Digital Burnout

Digital Burnout

Do you ever get annoyed at advertising?

I did an informal and unscientific poll of friends and strangers recently and discovered that the answer is Yes.

This is nothing new.  As long as there have been advertising, there are reasons for people to dislike it.

Music radio stations that play too many commercials in a row, that’s an annoyance.

TV ads that are just plain awful, usually it’s the locally produced ones that look and sound bad.

In the digital world there are a couple of irritants I discovered too.

One is the number of times we are shown an ad when we are online.

There is a practice called remarketing that is as old as digital advertising, that is part of the culprit.

When you visit a website, it places a tracking pixel, or “cookie” on your computer and adds you to their database of website visitors.

Then when you are visiting other websites, you start seeing ads from that website you just visited.  The reason is statistics tell us less than 10% of us buy the first time we visit a website.  So to remind you of that website you were visiting and the stuff you may have bought but 90% of the time, the stuff you didn’t buy, these ads that follow you around online.

It’s a neat concept from a marketing standpoint but it has become an irritant. A recent survey said that if you are still sending ads to people who visited your website a week after they were there, you are annoying 85% of the people you are trying to convert to customers.

Nearly half only want to see your ads for 24 hours and after a couple of days, you are just creating a bad vibe for your company.

One company has taken this seriously.

Proctor and Gamble which spends between 6 and 7 billion dollars a year in advertising announced this summer that going forward, they are reducing the number of times a consumer sees the same digital ad.

I know that there are multiple ways to track our online actions and one that seems to be missing involves connecting the dots between visiting a website and making a purchase.

If the digital marketers could get an alert when we make a purchase so they stop bombarding us with ads that are wasted, because we already spent our money on what you are still trying to sell us, everyone would be happier.

I know the technology is out there to do this, it just needs to be implemented.

If you are currently doing or are considering digital ads, talk to me first.  There are better ways to invite people to become your customers and buy your stuff without annoying them to death.  Drop me a note Scott@WOWO.com.

By the way, you can subscribe to this weekly ScLoHo Media and Marketing Article update that I share on my website, you can also subscribe to the podcast version which is pretty much the same weekly content that you can listen to in 10 minutes or less.  I also have a separate email business tips newsletter called Sound ADvice that you can get by filling in the information in the box below.  All free and yours just for the asking!

 

 

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Avoid A Digital Disaster

Avoid A Digital Disaster

I walked in for my 1 o’clock meeting, and there was a strange kind of energy at their office.

I’m talking about energy in the air, the people were not their usual happy selves.

I asked if Doug was in and they pointed to his office and went back to their computer screens.

I climbed the steps to his office and he greets me and tells me what’s going on.

It turns out Facebook shut down his company Facebook page.

Now that may be no big deal to you and your company, but it was for Doug and his business.

If you are relying on some marketing platform like Facebook to keep your business alive, you are risking a Digital Disaster.

Long story short for Doug is that he lost a lot but his business will recover, but it is expensive in time and money.

You may not be so fortunate.

By the way, the story I am telling is true, but Doug is not the business owners real name.

Let’s dig into the details and see how you can avoid losing your business.

Lesson Number ONE, when you name your business, register that name with the proper authorities. That’s usually at the city, county or state level. Depending on what your business does and what marketing you do, you may even need to trademark it which is at the federal level.

Doug’s business page on Facebook was shut down by Facebook because the name he had been using was trademarked by another company hundreds of miles away.  Doug was unaware of this conflict when he selected the name of his company and it wasn’t until that Monday morning that he became aware of the problem this could cause.

Doug used Facebook as his primary marketing and lead generator. His second most successful lead generator was my radio station, WOWO and it reality we married the two of them as a marketing tactic. 

Doug’s business is a home improvement company and everyday his team would be taking pictures of the transformations they did at peoples homes and sharing them on Facebook which worked when you put a considerable amount of money behind those Facebook posts like Doug did.  He spent double on Facebook what he spent with my radio station, otherwise we would have been his top lead source.

