Pitfalls of Pinpoint Targeting

Pitfalls of Pinpoint Targeting

A little of this and a little of that can work when making cookies in the kitchen.  But when it comes to marketing your business, having the correct “Media Mix” is crucial to capturing your immediate sales, and more importantly, your future sales and market share.

Digital media has made it possible to narrowly target, locate, and reach those precise prospects who are “ready to buy” today but many businesses have fallen victim to the pitfalls of micro-targeting.

People who only promote “micro-targeting” strategies suggest that advertising that reaches the broader market with mass media is a waste of time and money.  They claim that if you are not in the market to purchase today, you’re not worth talking to.

But here’s the thing…What if your competitor has been using mass media effectively to establish a brand and create a pre-need preference for their business over yours before the consumer is ready to buy? Waiting to reach your prospects until they are ready to buy can be too little too late.

The world’s largest advertiser Proctor and Gamble discovered this the hard way.  They learned that by targeting, or niche marketing, via digital and social platforms, they were not reaching their potential future customers.  Therefore, they were actually losing brand identity and ultimately market share.  They quickly re-adjusted their media mix to include even more traditional media (Radio/TV) which turned the tide and grew their sales. (No pun intended as Tide Detergent is a P&G product!)

Last year I was part of a radio masters sales summit conference in Cincinnati, Ohio and one of the presenters was the man who worked for Proctor and Gamble who saw the error of their ways and saved the company by returning to radio and TV.  He has since retired but he is a huge advocate for radio to build and sustain your brand image.

Human beings are stubborn animals. Reaching them when they are ready to buy is of little use, especially when they are biased towards your competitor or unfamiliar with you.

Conversely, if you have created a strong pre-need preference for your business, your competitors’ online and search efforts will be in vain.

Like cookies with added preservatives, the good ole’ traditional advertising (Radio/TV) is what makes your advertising investment last longer.  Of course, it’s not wrong to reach consumers when they are ready to buy, particularly if they are already familiar with you, trust you, and prefer you.

 

To see what the Advertising Research Foundation (a media-neutral organization) says about the right media ingredients, click here. If you would like to visit about your media mix, give me a call and we can visit.  I’ll bring the mixing bowl!

What you just read was sent to subscribers of my weekly Sound ADvice newsletter.  Contact me if you would like a free, no-obligation subscription too.

Reintroducing ScLoHo

Reintroducing ScLoHo

Last week, when I was recording the podcast version of my weekly update I mentioned briefly what a ScLoHo is. Today, that is the focus of both this article and podcast episode.

If this is the very first time you’ve listened to the Scott Howard Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast, welcome aboard.  If it’s the first time you’ve read an article I’ve published on this website, come on in.

Today I’m reintroducing myself, Scott Howard also known as ScLoHo.

I’ve been podcasting nearly every week since March 2017, so this is the beginning of my eighth year hosting a podcast.

I also checked my blogging history and I launched my first blog in 2004, 20 years ago.

The ScLoHo nickname began even before that as an email address because there are many Scott Howard’s out there and I needed something unique.

ScLoHo is a mash-up using the first two letters of my first name, Scott, first two letters of my middle name, Louis, and first two letters of my last name, Howard.

When you take those 6 letters and try and pronounce them, it becomes two syllables because there are only two vowels. Sclo (Sclow)- Ho (Hoe).

In 2004, I launched a couple of blogs, one was a personal blog, the other a media and marketing blog using Google’s old Blogger.com platform and eventually launched a few more blogs, all of them under the ScLoHo online persona.  At one point, for a couple of years, I was posting over 30 times a week on all of these blogs and this was not my fulltime job.  I was working for a group of radio stations from 2003 thru 2011 and blogging was just an unpaid side passion.

However, the ScLoHo name became pretty well known both locally and online.  I have used ScLoHo as a Twitter or X handle, along with nearly all my other social media profiles.  My personal email is @ScLoHo.net; I own the ScLoHo.com and .net domains and basically it use to be if you Googled ScLoHo, you’d find me.

Interestingly there were some people who knew me as ScLoHo and others who only knew me as Scott.  In the  summer of 2010, I was walking at the Tincaps baseball game, taking a lab around the stadium, when a group of friends from an advertising agency saw me and shouted my name.  Except, some yelled ScLoHo, and the others shouted Scott.

In 2011, I left radio for 10 months and worked for a website development company where a friend of my challenged me to merge the two and launched the ScottHoward.me website.  The dot me domain was not due to my ego, it’s because both the dot com and dot net domains were taken by other Scott Howard’s.

