by Scott Howard | Oct 27, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Search Engine Optimization. It’s been a “thing” since 1997 according to Wikipedia.
Here’s the basic premise. The Internet has close to 1,000,000,000 websites right now. How in this World Wide Web is anyone going to find yours?
Directories were created and that was okay for awhile then this company called Google came along and developed an easy to use simple way to find stuff online. The modern Search Engine was born and by the end of 1998, techies were praising Google.com:
“PC Magazine” reports that Google “has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results” and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.
Jump ahead 10 years to 2008 and I’m telling some of my radio clients that they need to blog regularly. At least once a month, but once a week is better. At this time, I’ve plunged myself into the blog world with over 3,000 articles I published on my own blogs that year alone, on a part-time basis.
The blog articles I was writing and sharing were being picked up by Google. Let me explain. If someone was to do a Google search for something I wrote about, I occasionally would appear on the first or second page of Google. Now Google is much more sophisticated these days and there are companies that specialize in optimizing websites for Google which still has over 65% of the search engine use market worldwide. Bing is #2 with around 20% of the market.
When I launched this website four years ago this month, I worked for Cirrus ABS, a website development firm in Fort Wayne and learned a lot of stuff I could be doing S.E.O.-wise for this site, but I didn’t. I was too busy working at my paid job and writing articles on the side to take the time to add those extras to my articles.
Time Travel with me to December 2013, about 23 months ago. That’s when I returned to radio to work at WOWO. I was given permission from management to write about WOWO and radio and advertising and marketing and just about anything I wanted because they trusted me.
As I went about my work at WOWO as an advertising sales person who prefers to offer advertising and marketing consulting 1st before the selling part of my job, I started writing about my experiences with WOWO radio and recently I noticed a trend.
People were paying attention. Mary, whom I’ve known for a few years was recommending articles I wrote to her clients. But this month in particular, I was getting phone calls, text messages and emails to my ScLoHo email account from strangers wanting my help with advertising, marketing and some were specifically wanting to advertise on WOWO. It was time to do some research.
I cleared my cookies and browser history and did a search for WOWO Advertise and was pleasantly surprised.
7 of the Top 10 Google Listings pointed to ScottHoward.me
The first three listings linked to our company website at WOWO.com But the rest all went directly to articles that I wrote over the past 22 months.
I sent a note and screenshot to my friend Kevin Mullett at Cirrus ABS who decided to investigate further wrote back, Maybe even more impressive. “radio advertising fort wayne” “fort wayne radio advertising” “fort wayne radio” incognito. Depends on how people are searching.
This is what I call the power of Accidental SEO. I almost called it lazy SEO but that’s not really what happened because I haven’t been lazy. I write and publish 5 articles each and every week on this website/blog. Many of them, but not all mention WOWO. That’s not being lazy, that’s being diligent.
The reason I called it Accidental SEO is because I didn’t add all the extra tags and metadata that would help Google find me and boost my results. I just wrote a blog and didn’t stop.
Maybe what I have done isn’t duplicate-able by you. Maybe it is. You’ll never know until you start and don’t stop.
If you want to be found online in a more purposeful way, I can help you with that with the services of the Federated Digital Solutions division of company. Contact me and we will see what is the best path for you.
by Scott Howard | Oct 21, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
I see so many businesses that are missing out on making money.
Lots and lots of money. What are they doing? 
Ignoring the Baby Boomers and not inviting them to spend their money with them. But don’t take my word for it. Read this from Mediapost:
Boomers Control $14 Trillion, Essential To Growing A Business
Baby boomers are the only demographic that has gotten wealthier over the last 10 years, while Gen Xers and Millennials have seen their net worth decline or in some cases disappear, often buried under a pile of student loans. Marketers devote a lot of energy to Gen X and Millennials, but baby boomers and senior citizens represent an untapped opportunity. Recent census data indicates that people aged 55+ represent 26% of the U.S. population and a whopping 66% of the country’s net worth, or $14 trillion.
Even the meaning of “senior citizen” has changed dramatically as life expectancy continues to grow, and rock stars like Mick Jagger (72), Bob Dylan (74) and Bruce Springsteen (66) continue to write songs and hit the road. Today’s boomers and seniors are no longer constrained by the social norms they helped upend in the 1960s and 1970s. They act like young adults, taking part in education, sports and leisure, entrepreneurship, non-profits, and they bring maturity and experience to the marketplace to boot.
The implications are huge for marketers in the U.S. and Europe:
1. The 55+ population has by far the most financial power and it’s essential to count them in. Younger generations may be trendsetters, but they do not have anywhere near their parents’ resources and financial freedom. To substantially grow their business, brands must target both the trendsetters and the mass market, which means people over 55.
