had no idea if he would be successful. But he was willing to treat that initial commitment as an investment that could produce a return, or lose money.
Initial return on his investment was huge compared to the hit and miss advertising he was doing previously. He decided to increase his investment, and we are watching the growth occur as a result. Three years have passed and you can hear about his company every week on WOWO because it works.
Bottom line on this is if you treat your advertising as something you have to do but expect to lose money on it, you are looking at it as an expense and probably not making good choices because you are trying to spend as little as possible without a return.
But if you treat your advertising as an investment and talk to someone with some know-how and marketing smarts, it is possible to get a positive return on your investment and watch your business grow.
Want help? Lets talk.
by Scott Howard | Nov 21, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
How to fix your marketing problems, seems like an answer that nearly every business person and entrepreneur would love to have, right? Today I’m going give you the big answer and give you an example.
The big answer to fixing your marketing problems is:
Be Curious.
Seek Answers.
Talk to Real People.
Read more.
In short, A. B. L. which stands for Always Be Learning.
You can apply this formula to anything that you want to do.
You and I are already doing this.
Take for example the last couple of big purchases I made for my wife and I. Phones and Computers.
I did all the above.
I was curious, I sought out answers, talked to real people, read reviews, etc.
It’s the way most humans decide on what to buy.
I apply it to my advertising and marketing expertise too
Just last week my son sent me a link to a podcast about CSA Farm Marketing. I’m actually writing this a few minutes after he sent me the link, but by the time this article gets published and I create the podcast version, I will have listened to the podcast he sent me.
I am not a farmer. I had an Uncle Ed when I was a kid who had a farm that I visited a few times but we never really talked about farming. My son Josh on the other hand runs an organic CSA farm in South Carolina. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and it’s a way for small farmers to create a sustainable business model by selling shares of the harvest ahead of time. It’s a pretty cool concept that I had not heard of or thought about until my son started working for one in Ohio years ago.
I will share some specifics lessons from the podcast in an upcoming article and podcast, because at first glance there are some golden nuggets of marketing wisdom tucked in that podcast.
This Always Be Learning concept is something I’ve been applying to build my marketing and advertising expertise for over 30 years because I was curious. In 1986 when I moved my family to Detroit and spent 7 years creating successful radio advertising campaigns; it was a huge learning experience for me as I got to interview dozens and dozens of business owners to find out what they did, why they did it, and how it worked. I was driven by curiosity.
I also read, researched and applied the concepts I was discovering into a working laboratory of marketing experiments with my advertising partners in Detroit.
This passion continued when I started doing this in 2003 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. (By the way, in between say, 1993 and 2003, for about 10 years, I got to work outside of the advertising and marketing world for a living and simply experience marketing and advertising from a consumers stand point. This ability to look at both sides of the marketing transaction, I know gives me a unique ability to see both the big picture and little details from both the business side and the customer side.
A friend of mine told me she was going to spend $20 to take a two hour marketing class offered by the small business administration and a local college. Good for her, I thought. But I’m curious as to what she will be told. Hopefully she’ll get some valuable tips. More importantly, she is starting the process that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece:
The big answer to fixing your marketing problems is:
Be Curious.
Seek Answers.
Talk to Real People.
Read more.
In short, A. B. L. which stands for Always Be Learning.
If you are in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area and want to do this, contact me. I work for WOWO Radio and Federated Media and may have some help in marketing your business available thru those resources. But my true passion is to help you on the right path whether you buy something from me or not.
Let’s talk.
by Scott Howard | Nov 17, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
I was recently asked to share an infograph with you which prompted what I am writing today, Is Bigger Also Better? I’m going to limit my thoughts on the subject to the business world and some personal insights too.
First the infograph:
Anything surprise you?
There were a couple of items that I had forgotten about some of the U.S. based companies and as Americans, we are mostly ignorant about the companies that are headquartered in other parts of the world. Rarely have I worked for a company that was as large as any of those mentioned, but I have friends who do.
The bigger a company is, the more they have to lose if they are not diversified. Google did some restructuring and created their own parent company, Alphabet, which is listed above. Most of those on the list are very diversified which has helped them weather the economic ups and downs for not just dozens of years, but well over 100 years.
I don’t work with companies of that magnitude in the day to day work that I do as a marketing coach, consultant and advertising sales person in Fort Wayne Indiana with WOWO radio and Federated Media. Usually when I work with companies that are publicly traded, I work with a subset or division of the parent company which is fine.
Did you notice the revenue numbers listed above were all Billions? Change that to Millions for the level of companies I work with. (There are a couple of exceptions, this year and next year I am working with a company that has annual revenues of over $13,000,000,000.00, but on a local level which is just a small piece of that 13 billion dollar pie.)
It is not uncommon for a company in Fort Wayne that I work with to have over a million dollars in annual revenue. Most consumers in Fort Wayne are probably not aware of the cash flow that is going on in our city.
These local companies with annual sales in the millions are all over the place. I had neighbors in the pizza business, friends I go to church with in the sign business and home repair industries and there are tons of B 2 B businesses that are never given a second thought because they are not retailers.
All of these businesses need guidance and help with their marketing and I enjoy sitting down and asking the right questions to help them form a strategic marketing plan. Sometimes they become my advertising partners and sometimes we just become friends.
A few years ago American Express launched #SmallBusinessSaturday and it continues again this year. Many local retailers will be participating on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. It’s sandwiched in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
I suspect I am like most of you in my shopping habits. I buy local when possible and also buy from the big boys.
Amazon Wish Lists help me buy for my out of town family. Were you aware that Amazon also supports local non-profits with their Amazon Smile program? I am on the board of directors for Homebound Meals, Inc. of Fort Wayne Indiana and recently made the switch so my Amazon purchases benefit locally. Kroger also has a rewards program that you can sign up for that gives money to the charity of your choice.
But back to the title of this article.
Is Bigger Also Better?
No, but the opposite isn’t true either.
I urge you as a business person to seek out advice on how to be the best you can be no matter your size. An often overlooked piece of your success is how you invite people to spend money with you, that’s part of your marketing and I can help.
I also urge you as a consumer to support your neighbors and their businesses when possible in a variety of ways as I just mentioned.
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