I imported over a thousand stories to this website from my blogs and eventually scaled down my updates from several a day to one a day to once a week.  The only time I’ve done less than a weekly update was a few months in 2022 and 2023 when my duties at the radio stations as a sales manager overseeing 4 stations and 8 salespeople needed my attention more than this. At the time, I also figured after 300 podcasts and over 1500 articles, I pretty much had shared everything there was to know and media and marketing.  I did monthly updates.  My focus was to help my team grow and to take the spotlight off me and on them.

However at the end of last summer, things changed.  I decided to step back from management and rehire myself as a member of the WOWO radio sales team.  With that change, I decided to return to weekly updates and to get back out in the community again instead of behind the scenes like I had been doing for nearly 4 years as a manager.

What’s my backstory?  Well first of all I never wanted to do sales.

In high school, my first venture into radio was on the air.  After graduation, I was on the air at radio stations full time in Marion and Kokomo Indiana and then returned to my hometown of Fort Wayne and was on the air at WMEE.  WMEE has always been owned by Federated Media and in the 1980’s WOWO was our competition, owned by another company.  WOWO was the big dog, the radio station that had the highest ratings and most listeners for decades.  However in the early 80’s I was part of the WMEE air team that finally beat WOWO and became the most listened to radio station according to the ratings.

Next stop was back to Kokomo and Indianapolis before taking my growing family to Detroit.  Up until I moved to Michigan at the ripe old age of 26 with 10 years of on-air experience, I had only voiced radio commercials, but never wrote and produced advertising campaigns.  The company I joined in Detroit was different and awakened a curiosity in me to figure out how to communicate and motivate people with a radio commercial to spend their money with a particular business.  I learned how to create ad campaigns that were distinct and unique, and most importantly, created top of mind awareness of a business so that consumers would eventually need them, those businesses were already Top Of Mind.

While in Detroit at Crawford Broadcasting and station WMUZ, I grew our production department, did a stint as fill-in host and eventually hosted the morning show for awhile and also took my first advertising sales position.

In my mid-30’s, we moved my family back to Indiana, I returned to working on the radio at WFWI in Fort Wayne and then took a hiatus and worked outside of media.  Finally in 2003, it was back to radio full-time for good, all most.  Eight and a half successful years with a group of Ft. Wayne radio stations, followed by full time at a website development company, another radio station and as the Social Media Guru for a multimillion dollar eCommerce company and then back to Federated Media in 2013.

Nearly 30 years between my first time with Fed Med as a WMEE Disc Jockey to my current position on the WOWO Sales Team.  I also spent close to 4 years as the General Sales Manager of WOWO and a year on an interim basis as sales manager of 3 other stations.

I’ve been a guest speaker with Huntington University a couple of times, Ivy Tech Fort Wayne, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne and this year will be making my second appearance speaking at Trine University.

I’ve worked with over a hundred companies and organizations and consulted around a thousand in both formal and casual settings to help them become better with their media, marketing, public relations and internal sales and marketing.  Just in my 10+ years with WOWO have won a few achievement awards, called Feddies for Federated Media and even my own website won a best of contest by a competing media outlet.  Awards are nice, but what really motivates me is to have the opportunity to help others and share the wisdom and knowledge I’ve picked up over the last few decades and I’m continuing to learn as a life-long student.

Teaching, Training, Motivating and Encouraging has been a lot of what I do.  Helping people make wise spending decisions with their advertising and marketing is my bread and butter.  Being a dad, husband and grandparent keeps me grounded as well as my Christian faith.

There’s a philosophy about marketing and advertising that I call using Human Relationship Principles that I’ll review in the near future, but for now, you now know a lot more about this Scott Howard aka ScLoHo then you did 10 minutes ago.

 

64 years ago

64 years ago

It’s birthday week for yours truly.

And there’s not much that I want, because if I really want it, I usually buy it myself.

Of course the best things in life aren’t things that you can buy anyway.

I’ve been doing a lot more reflecting on things lately, compared to a few decades ago, even more than 5 years ago.

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 kind of turned some of us to become more introspective because at the beginning, there was so much unknown and conflicting information.  We were told that we just needed to stay home to flatten the curve for a few weeks and then as weeks became months, well you were there too.

25 years ago, I returned to Fort Wayne, Indiana to help my Mom downsize after the death of my Dad.   I was just 38 that summer and my Mom had just turned 65.  I’ll be that age next year, but my health is much better than hers was back then.

Last month, I happened to visit the radio station that gave me my first full-time on-air job as a teenager, and low and behold, there was a guy named Jim who had worked there all those years ago and he was there when I visited.  He was having a birthday that week and turning 75, and still working in sales and on the air.

A few days later, I had coffee with my friend Lee to talk about a client.  Lee’s a few years older than me and I’ve known him since I worked on the air at WMEE in my early 20’s.