Anyway, the mistake Doug made was that he trusted Facebook.  When they took down his business page, they did without warning and all the hundreds of pictures and success stories were not just gone, but lost.

Lesson Number TWO is to Keep Everything Yourself.  Doug and his team deleted their copies of the pictures and posts once they were on Facebook. Doug now saves all those pictures in the cloud on a space he controls.  

By Wednesday, Doug had moved on and decided to rename his business.  This time he did a more thorough check for conflicts and once he was satisfied he contacted me with the new name.  It was easy for me to help him with his rebranding to our radio listeners, that’s part of the beauty of radio, we can make changes often within 24 hours.  That’s not the case for TV or print advertising.

Over the next few days, Doug started his Facebook marketing from scratch.  He had plenty of jobs that he could post and share pictures of, just like he did before, but the Thousands, yes THOUSANDS of people who were connected to his old Facebook business page, were all gone.  So once again he poured money into promoting those Facebook posts and was able to get things up to a satisfactory level of activity in about a week.  He had one handicap with Facebook marketing however.  He could not mention his old company name or he would risk being shut down again.

WOWO radio to the rescue.  The tactic that we used for Doug when he started with us is live endorsement ads and the call to action was to call them and also visit their Facebook Page.  For the first two weeks since the Facebook page was gone, we continued to promote the old name and phone number since Doug still has the old website up.

This week and for the rest of the month, the radio ads will do something that Doug could not do on Facebook. 

We are promoting the name change on the air.  Both names are mentioned as a transition.  This keeps the reputation and good will that Doug has built with our radio audience and we are also telling people to check out the work at the new company Facebook page.  The only reason I didn’t make the switch earlier is I needed Doug to have at least a dozen completed jobs as Facebook Posts so our listeners would see that this is the real thing.

I mentioned that this is an expensive lesson for Doug.  Besides the money spent to handle all of this mess on Facebook, he also needs to spend money fixing everything else online.  That includes a new website, new email addresses, getting Google reviews built up for the new company name for example.  There is also the hard costs of changing everything else with the old company name to the new name including quote forms, bank accounts, business cards, embroidered shirts for everyone on his team, vehicle wraps for their fleet and work trailers. New logo design, and the list goes on and on.  Did I mention he spent a few thousand on a radio jingle that is now worthless?

The only reason that Doug is not out of business today is he has deep pockets because this has been a good first year for his company.  Also he was not solely relying on Facebook to keep his business leads coming in.  His relationship with me and my team at WOWO Radio has made this painful lesson just a crash, but not a crash and burn.  

Please, there are ways to avoid a Digital Disaster, and I can help.  The earlier I get involved the more likely we can prevent this from happening.  Contact me: Scott@WOWO.com.  And you can also get free weekly Sound ADvice marketing tips by signing up for my newsletter in the box below.

 

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The Mass Media Myth

The Mass Media Myth

Continuing my series based on Roy Williams article about Advertising Oversimplified with my thoughts on points 2 and 3…

Roy talks about Mass Media and targeting your advertising message:

They call it “mass media” for a reason: it reaches the masses. Consequently, you can’t really target using mass media. (TV, radio, billboards)

But don’t worry about that. Use mass media anyway. Targeting is overrated and ridiculously overpriced.

I just got my hands on the latest ratings for radio listenership and I’m going to use that to prove Roy wrong.

Sort of.

Since I have my hands in both the traditional mass media and the new digital media worlds, I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two, (to borrow the tag line from Farmers Insurance ads.)

I’m going to clear up some misconceptions about targeted digital ads first.

The people selling you these highly targeted ads are liars. Most of them don’t know they are lying because they don’t dig deep enough to see who those targeted ads are really going to.  When I sold them, I only dug deep enough to see the good stuff, but when I looked deeper, below the surface, I pretty much stopped selling targeted digital ads.

Why?  Because all the targeting and algorithms and “stuff” just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

For example, when I examined the response rate of a targeted campaign and saw where we were getting clicks and somewhere from locations that we did NOT target, I started to see the cracks in the not-so-perfect world of targeted digital ads.

