Do You Know What C.A.T. Is?

Around the radio station we talk about offering a “CAT” advertising solution as one of the methods to help our advertising partners.

But most of you are clueless if I were to ask you, “Do You Know What C.A.T. Is?”

That’s alright because I’m going to take a couple days to explain.

First off C.A.T. is a made-up word. ScLoHo’s Web World

But that’s okay, because it’s an acronym for something pretty spectacular that is offered exclusively by Federated Media, the parent company of my radio station WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  We have a digital division called Federated Digital Solutions, and C.A.T. is one of the solutions.

C.A.T. stands for Custom Audience Targeting.  Here’s why those three words were selected.

Imagine if you could targeting your advertising so only specially qualified individuals saw or heard your ad?

If this was possible while watching T.V. that means the ads that you see while watching your favorite show would be different than the ads I see, while watching the same show at the exact same time!

Say you are into Country Music, and I’m more of a Classic Rock fan, you’d see ads for the upcoming country concert coming to town and I’d see some old rockers concert commercial.

So far, that’s not possible.  It’s not possible with television, radio, print ads, billboards either.

But it is possible with the power of digital display ads.  These are the ads that seem to follow you around after you’ve been to a website and ads for that website appear when you’re off looking up something else online.

What I just described is called Retargeting and it works by the website you visited placing a pixel or cookie on your web browser.  Retargeting is the oldest form of this digital display ad technology.

When I combine it with three other methods of finding the right target for your ads, it can be pretty powerful.

Those three other methods include Search Retargeting, Contextual Retargeting and GeoFencing.  Together, these 4 methods of finding the right audience for your digital display ads combined with other qualifying data helps us to create a Custom Audience Target.

Curious about how this works?  Contact me and I’ll show you.

Media & Marketing Your Business in 2016

This week I was asked by my friend Kevin Mullett to sit on a panel for the Social Media/Marketing Breakfast that he emcee’s each month in Fort Wayne, Indiana along with Ric Johnson from Xymmetrix.

Kevin, Ric and me. Picture snapped by my friend Ryan Recker.

Kevin, Ric and me. Picture snapped by my friend Ryan Recker.

The topic was Online Reputation Management which included a great discussion and plenty of advice. This monthly event is 5 years strong and if you want details, contact me.

But what really struck me recently was the way media has changed over the past 5 years and even the 10 years before.  Some of the members of the audience weren’t involved in any form of media, online or otherwise 15 years ago.

From a marketing perspective, these millennials don’t know about life without the web.  Or they have lived a majority of their lives with the web.

Compare that with the 40 year old or 55 year old business person who has to make marketing and advertising decisions to keep their company alive and growing for the next 15 years.

Before 2000 a minority of businesses had a website.  Social Media really started to take off with MySpace from 2005 through 2008.  By 2009 Facebook became the largest Social Media platform and others have come and gone while even more have come and evolved as they discovered their niche.   In researching this article, I discovered that MySpace has a Facebook account!

Social media platforms have allowed all of us to be both consumers of content along with creators of content.  Facebook has launched a live video capability to compete with the others that offer similar options. This is vastly different than the media choices we had before.  One of the differences is the size of the audiences doesn’t compare.

Traditional media included T.V., radio, newspapers, magazines.  Lots of advertising options in traditional media.  Plus other traditional advertising options included yellow page phone books, billboard, direct mail and flyers/posters.

There has been an explosion of choices we have as consumers to get the entertainment and information we want and need.  Instead of settling for summer reruns or special summer seasons of TV shows, I will go to my Amazon Prime Video account and stream movies or shows I want to watch.  I can use my Google Chromecast to watch on my TV.  Others are using Netflix or Hulu or who knows what to watch video entertainment.

We have the ability as consumers to ignore the traditional media and still be informed and entertained.

However many of us don’t ignore traditional media.  I work in the radio industry and also online world.  Over 90% of Americans listen to a radio station every week.

We just got radio rating information and my station WOWO continues to lead the pack with more adult listeners than anyone.  Overall WOWO is one of 4 stations that has over 100,000 weekly listeners and 98% are over the age of 18.

