The Difference between Principles and Practices

The Difference between Principles and Practices

by | Jul 12, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

There are certain Principles that are Timeless.

There are certain Practices that have a limited lifespan.

We need both.

We also need to know and understand the differences.

I’ll use two different examples, one of which is my area of expertise, the other is simply an observation.

Personal Land Transportation is the example I’ll use for the latter.

The United States of America is just shy of 250 years old.  Our ancestors, the ones that arrived from other continents, came overseas way before the United States became a country.  Water travel, boats, ships with multiple people… it was a form of mass transportation.

On land, we have had, horses and other animals we could either ride or attach to something that was pulled.  Eventually bicycles became a popular form of Personal Land Transportation and then automobiles mostly powered by gasoline. Today the growth and popularity of electric vehicles continues to grow but it was be years before they replace gas powered personal land transportation automobiles.

I almost omitted rail transportation because it’s not a personal but a mass transportation system, however we as individuals have the freedom to use trains, subways and other rail based transportation to travel from one place to another over land.

The Principle is simple.  Get from one place to another over land.  It takes action and energy.

The Practices have evolved over time, and yet some of the early practices are still available.  The most independent is perhaps ourselves, walking.  All we need is fuel for our bodies and appropriate clothing.  You can go faster riding a horse or bike.  Motorized transportation is the Practice that most of us use these days to implement the Principle of getting from here to there.

Now I’ll apply this to my area of expertise, Advertising and Marketing using Human Relationship Principles.

The Principle is the closer you can spread the word about you and your business using what we as Humans respond to, the better.  Boiled down to a couple of words, it’s the Trust Factor.

The very basic is called Word of Mouth.  I ask you where to go for lunch and you recommend a place and tell me why.  Because I trust you, I trust what you tell me and I go there and spend my lunch money.   That Practice is probably equal to walking in my previous example.  Very effective, but a slow way to grow your business.

Signage is another practice.  If your business has no sign identifying it, I’m not going to trust I am at the right place. That kind of signage serves as an identifier of a physical location.  There is also the physical signage that is more closely though of us advertising. I’m talking about billboards that advertise your business. Or it could be a smaller sign I see somewhere.  Signage create a little bit of trust, but not as much as a friend telling me.  The benefits of signage is that one sign can inform many more people than word of mouth and it can be placed strategically to potential customers.

Other Practices for advertising and marketing your business is the traditional media models of newspapers, television and radio stations. Online we also have a multitude of ever evolving tech.

Some Practices work better than others and it’s due to the Human Relationship Principle, the Trust Factor and how closely it is applied. Some of the online practices have evolved to attempt to create a more personalized advertising experience. As you and I do ANYTHING online, we are adding to the meta-data that is used to serve us ads that are supposed to be more targeted and relatable to each of us.

This is where I want you to really pay attention to the Difference between Principles and Practices.

The Practice of personalized and targeted ads makes sense, but it does absolutely nothing when it comes to following the Human relationship Principle of the Trust Factor.

I’ll talk more about the what and why of creating the Trust Factor in your advertising and marketing in the weeks ahead but for now, please understand that just because the an ad message is targeted and personalized the way tech can do it with algorithms, doesn’t make it better if it ignores the Principle of Human Relationships.

Getting Linked

Getting Linked

by | Jun 7, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Among the one-liners of business success, there’s one that I’ve noticed has been critical and it has to do with connections.

I’m going to focus on LinkedIn, but first here’s the one-liner:

“It’s not who you know, but who knows you that determines your success”

This is why I highly recommend using the power of social media to build a network.

In the 1990’s as a young advertising sales guy in Detroit, I was tasked with making cold calls to find businesses to advertise. It wasn’t fun and I actually quit.  Since I was not from the area, I had only a few connections and none were business owners.  Armed with a phone book and a car, well that was about it.  There was no social media in the 1990’s. MySpace launched in 2003 and Facebook after that.

