by Scott Howard | Oct 16, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Wrapping up the week, with Timeless Marketing Rule #7: Adapt to Their Favorite Way of Communication, as I finish this series I started a couple weeks ago.
Here’s what I said in the original article:
7. You need to communicate with people using the medium they prefer.
You may like T.V. but do your customers?
You may like Instagram, but do your customers?
Instead of focusing solely on your favorite ways to communicate and market and advertise, look around and see what medium your customers prefer. 
A few years ago, when I was working full time in Social Media taking care of all the social media for a 50 million dollar eCommerce company, I had to make a change in my personal preferences.
I was a huge Twitter fan and disliked Facebook. But for our business, it was Facebook that won 10 to 1 over Twitter.
Then I made another discovery. While we had 130,000 Facebook fans, Facebook was not the social media that produced the most sales.
Our Pinterest account that had only 2000 followers was generating more sales than the much more popular Facebook account. So I worked on growing our Pinterest reach and added another 1000 followers. Before I left that company, our smaller Pinterest account was outperforming our massive Facebook account by a 2 to 1 margin.
That’s just one example from the social media world of how we need to find ways to communicate our marketing messages that our customers will respond to by using the medium they prefer, not just our own personal preferences.
I have made myself available through various channels too. Some people call me. Some text me. Others will Tweet while some people now use the Facebook Messenger app.
I also get emails and face to face conversations are going on every day. I am doing my best to be available to communicate in the way YOU want to reach me. Go ahead and reach out.
by Scott Howard | Oct 13, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
This week we are going to continue our deep dive into the Timeless Marketing Rules I shared last week and today we’ll look at Timeless Marketing Rule #4: Reach & Frequency.
Most media salespeople worth the time listening to will use Reach and Frequency as a guideline for success. I’m not talking about salespersons success, I’m referring to the success of your advertising campaign.
First let’s define the two terms:
Reach. This is the total number of different people your campaign could reach.
Frequency. This is the number of times each individual person will see or hear your message.
Here’s an example of how this can work using WOWO Radio:
Reach & Frequency on WOWO example
For this example I told my software program to use certain limits, such as adults age 25 and older who listen between 6 and 9 in the morning to Fort Wayne’s Morning News which airs Monday thru Friday on WOWO. The total number of people who listen who fit that criteria is 68,963. Using the schedule of 10 commercials in one week, 44,694 will hear your commercial. That is the reach for one week. Over the course of a year, that reach increases to 66,261. The Reach of your advertising campaign cannot exceed the total number of people who listen, which is that 68,963 number for this example.
Frequency is also mentioned in this illustration. If this campaign were to run for one week, the average person (all 44,694 of them) would hear your ad an average of 3 times. Over a year, that number also increases. The average person (all 66,261 of them) would hear your ad an average of 106.7 times.
Please don’t confuse Reach and Frequency. Both are important but a balance is needed.
Too often I see businesses try and reach too many people without enough frequency. Last week I was talking with a business owner who told me about this great advertising package that was supposed to reach well over 100,000 people that he bought. When we looked at it together, we were able to see that his ad may have been seen and heard by over 100,000 people, but there was not enough frequency of exposure to have an impact on any of them.
Besides, he couldn’t handle all of that new business. Ten new customers a week would be tops. We’re going to talk next week about balancing the reach and frequency numbers in his favor. And I’ll have more or this tomorrow.
by Scott Howard | Oct 9, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
The timeless marketing rule that we’re going to look at today is so basic, yet so many business owners miss this.
3. If you want people to show up at something but you don’t invite them, they won’t show up. This is one huge principle I preach about advertising. You have to invite people to become customers.
In conversations with business people I lay out the following scenario:
You’re getting married. You pick a date, get a dress, order flowers, notify the bridesmaids and groomsmen, reserve the church, the minister, plan the reception, order the cake and food and even make a guest list. You do everything right except one thing: You never send out the invitations. How many people do you think will show up?
Now most business people see the problem right away, no one is going to come to your wedding unless you mail those invitations. It doesn’t matter that you planned for 200 or 1000 guests… the answer is still zero.
What a waste. All that planning, all that food, all that money. Sure you can still get married but…
Transfer this line of thinking to starting a new business. You do everything except invite people with an advertising and marketing plan. You open the doors on your first day and there is no one waiting to do business with you because you didn’t invite them.
The invite is critical. Your business will close if you have no customers. You will not have any customers if you don’t invite them.
Marketing and advertising isn’t an extra expense, it’s as crucial as any other part of your business. More on this series next week. In the meantime, if you want help, contact me.
by Scott Howard | Oct 8, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Digging deeper today into Timeless Marketing Rule #2: Don’t Sell, Help Them Buy.
This is the 2nd of the Timeless Marketing Rules I mentioned this week:
2. People don’t like to be SOLD something. But they usually will accept and welcome help BUYING something. Big Difference.
Here’s where Human Relationship Principles come into play. We are annoyed by pushy salespeople. Even when we are ready to buy something, if the salesperson is a jerk we lose trust and may even delay buying.
Sounds Like a Good Deal?
There are some stores I refuse to go to because the salespeople are too annoying. That act as desperate vultures who see me and anyone else as fresh meat and they are ready to pounce on to see how much money they can extract from me.
Or so it seems.
There are other stores that you walk in and are desperate to find someone to help you find what you need. This is the opposite problem. Sometimes I want advice to decide if I should buy this or buy that. But they only have know-nothing clerks or order takers who are clueless about this, that and everything!
Apply this to your marketing and advertising outreach.