Heck you probably have seen so-called targeted ads when you are online, maybe playing a game on your phone and you keep getting ads for dog food which you’ll never buy because you don’t own a dog.  True story.  That was my story recently.  You probably can come up with your own now that I’ve pointed this out to you.

So the alternative to digital ads that are targeted is to use mass media, as Roy mentioned.

Mass media reaches the masses.

In the most recent radio rating survey for Metropolitan Fort Wayne, Indiana, they listed the area has a population of 460,900 people age 12 and older. The radio station with the most weekly listeners had 141,202 listeners. while the station with the smallest audience had 4,936 weekly listeners.

That’s a huge difference.

However there is more to the story than just the number of listeners.  Each station has a format that attracts fans as listeners and those fans/listeners have characteristics about them.  The station with the largest audience is mine, WOWO radio with a news and talk format. Also in the top 10 are a Pop Music Station, a Country Music Station, a Rock Music station, a Public Broadcasting station,  a Contemporary Christian Music station,  a Classic Hits Music station, a Soft Pop/Rock Music station, a Hip-Hop Music station and a Classic Rock Music station.

That’s just the top 10 of 29 stations that had enough listeners to get mentioned in the Spring Rating period.  There are also another dozen stations in the area that didn’t make it because their weekly audiences are even smaller.

The point is that each of these radio stations have an audience that you can target with your advertising simply by advertising on the stations that have the target listeners that you want to invite to your business.

You can target with mass media.

I’ll even give you a deeper example that I have with my station, WOWO.

We just launched a new weekly feature and a new weekend talk show that is focused on health news.

My friend Lee Kelso, whom I’ve known since we were in our early 20’s, is now WOWO radio’s health news correspondent.

WOWO radio’s audience of 140,000+  has less than 1,000 teenagers and less than 7,000 18 to 24 year olds.

That means 95% of WOWO’s audience is age 25 and older.

When we reach the age of 45, our interest in health and well being increase significantly compared to when we were in our 20’s.

WOWO’s audience of people age 45 and older is 70% of our listeners.

Once a week on Tuesday Mornings at 7:10, Lee Kelso reports with his 5 minute HealthCall feature during Fort Wayne’s Morning News with Kayla Blakeslee.  Lee also does another report on Health most Thursday afternoons during a segment on the Pat Miller Program also on WOWO Radio.   Our news department also uses Lee’s stories in their regular newscasts.  

All of this HealthCall stuff that Lee Kelso does during the week reaches the masses of people who listen to WOWO each week.

That’s one way we’ve combined mass media with a targeted message matched with an audience that has a significant number of listeners who are interested in the targeted health messages.

But wait, there’s more…

We have now launched an hour long Saturday morning talk show called, you guessed it: HealthCall Live

Hosted by Lee Kelso, HealthCall Live features interviews with health care professionals and listeners call in and ask the doctors questions.

The Saturday HealthCall Live radio show on WOWO is very targeted.  If you don’t care about health, then you’ll find something else to listen to during that hour.  But if a doctor or health care practice wants to target their message directly to the people they want to serve, this is it.

See, mass media, when used properly can also be targeted media if you work with someone who knows how all this works.

(That’s me, waving my hand.)

Want to know more?  Contact me: Scott@WOWO.com

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The Online and On-The-Air Marketing Mix

The Online and On-The-Air Marketing Mix

If you are a business owner or in charge of handling the marketing and advertising, a wise thing to do is to pay close attention to what the BIG GUYS are doing.

The “Big Guys”, the likes of GEICO, Home Depot, Proctor & Gamble and others, have huge budgets to track what works and what does not work in advertising. And they have marketing experts to think strategically in all of their planning.

There’s a strategic reason why GEICO and Home Depot remain strong radio advertisers and why Proctor & Gamble, after a short but strong run with digital, has come back to radio. These successful marketers understand something about their customers that most of their customers don’t even understand about themselves.

They understand the difference between HOW people buy, and WHY people buy.