But did you know that LinkedIn also launched way back then, in the early 2000’s?

LinkedIn used to be thought of as a place to find a job.  You’d fill out your employment history and it sort of functioned as an online CV or resume.

It has become much more than that.

LinkedIn promotes itself as a social network for professionals for professional connecting which is pretty much true.  I also recall the debates over who to connect with.

“Should I only Link to those people I know?”

Well, that is a good start and some of you haven’t even done that.

Please do that first.  Then it’s time to really grow your network.

Anyone that you are connected to has connections and while LinkedIn will tell you whom you share connections with, it will also show you something called 2nd degree connections.

These 2nd degree connections are where the real potential value is, I’ve discovered.

It’s the Kevin Bacon Effect.  The Kevin Bacon Effect was a fun gun to play to see who was connected to whom and how many people you had to go thru to connect to Kevin.  Look it up if you care.

Before I was preparing this article, I had no idea how many 1st degree connections I had. Just glancing at my profile, says 500+ which seems like a lot.  But when I dug deeper, I saw I have over 3,000 first degree connections!

Here’s the fun part, and I’m going to scale it down using a low number of connections.

100.

If I had just 100 connections, and each of my 100 connections had 100 connections, that means in theory I have 10,000 second degree connections.

Move that number up to 400 and do the math and that adds up to 160,000 connections.

Of course there are a lot of variables but according to LinkedIn, the average number of 1st degree connections is between 500 and 999 for active LinkedIn Profile users.  When I looked at my co-workers, I saw most having less than 500 which means they are missing out.

What are they missing out on?  And what are you missing if you aren’t active on LinkedIn?

When I am doing research on a company or a potential contact, LinkedIn is one of the top 5 searches I do.   My role with my radio station includes looking for potential candidates to hire for positions that may open up.  I also do some research on companies that might be a good fit as an advertising partner.  Besides the 1st degree connections, I can also reach out to 2nd degree connections.  And I do this free.

Yes, I don’t pay a dime for my LinkedIn account, and I usually don’t advise people to get a paid account either.  If you instead build your contacts and connections, you will grow it over time and it will become a valuable resource.

Finally here’s the added benefit that has been happening a lot, and that is people reaching out to me.  Every single week.  Some just want to connect for networking but others are seeking me out because they want to consider buying what I have to sell them.

Would you like people contacting you like that?  What are you waiting for?  Get Linked!

 

Own Your Space

Own Your Space

by | May 31, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Here we are in the summer of 2022 and due to some recent business meetings I’ve had, I need to give you a piece of advice that I’ve said repeatedly over the years.

Own Your Space.

Not just any space, but your space online.

This applies to you as a person and if you have a business.

A dozen years ago, I was showing college students how I created my own personal brand, the ScLoHo brand with a couple of blogs that I updated every single day.

Then 11 years ago, my friend Kevin challenged me to create my own space, not for the ScLoHo brand, for me, Scott Howard.

And so I did.  It took a few months but I invested in my own website instead of using the free blogger sites from Google.  This is that website I created in 2011.

It looks much different than the first version.  The domain name, ScottHoward.me, was selected because the dot com version of my name was already taken.  So while the layout and design have evolved over the years, this website has been consistently been the Space I Own.

Recently I’ve seen business start-ups that don’t have their own website, they are relying on socials.  You don’t have a real business, you’ve got a hobby.  Until you spend a few hundred bucks, buy a domain and create a simple landing page, at the bare minimum, you aren’t real.

Not in today’s world at least.  Look, you don’t even have to use it to run your business, but if your own website doesn’t exist, neither does your business as legit.

I’m not into building websites anymore, but I can connect you with the people I trust.  Believe me, I want you to succeed, and there are always a few exceptions to most any rule, but do yourself a favor and get Your Own Space now, for your business and also for your own personal branding.