WOWO is still a mass media that produces results for the advertising partners. Sadly that is not always true of all radio stations for a variety of reasons.

What about the online advertising options?  Technology has allowed us to pinpoint the people that a business wants as customers, anywhere in the world and deliver advertising marketing messages to them.  It’s sort of mindblowing.  But I’ve seen it in action with my advertising partners.  I’ll delve into some of those details next week.

Bottom line is simple:

  1. You need to invite customers to do business with you.
  2. There are people who will become your customers if you invite them.  They are spending their money every week on stuff they need and want.
  3. I can help you make that connection to invite them to spend money with you.

Want to know more?  Let’s meet.

How WOWO Radio & Digital Marketing Solutions Work

I have an incredible job.  I get to help businesses succeed.ee

My area of expertise is marketing, media and advertising, something I’ve been doing in Fort Wayne since 2003 and actually for a couple decades before that.

Many businesses struggle with not having enough customers and they don’t know the most effective way to invite people to become their customers.  That’s where I come in.

I have two media platforms to work with and depending on the needs, we may use WOWO radio or we may use a digital solution to use the internet.

Right now, I’ll outline the most common methods that I just presented to someone this week:

WOWO Radio has been on the air for 91 years and is the most listened to radio station in Fort Wayne, Indiana by grown-ups.  100,000 weekly listeners is the number we are told by the radio rating/survey people.

WOWO is an excellent way to reach a mass audience.  With our news-talk format, listeners do not tune out when commercials come on and as a result, we have countless success stories from our advertising partners.  Ask and I’ll share some with you.

The digital marketing solutions are also an extremely effective way to invite potential customers to your business.  I can target ads to reach the specific criteria of people that you want to expose your business to.  I’m not limited to just our area, I have one campaign that is nationwide.  Another is targeted to only certain zipcodes.

With the digital marketing solutions offered by Federated Digital Solutions (the online division of our parent company), I can create a very specific and targeted campaign that is only limited by the parameters we decide.

It’s the combination of these two marketing solutions using WOWO Radio and Digital Marketing that allows me to help you succeed by connecting your business with new customers.

Want more details?  Let’s talk.

The Women Who Listen To WOWO Radio (part 2)

WOWO Radio has more Baby Boomer women listeners than any other Fort Wayne radio station by at least 10,000.  That was one of the items I pointed out in our last article.

Baby Boomer women control the biggest pile of consumer spending still and for the next 7 to 10 years. portrait-monochrome

Let’s continue with part 2 in a series from Mediapost, How To Connect With Baby Boomer Women.  Here’s the highlights that I can help you and your business with WOWO radio:

1. Don’t forget the purchasing power of self-employed Boomer women. Recognize that she is working and wants to find meaning through work as long as she can.

2. Avoid using the word “retirement.” She wants to connect with her aspirations through the increased freedom to choose how and where she will contribute through the full utilization of her skills and abilities.

3. Engage her in dialogue; she wants to establish an authentic relationship with you and your company.

4. Don’t make assurances on which you can’t deliver. Tell her what you’ll do for her, not how great you, your product or company is.

5. Listen to learn what is motivating her. The most important question you can ask is “What are you hoping your planning for the future will allow you to achieve.”

6. Don’t be afraid of a spiritual slant in your messaging. Survey results show 44% of Boomer women are turning to sources other than organized religion for spiritual guidance.

7. Although not very happy about it, she can laugh at the physical effects of aging. You can successfully use a “women like her” to comment humorously on conditions and circumstances only one of her own would fully understand.

8. Baby Boomer women are more active than you may think. Your images should reflect her full level and range of engagement in life.

9. Avoid using a single relationship to define her. She may be managing health care for her parents but she’s not only a “caregiver.” She’s also “grandma” but she would define her life much broader. The brands of suppliers who best support her multi-relationships underlying her purchases will win her business.

10. Cater to her desire to learn. Link your brand and products to opportunities to learn more about issues and concerns she faces every day. Her focus has shifted to experience, rejuvenation and personal growth.

11. Don’t talk down to her. What she didn’t gain through formal education she gained through experience. Insult her intelligence at your peril.

Want to know more?  Contact me.