And one more connection to my past happened back in October when I spoke to a college class at Trine University at the invitation of an old acquaintance of mine that I met nearly 20 years ago.  He’s a professor now and invited me to speak to his class.

There’s also been the death’s of a few friends and family members in the past few years that have made me introspective and finally, I think one of the last items that has influenced what I’m sharing today was the role I had in our company from early 2020 until a couple months ago.  I was the General Sales Manager of WOWO radio and then also a few other stations before returning to active sales a few weeks ago.   As the General Sales Manager, a big part of my role was to hire, coach, train, and mentor my team.  Now I get to lead by example again.

My desire is to pass along knowledge.  It’s kind of weird, because I’m a curious person looking to learn myself and so as I talk to my elders, I want to know what they can teach me.  And I’m at that age where I’m passing along and passing down what I’ve learned too.   In a moment I’m going to share with you some resources that helped me and could help you too.

But first I recall when I was about 30 years old and creating advertising campaigns for businesses in Detroit.  I had clients in numerous and varied businesses and I took what I learned from observation, from conversations and from experimentation, using their money and improved all of them.  There was a guy Steve who had a transmission shop, a doctor named Tim who was working with his wife to build a health care practice, another man named Mike who ran a rental car business until we transformed it into the best used car dealership in the area and another favorite was a family headed up by Ed and his wife Sharon who created a small mortgage company with their daughters and we transformed it into a debt-reduction vehicle for thousands of homeowners.

This website started out years ago as a blog to save stories and articles online in case my laptop crashed and burned, and has become a resource for others as well as a creative outlet still for me.

So besides this website which will live as long as I pay the hosting fees, there are a few others that I recommend.

I also need to add this disclaimer that I read a lot less books than I did 30 years ago.  Instead I listen, watch and research.  With podcasts and online videos being available in much greater accessibility that 30 years ago, you may find a format other than paper books to be a preferred resource too.

Here we go with authors whose books I’ve bought and read and recommend to others:

Sales Leadership: Mike Weinberg.  I’ve read three of his books and was a regular listener to his podcast when I was a sales manager.  I was part of his launch team for his latest book, First Time Manager: Sales.  Check him out here: https://mikeweinberg.com/  

Marketing guru Seth Godin.  A thought leader and I see he also has a podcast that I’m going to subscribe to:  https://www.sethgodin.com/   

Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads, besides his books on marketing, he publishes a weekly newsletter called the Monday Morning Memo that includes a rabbit hole that often is fun and intriguing. http://www.rhw.com/youll-laugh-youll-cry/ is the link to his books and here’s the link to his MMM: https://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/

Art Sobczak has sales books that I’ve bought along with a podcast and blog at: https://businessbyphone.com/

There are three others that I’m going to recommend that had an impact on my 20, even 30 years ago:

Harvey MacKay https://harveymackay.com/   Harvey’s first two books on sales were so influential that my first year as sales manager I gave my team their own copy of them for their own use.

Trout & Ries.  Al Ries and Jack Trout launched a series of books on Branding and Marketing in the 1970’s that I discovered when I started in the ad world in 1986.  Al passed away just last year and his partner and daughter continues his work. https://www.ries.com/books/

The last recommendation is a book that I re-read every few years as a reminder of how to approach sales. Frank Bettger penned the book How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in the 1940’s and here’s an Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Raised-Myself-Failure-Success-Selling/dp/067179437X 

I urge you to be curious no matter how young or old you are and continue to seek knowledge and share with others too.

 

On The Road Again

On The Road Again

‘Commutes Are Back’ As Time Spent With AM/FM In Cars Hits Eight-Year High.

That was the headline of an InsideRadio.com story last month and that’s great news for those of us in the radio broadcasting industry.

It’s also fantastic news for businesses that want to reach a regular and consistent audience and invite them to become their customers.

Naysayers have been predicting the end of radio relevancy for decades, and when something like a pandemic happens that disrupts our daily lives including our time spent driving, those negative voices get louder.  However as a radio insider, I have the facts that say differently.

Here’s some more from that story:

Compared to results from earlier surveys by MARU/Matchbox and Nielsen since April 2020, the height of the pandemic – when more than half (52%) of pre-COVID commuters were working at home – that share gradually fell to just 6% in the recent survey, meaning 94% of average Americans are now commuting to work.

Here in Fort Wayne, Indiana the average commute time is around 20 to 30 minutes.  Longer in the afternoon than morning for some reason. Radio continues to live in the car, or whatever you drive.  The radio station I’ve been working for the past decade, WOWO in Fort Wayne Indiana did something this year that we’ve been talking about for a few years, we added an FM signal to the WOWO listening choices.