More Powerful Than Digital Advertising

More Powerful Than Digital Advertising

by | Apr 5, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Over the past couple of decades, the biggest growth in advertising expenditures has been digital.  I’m talking about nearly anything online, from websites, to apps, to Google ads, Social Media Ads, all of it together has consistently seen growth in the double digits, percentage wise.

This is a good thing, by the way.  Technology is always evolving and automating tasks… that help us be more productive.  Our company just upgraded our CRM system this year from an older, non-intuitive software system to one that was designed specifically for our business.

As we learn to use and trust new tech, we might think that it can replace nearly everything that people used to do.

However, you and I are still people and we still use Human Relationship Principles in our daily lives.

Sure, I mostly trust my digital tech to pay bills and order a pizza, but when it comes to picking a dentist, I want another human being’s input, not just a techy.

The Trust Factor.

It is one of the most important elements of being human.

A recently released study from MarketingCharts.com says that Word Of Mouth Beats Websites, and they also list a few other ways to spread the word.

Word of Mouth has nearly DOUBLE the Trust Factor over branded websites.

Word of Mouth more than DOUBLE’s the Trust Factor on online consumer reviews.

What if there was a way to take the power of Word of Mouth and make it spread faster than just me telling my friend one at a time?

There is.

I’m referring to something I’ve referred to as “Word of Mouth with a Bigger Mouth”  It’s my radio station. WOWO, nearly 100 years old and the most powerful Word of Mouth vehicle in Northeast Indiana.

With over 30 radio stations, WOWO is the biggest Talk Radio Station with over 100,000 weekly listeners.

A news/talk format with local hosts and newscasters is a trust machine.  Thousands tune in every morning to WOWO for news, weather, sports and current events.  Our two local hosts, Pat Miller in the afternoon and Kayla Blakeslee in the morning do the ultimate Word of Mouth endorsement for a select few advertising partners on WOWO and the results speak for themselves.

We actually have a waiting list of businesses that would like to have Kayla or Pat’s endorsement because they will only endorse one business per business category.

This Word Of Mouth with a Bigger Mouth on WOWO reaches tens of thousands of consumers each day.  If you are in the WOWO-land listening area and want to know more, contact me.  Scott@WOWO.com

The Scott Howard Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast

The Scott Howard Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast

by | Feb 1, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

This year marks the completion of 5 years of creating, hosting, recording and producing a weekly podcast and it seems like an appropriate time to introduce myself or reintroduce if we’ve been friends for awhile.  By the way, don’t worry when I say completion, I decided to use that word and not conclusion.  I’m not planning on stopping my weekly articles and podcast episodes, it’s just that we are entering year number 6 of the podcast.

First off, my background.  I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana and as a kid dreamed of doing all kinds of professions.  Astronaut and race car driver, gave way to television production by the time I was in middle school and then high school set the stage for radio.  When I was growing up, I listened to Bob Sievers in the morning on WOWO Radio to see if we had school delays.  Back in the 70’s over 70% of people in Northeast Indiana listened to WOWO in the morning.  Some to hear about the weather and school closings, others for farm news delivered by Bob and farm director Jay Gould on the Little Red Barn radio show on WOWO.  I also listened to Chris Roberts in the afternoon after school and Ron Gregory at night on WOWO as a young teenager and that was what planted the seed to be a radio personality.

WMEE was another Fort Wayne radio station that was influential as they played the Top 40 hits of the day.  WMEE was AM radio station at 1380 in the 70’s and WOWO was also on AM at 1190.  At the end of the 70’s WMEE moved to 97.3 FM where they have been ever since.

My high school, Concordia started an FM station when I was there and that was my first on-air experience.  After graduating I began a full time on-air career at WBAT in Marion, Indiana, followed by WIOU in Kokomo and then I ended up on WMEE for 3 years.  I returned to Kokomo, Indiana for about 3 years on the air and as Program Director at WZWZ until the station was sold.  I worked briefly on the air at WXIR in Indianapolis before moving my family to Detroit and WMUZ where I first ventured into the advertising and marketing side of the business.