2. Market research should be targeted at boomers and seniors, rather than merely on the young or middle-aged. Buying behaviors and expectations have changed significantly in the past decade, particularly among 55+ consumers. It is critical to get past stereotypes and clichés to understand precisely how they have changed so that marketers don’t miss prime opportunities.
3. Boomers and seniors can be excellent partners in market research because they are demanding and focus on essentials. Marketing gimmicks or fashion statements are not sufficient to get their buy-in. Boomers and seniors challenge companies to rethink products and services in radical ways, because they demand real vs. cosmetic innovation. These populations might appear more conservative when they are simply more discerning.
The takeaway: Baby boomers are not fading into the sunset, and they’re bored by an endless stream of ads for Viagra, Florida condominiums and Caribbean cruise ships. Market research that is inspired will focus on this powerful force in the economy for the next decade and beyond. Or as long as the Boss keeps rocking, and the Stones keep rolling.
At WOWO Radio, we have the largest radio audience filled with Baby Boomers in Fort Wayne. Contact me and let’s talk about how to invite them to spend their money with you.
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 15, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights
Continuing our series on Timeless Marketing Rules:
Trust.
Behind any financial transaction there is a level of Trust.
Take food for a second.
Pay $1.00 for a burger off the dollar menu and you expect a dollar burger.
Drop $50 or $75 for a dinner and you expect a Fifty or Seventy Five dollar meal.
It’s not the price, but the value.
It’s not even the value as much as you trust that you are going to get what you pay for.
Another example, this time a service.
You pay to get your cars oil changed and you trust that they are going to do it correctly. You know, drain out all the old oil, replace the filter and refill the crankcase with the proper amount of oil for your car.
If you pay for extras, like checking and topping all the other fluids, you trust them to perform the work that you paid for.
We are a trusting bunch aren’t we?
But if we feel messed over, all that trust is gone.
A friend of mine went to a fast food place 5 years ago and the sandwich he was served was cold. Not just a little cold. Ice cold. He’s never gone back and he still tells the story of how that fast food joint gave him an ice cold sandwich. He doesn’t trust them anymore despite the fact he bought food from the same place for 10 years before.
Trust, it’s not just important in our personal relationships.
Trust is essential to staying in business.
Your advertising needs to be trustworthy.
Your marketing needs to be truthful.
You will live or die on whether or not you and your business is trusted.
Trust is a timeless marketing rule. Trust me.
by Scott Howard | Oct 14, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights
Continuing this series on 7 Timeless Marketing Rules, today a deeper dive into the concept of frequency that we started talking about yesterday.
First a reminder, Reach is how many different people will see/hear your message and Frequency is how often each person will see/hear your message.
Our brains are set up to filter out of our conscious recall most of the thousands of marketing messages we are exposed to each day. Some studies say we exposed to over 5000 ads each day. Others say we only are paying attention to less than 200 true ads. That last study I linked to says only 12 ads make an impression on us each day.
Let’s play a game for a second. Jot down 10 ads you have seen or heard in the past 24 hours. Do it right now, don’t wait for 10 ads to appear on your screen or elsewhere, we’re talking about recall and retention.
That was hard. And I bet some of those are false memories. You think you saw that ad today, but it was a couple days ago or longer.
This is why we don’t sell one ad on the radio or TV or Internet or nearly anywhere. Our incredible memory machines (our brains) are able to filter out stuff that we don’t care about at the moment.
Our brains are also able to help us recall things we didn’t even know we knew. But here’s how that works in the advertising and marketing world and how you need to plan your marketing to be the most effective. 
About 10 years ago, my wife needed a special piece of glass for a project she was creating. She asked me who to contact and I told her about City Glass, a company that has been advertising on one radio station since I was a teenager. I never bought anything from City Glass, and wasn’t planning on it. But City Glass was top of mind due to their continuous advertising for at least 40 years on one radio station.
This summer when our house heated up to 80 degrees, we called Doc Dancer, a local HVAC company that will be 70 years old next year. It wasn’t their advertising that created Top Of Mind Awareness of Doc Dancer for my wife, it was because the owners go to the same church we do. Interestingly, there are a couple other HVAC companies that are associated with our church, but neither came to my wife’s mind when we needed someone to diagnose and repair our A/C. It must have been the repeated positive exposure to the owners of Doc Dancer that created Top Of Mind Awareness and created action to the point of us calling them and spending out money with them.
There are additional reasons for more than one invitation that I’ll explore in the future, but simply to build Top Of Mind Awareness for future business is an extremely important reason as demonstrated in those two examples.
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