The Women Who Listen To WOWO Radio (part 1)

A few years ago when I started on the WOWO radio advertising sales team and I was sharing information about the WOWO listeners, I kept running into women who would say, “I’m a little unusual because I listen to WOWO.”

I pointed out to them that they were in good company.  Look at these numbers from our last rating survey:

Total Weekly WOWO Listeners age 12+: 107,000

Total Weekly WOWO Female Listeners age 12+: 44,000

Total Weekly Female Listeners age 45+: 34,000

That last number is important. Baby Boomer Women are the ones that have the buying power that most businesses want.  Of all the radio stations in Fort Wayne, Indiana, WOWO has more than any other station by at least 10,000. 2016-06-06

Last month Mediapost shared an article, How To Connect With Baby Boomer Women and I’m sharing the highlights because these are the Women of WOWO that I can help you reach.

1. If she feels your authenticity, that you have really listened to her and you genuinely care, she will reward you.

2. They love products that make them feel more creative and helps them connect to their friends and family.

3. If you are looking for better-educated women with more discretionary income, you will find her online. She is not just a passive observer; she is quickly adopting the internet usage patterns of younger generations and posting content herself.

4. She is free to choose the “best of” from all stages of her life, as well as incorporating new products, services and behaviors.

5. Marketers in search of aspirational messaging are advised to look higher up Maslow’s pyramid toward new levels of simplicity and altruism and away from icons drawn from the assumption that she spends money only to gain the approval of others.
6. Boomer women are more than six times as likely to make purchase decisions based upon their personal values.
7. Perceptive marketers recognize that the Boomer woman knows she has entered and is transiting through a new lifestage and will reward them for recognizing her special needs and interests.

8. Market to her through women like her. Keep in mind that women want to know that the person offering advice or inspiration is someone from both the gender and lifestage that has personally advanced through the same lifestages and transitions.

9. She doesn’t aspire to be ignored. They don’t like ads that never feature women 50+.

10. Show her respect by providing her the facts. A product example is Olay anti-aging products. Olay used an abundance of useful information and straightforward facts about their products with extensive reviews and ratings from other women rather than clever imagery.

That’s just the first 10.  Mediapost shared a follow up article this month that I’ll share the next time.

Another Secret To Successful Advertising with WOWO Radio

When I started on the WOWO radio advertising sales team, I needed to create a new recipe for building successful radio advertising campaigns. Seems like most of my established co-workers were using the formula that included Live 60 second Endorsement Ads because they worked.

They worked so well that my options were limited. Those live 60 second endorsement ads carried exclusivity for the advertiser.  If I wanted Charly to endorse a dentist, he wasn’t available because he was already endorsing another dentist.  Same thing with other business categories that were successful on WOWO.

So here’s what I did. maxresdefault

Instead of live 1 minute endorsement ads by the personalities, I opted to use live 10 second embedded news sponsorship ads.  These shorter versions when used the way I set them up worked and still work under the right circumstances.

It’s not really a secret, but it was something my peers were not doing the way I did it.

Live embedded news sponsorship ads that are just 10 seconds long are read by the WOWO news hosts and WOWO personalities within the context of the news, weather, or sports reports.  We have 37 slots each weekday between 5am and 6pm.

My first year at WOWO, I started using these to get my advertising partners on WOWO and because of the way I did it, it was successful.  It became so successful that we had to start keeping track of the amount of inventory we have each week for them and applying the supply and demand price model.

When we are nearly sold out, these are $50 each.  That’s less than 1/2 the price for a 60 second radio commercial on WOWO, but there are certain conditions that must be met for this kind of campaign to work.  Also, I don’t believe you can transfer this recipe to a music based radio station with the same results.

Here’s what I look for to even consider using this:

  1. Can we communicate the advertising message in 10 seconds or do we need more time due to the complexity of what should be said and/or competition? That is a must.
  2. Is there a simple call to action, usually a website or location that we can direct people to in the message?  This depends on what we are looking to accomplish.
  3. Is there going to be enough of a commitment of money and time to enable this to work? This is a question I need answered no matter what kind of marketing plan I develop.

Will this work for you?  Maybe.  We should talk first.  Contact me.