I did some additional on-air work both part-time and full time at stations WMUZ, WBTU, WGL, WFWI and WAJI. In 2003 I entered the ad world in Fort Wayne, working for a group of 6 radio stations for more than 8 years and it was during that time I began blogging using the online name ScLoHo.

ScLoHo is a mashup of my first, middle and last names. Take the first two letters on Scott Louis Howard and it spells ScLoHo.  Many people have attempted to pronounce it without success.  Often they leave out some letters or add extra letters.  Not even Alexa knows how to pronounce ScLoHo.  

I had multiple ScLoHo blogs on the Google Blogger platform and my friend Kevin challenged me to create an online reputation under my birth name of Scott Howard so in 2011, when I was working fulltime in the webworld, I launched the first version of the Scott Howard dot me website using over 10,000 articles I had already published as the foundation.

Ever since around 2004 or 2005, I have published a minimum of one new article per week.  I used to do it daily and multiple times per day, that is how I ended up with over 10,000 articles in just 6 years.

15,000 articles and counting was what I was continuing to work on when I was approached in 2016 with a request to do a podcast.

More on the podcast in a moment, but first back to me and radio.  In 2013,  I was hired to join WOWO radio, not on the air, but as one of the Local Advertising Sales People.  Official job title was Account Executive and I added Marketing Consultant too it because that was what I did besides selling advertising schedules.  By 2019,  I grew to be the top local advertising account executive not just at WOWO but in our entire company at Federated Media which included a dozen radio stations and nearly 40 A.E.’s.

At the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, before the pandemic hit, Federated Media had a couple of management changes.  My boss, Ben took over as the Federated Media Fort Wayne Vice-President and General Manager and I became to General Sales Manager for WOWO.  These were not “automatic” promotions due to longevity.  Both Ben and myself were promoted from within after our company conducted extensive nation wide searches to find the best leaders for management. Both Ben and myself are now in our 3rd year in our current positions with Federated Media.

Let’s go back to 2016.  Ben and another manager, Suzee were given the task of starting an advertising oriented podcast for Federated Media.  Podcasts were still an early adopter thing 6 years ago and Federated Media wanted to get in on the ground floor.

Ben and Suzee, were aware of my weekly articles I was writing about advertising and marketing on my website at Scott Howard dot me and they might have been aware that I had experience talking behind a microphone too, so they approached me to consider being the one to launch this podcast.  After a little bit of thought, prayer and negotiation, I said yes and by March of 2017 The Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast was launched as a weekly audio version of the articles I was writing and publishing.

While the written form of this is article 15,000 and something.  This is also episode 250 of the podcast.

Who chose the name of the podcast and why?  I did.  Because of my online identity as ScLoHo and the subject matter dealing with media and marketing, that’s why those words were selected.

Why is it the “Genuine” ScLoHo podcast?  As a way to clearly claim my work.  Several years ago when I was just publishing online under ScLoHo, I discovered someone was stealing my articles and republishing them on another website site without my permission.  I also voice my own podcast and identify myself as Scott Howard in each podcast episode. 

One change was made a few years ago with the advent of smart speakers.  I discovered that Alexa doesn’t know how to pronounce ScLoHo so I amended the name to Scott Howard’s Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast.  Now if you ask Alexa to play the Scott Howard Genuine Podcast, she usually knows where to find it.

Unlike the audio version of this article, nearly every weekly episode is less than 10 minutes.  Just long enough to give you an update without eating up too much of your time.

As we move forward this year, I’m going to revisit and update some of the topics I have covered in the past along with keeping you current on the latest trends and thinking to help you with your advertising and marketing as you run your businesses.

There are some Timeless Human Relationship Principles that should be applied to your marketing and advertising and that is where we will start again in some upcoming articles and episodes.