Media & Marketing Your Business in 2016

by Scott Howard | Jun 29, 2016 | 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

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.

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.