The internet is where people do their due diligence and research, just before they purchase. They are trying to justify what they already believe based on Pre-Need Branding advertising that helped you decide WHAT you wanted to buy. They search online to learn more about the prices, warranties, policies, and technical specs of what they are about to buy.

But the smart advertisers understand that their digital media is typically not why people choose to buy from a particular business. The “why” is the pre-need preference and feelings great marketers create before their prospects search online.

Broadcast INSPIRES – Internet INFORMS!

It’s okay for you to steal proven marketing strategies from the big advertisers. Proctor & Gamble, GEICO, and Home Depot have already made a considerable investment to determine the most successful media strategies, and they use “radio to inspire, internet to inform”.

What I just shared with you is from my free email marketing newsletter, Sound ADvice that you can sign up for below.  

I’ve got a couple more tips to share with you right now…

Because you probably aren’t the size of the big advertisers I just mentioned, your advertising budget probably isn’t as large as theirs either.

It’s going to take more than a scaled down copy cat strategy, we really need to dig in an do our best to make the most of the ad dollars you have to get the best return on investment and help your business grow.  I can help.

I have several WOWO radio advertising partners that are doing both online and on-the-air advertising and marketing and I help them with the messaging on both.

Contact me and we’ll get started on what is appropriate for you. 

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Ad Fraud is Real

Ad Fraud is Real

The topic Ad Fraud  is one that has been tossed around in reference to digital/internet marketing.  

Today I read a story in MediaPost that calls out Ad Fraud in the Television industry.

Before I dig in, let me make it clear what type of Ad Fraud I am referring to.

I am not talking about commercials that make fake or questionable claims or are for shady businesses.

The type of Ad Fraud I’m talking about today pertains to the buying and placing of ads on any type of media, and today I am going to address Television and the Internet.

There is a whole lot of trust that media buyers or business owners place in digital advertising that is worrisome. A few years ago when I worked full time in social media for a multi-million internet retailer, I learned how to game the system for getting Facebook likes for our brands pages.  I was given the assignment to double our Facebook page likes over the next 9 months.  Because I knew some tactics that they were not using, I was able to complete that task in just 3 weeks, not 39 weeks.

I have also dug deep into the Google Analytics of various businesses that I’ve worked with and unfortunately, the digger you dig, the more likely you are to find stuff that doesn’t look so good.  

Before you invest ANY money on anything in the digital world, you have to know the limitations and also know that along with any good stuff, you may end up with some worthless stuff.  I know that sounds vague.  

One of the promises of digital and internet marketing is that it is highly targetable and also highly trackable.  Those who sell those types of advertising like to promise that they “eliminate the waste” and “only deliver your ads to real customers.”

Bullshit is the most direct way I can tell you what those promises are.

Look, I can sell you digital solutions too, but not with the false promises that those others are pushing.   I’ll be honest with you.

Let’s go back to what prompted me to write this today and that is Ad Fraud in TV-land.

The headline from MediaPost is:

Top Media Buyers Allege Networks Lied — And Stole From Them — In Last Year’s Upfront

FYI, Upfronts are the meetings and presentations that traditional television networks have before the Fall TV season to roll out the new and returning shows to the media buyers to get them excited and get commitments from the media buyers to spend advertising dollars on those shows.  

Not only do the networks present the shows, they also share their plans for how they are going to promote, attract and retain audiences for their show.   In recent years, one tactic that was promised is the networks would reduce the number of ads.  This would mean the remaining ads would be priced higher but the audience retention rate would also be higher.

However:

A panel discussion featuring some of Madison Avenue’s biggest network TV buyers Thursday morning accused the network TV industry of misrepresenting itself in the previous year’s negotiations, even to the point of explicit fraud.

“It’s robbery,” Mike Law, head of U.S. media investment at Dentsu Aegis Network, asserted during the opening session of MediaPost’s Outfront Conference in New York City, adding, “They actually lied to us.”