If you and your company are truly experts and knowledgeable beyond knowing how to read the label on the stuff you sell, then you can help people buy. That’s what we want.
by Scott Howard | Oct 7, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
I mentioned yesterday that I would dig deeper into the 7 Timeless Marketing Rules and so here we go with #1:
- People like it when you talk to them. Better yet, talk with them, not at them. If your advertising is yelling, shouting, screaming, or simply annoying, stop it and get real with people.
The best marketing is word of mouth. But that is also slow and uncontrollable. So you pay money to advertise. Your advertising outreach can mimic and emulate word of mouth. 
In the radio world I work in, live endorsements by trusted air personalities are often the most powerful way to use your 60 seconds of advertising time. I saw this was an excellent way for ads to stand out when I worked in music radio.
With our news/talk format on WOWO radio, it’s even more impactful. This is word of mouth with a bigger mouth because instead of reaching one person at a time, there are thousands who are hearing about you and your business by people they trust. And it is done in a no-hype, conversational manner.
With WOWO we also offer some exclusives for those advertising partners that are buying testimonial style ads. Charly and Pat will only endorse one business in each business category. Not every business automatically qualifies, Charly or Pat have final say on whether or not they will do live endorsements. It’s their reputation on the line along with WOWO’s reputation.
Another way to use word of mouth marketing is in business networking groups. Not all are created equal. I recently rejoined BNI. I was a member for three years between 2004 and 2006 and then was a regular sub for that BNI chapter. My only reason for leaving was my position changed and I was not available to meet every week.
But I saw the value and when I was invited to join a local BNI chapter this summer again, I signed up and made the investment. Our chapter is larger than any of the others in Fort Wayne with over 35 members which is about double the number of members other local chapters have. BNI offers category exclusivity and has high standards that members must meet. BNI is a true word of mouth business networking organization. Interested? Contact me and you can be my guest at our next meeting and see it in action.
Word of Mouth also works on social media but not in the way that companies like Facebook are trying to push. Facebook earns it’s money from advertising. That’s why we see ads in our timeline. But there is also a more trusted form of word of mouth that occurs organically on Facebook. Just update your status with a request for a recommendation for something you need. I saw this in action several years ago when my friend Heather was looking for a dentist. Over 25 of her friends responded with recommendations of who to use and who to avoid.
Back to the concept of talking and not yelling, shouting or screaming in your advertising. There are lots of businesses that will continue to yell, shout, and scream in their radio and tv ads, so when you present a more human, relationship friendly message, it will get attention and stand out. Want help? Contact me. More on this series tomorrow.
by Scott Howard | Sep 30, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Time to share the thoughts of many business owners: Salespeople are annoying. And unfortunately in my business of media, marketing and advertising, it’s not much better.
I never wanted to sell advertising, but I do. I take a reverse approach. I help people buy. There is a difference. Let me explain.
I ended up on an email mailing list from a person that sells advertising in a business publication. A couple times a month I get an email from her with some offer or promotion that her bosses told her to sell. The email opening is always the same: Dear Decision Maker, blah blah blah… She sends this email to everyone at once. This is considered spam in the email world. It’s just annoying to most recipients. But it’s easy to delete too.
Another example. I am helping a friend with their marketing plan. She and her husband were high school classmates of mine 40 years ago and we started talking this summer about how she didn’t have a marketing plan and that’s not her background, (she was a C.P.A.) but making decisions on advertising is her job because she pays the bills. Because of my role as her marketing adviser, I went with her to a meeting at a local tv station that wanted to invite businesses to check out their “geo-fencing digital advertising options”.
She asked the salesperson who invited her if she could bring me as her marketing adviser and with a little reluctance, I was invited.
The day arrived and for nearly two hours we were in a conference room with one other potential TV client and 5 people from the TV station. The first hour was all about the history of the TV station and their parent company and how big their signal is and on and on and on and on about how great they are. We watch a short video and sat politely as they read from a power point. We also heard plenty of insider jokes about living in rural Indiana along with one guys story about his daughter’s college basketball career cut short by….. stop. please stop I was thinking. 
At the end in was after 5pm, my friend mentioned she needed to be at a meeting at 5:30 and so the salesperson who invited us had to rush through a binder of information about a package that they were pushing connected to all of this. The price was way too much for my friend to consider spending right now and when I heard there was a deadline of next Friday to sign up, that was the final red flag.
The details of the TV package where bad, but what I really found bad was the whole method that had for selling. Like I said earlier it was backwards. Instead of learning about my friends business and trying to determine how they could help my friends business grow, the TV people were more interested in selling their own stuff so their TV advertising business would grow.
I have worked for organizations like this TV station, that pushed packages with false deadlines and the focus is on selling. It’s not fun. It’s why I don’t work for those organizations anymore.
My focus is to help business owners and managers make wise decisions with their marketing and advertising. I will recommend advertising options that they can buy from me when it fits, and I will recommend advertising options that they can buy from others too when it fits. I’m all about their success in selling their goods and services, not mine.
There are about 100 or more people in the Fort Wayne area that want to sell you advertising. I would rather help you buy advertising and marketing services that fit your business goals.
I work with WOWO Radio, Federated Entertainment, Federated Digital Solutions, under the Federated Media umbrella. I was on the American Advertising Board of Directors locally for 7 years. I know people at most of the advertising venues and agencies in the area. I can and will help connect you with the ones that can help you. But beyond that connectedness, I want to help you create a marketing strategy based on what your business needs, not on what people want to sell you.
See the difference?
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