Law was speaking about promises made by some major networks to reduce their prime-time commercial loads on the premise that it would improve their viewers’ experience and boost ratings and attention to advertising.

“I firmly believe they lied to us,” Law added, declining to name which network he was referring to, but it is well known that Fox and NBC took the most aggressive positions on reduced ad clutter pitches coming into last year’s upfront.

Here’s more:

He described going into some kind of post-delivery meeting with network executives and said, “I’m a pretty casual guy and I dropped f-bombs in that meeting, because it is ridiculous.”

While he didn’t use the word fraud, Law said, the network sales executives “sold us on a proposition that you thought was going to happen.

“You paid more for something they told you was going to happen and none of it happened.”

“We heard promises last year that we were going to see a reduction in commercialization and the fact of the matter, with that particular network, who is now my client — I would prefer not to mention who it is — their commercialization actually went up by 2%,” echoed John Muszynski, chief investment officer, Publicis Media Exchange.

Citing an analysis of upfront media buys for the major broadcast and cable networks over the past five years, their prime-time ad rates have risen 38%, said Muszynski, while their delivery of adult 18-49 viewers declined 39.%

“That’s having it both ways,” he said, adding that agencies and their clients also have been hit with a variety of ratings and format packages that do not necessarily benefit advertisers, but are intended to boost the “yield” of the networks’ sales organizations.

Law said his team did an analysis looking back to 2001 and said “the number is actually worse” — noting that prime-time ratings have declined 78% while ad rates have increased 180%.

“It’s a model that is completely broken,” Law said, adding, “If we come back and everybody walks back to the table with the same amount of money for television, like, shame on us, because it’s just playing right into their hands.”

In fairness, no one from the supply-side was represented on the panel, but all of the buyers were in agreement that this year likely would be one of massive correction, including shifting as much of their ad budgets out of the upfront and putting as much of it as possible into other media.

On a local level, I have no reason to believe that television stations are committing Ad Fraud.  I don’t any information one way or another.

Here is my advice:

Look for real measurement benchmarks.

Set up 3 or 4 or more ways to track what people are doing in their “consumer journey”.

Deal with people you trust to have your best interests at heart.  They are usually able to talk to you in terms that you understand without the need to have a masters degree in media and advertising lingo.

If you want my help as an advertising and marketing coach, just ask.  You can also sign up to receive my weekly Sound ADvice media and marketing tips newsletter using the form below.   

 

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The Good Side of On-Line Advertising

The Good Side of On-Line Advertising

Thank goodness the political advertising season is done for awhile, now we get to see and hear holiday ads.  Advertising it self is neither good or bad, but you and I know that we have seen plenty of bad ads we never want to see again.

Let’s set the record straight.

Advertising is simply an attempt for a business to invite you to spend money with them.

The business may use incentives in their ads, such as the sales we have seen for Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping.  Or they may simply be branding ads that are to remind us of them so when we have a need, they are top of mind and we check them out first.NASCAR-stickers

Actually we live in an ad-supported world.  NASCAR would not survive if there was no sponsorship dollars because the cost of the sport would have to be paid by the fans and ticket prices would be so high, the sport would die.

How about the online world?  The ads we see on our favorite websites or posted next to the stories we read are supplementing the cost of those websites.  Same thing with your “free email account”.  It’s more than just data collection, it’s also a way to improve your online experience.

As data is collected about us from our online habits and the information we give voluntarily on sites like Facebook, the reward for you and I is we are served ads for items that we are interested in.  The ads my son sees when he is online are different from the ads I see.

Try this experiment with a friend.  

Both of you visit the same page on a website on your own computers at the same time.  Odds are there will be different ads customized for each of you based on the information that “Big Data” knows about each of you.

By the way, if you are reading this and have a business, I can show you how to target online your potential customers anywhere.  It’s a pretty cool trick, and actually more than a trick, it’s an extremely useful way to spend your money to invite customers.  It’s part of the Good Side of  On-Line Advertising and can work hand in hand or separate from the other advertising options I have available with my radio station WOWO.

Contact me and let’s talk.