The backstory is that with the growth of EV’s many car companies were not including AM radio in the dashboards, only FM.  While the broadcasting organizations having been lobbying Congress to force AM radio to be included in all new cars, at WOWO we decided to be proactive and rebrand with a focus on our full strength FM signal 92.3 along with our 1190 AM radio signal.  And not to get all techy, but before May, you could listen to WOWO on the FM band at 107.5, but that was a low-power FM signal.  If you had an HD FM radio, WOWO could also be heard at 97.3 HD2, but those were not as popular as a traditional full strength FM signal like we have now at 92.3 FM.

Going back to talking about people driving, last month I noticed that our two major malls were getting busier and busier as the holidays approached. Which means even more time spent in cars, listening to the radio on the way to buy from traditional brick and mortar stores, similar to what we had 4 or 5 years ago.

It’s a good sign for the local economy to see people buying locally and for radio stations like mine that are providing news and local information.  This trend will continue after the new year too and if you want help driving our listeners to your business, contact me.

 

Is It A Thing or Is It A Fad?

Is It A Thing or Is It A Fad?

Let’s jump into this topic headfirst with the reason I’m talking about this subject right now.

Around July 5th, a new social media app, Threads was launched and it’s been all over the news because… well.. the news media thinks it’s newsworthy.

Threads is connected to Instagram which is connected to Facebook which actually changed their corporate name to Meta in 2021.  Sort of like when Google changes their corporate name to Alphabet in 2015.

Anyway back to Threads and the news it’s making, mostly because of the number of users or subscribers it’s signed up.  News reports proclaiming it’s breaking records compared to other social media apps are true but with a footnote.

Facebook or Meta or whatever you want to call it is still the worlds largest social media platform when you count the number of accounts or users they have.  However if you look under the hood and ask some reasonable questions like “how many active users?” and “how active does an account need to be to be considered active?” , those numbers will shrink.  More on that in a moment.

The reason Threads has gained so many subscribers so quickly is because of two things:

  1. The Hype.  Free advertising from the media.  Because when Elon Musk took over Twitter and started making changes in 2022 that disrupted the Twitterverse, many Tweeps from the old days were not happy and looking for a Twitter Alternative.
  2. The Facebook/Instagram subscriber database.  If you have an Instagram account, you can sign up for Threads in less than a minute because Threads is currently tied directly to Instagram.  As of March 2023, Instagram has 2 Billion Monthly Average Users. That’s made it easy to pull those people over to Threads.  Twitter only had 233 MAU in March and as I write this just 5 days after the Threads launch, over 100 million have created a Threads account.

Regarding Threads, Is It A Thing or Is It A Fad?

Honestly it’s way too early to tell.

I recall in 2009 when the program director of one of my radio stations proclaimed that Twitter was just a Fad.  This was 3 years after Twitter launched and a year after I hopped on as a Tweep and built my ScLoHo Brand to national recognition with some of my Tweets being quoted by mainstream publications like the Wall Street Journal along with some more niche platforms.

The real test will be as the year unfolds and next year too. Right now people are signing up because they’ve heard about it and it’s easy.  But are they going to be active on Threads?  We have to wait and see over time.

There are some limits to the functionality compared to Twitter and other social platforms and that will evolve with time.  I’ve seen my friend Kevin Mullett and others explain the pros and cons of Threads. Scroll thru the Facebook comments until you find Kevin Mullett  here: https://www.facebook.com/djtrend/posts/pfbid02A7eh8tYxLLhcc1vmhf7xxfzLpzYXyQRU12swiuXTjTsc2JD6cro9V3DBP9ZCE9GVl

Also my friend Anthony Juliano had a very common sense approach that he shared on LinkedIn this week.  Anthony wrote:

My take on Threads, in a nutshell:

1. Yes, it’s a thing
2. A lot of people are joining it
3. But you don’t have to
4. Unless you want to
5. Oh, I understand: new stuff is neat!
6. But it probably won’t change your life, and
7. Do you really need another distraction?
8. It’s okay if you do, though, or see it as something that will move you toward your goals
9. But it’s okay if you don’t
10. And you can always change your mind later. To join or unjoin Threads. Or anything else. These tools aren’t going anywhere, and if they do you didn’t miss anything.

Except that last point #10 .. you can’t unjoin Threads without deleting your Instagram account right now. However, you can decide not to participate and simply keep your account without using it.

If you are an early adopter like I used to be and Kevin still is, go exploring on Threads.

But for marketing your business the way some people have relied solely on Social Media platforms to be the lifeline of revenue for their income… hold off.  At this moment Threads doesn’t have a way to run sponsored content, but they will in order to survive.

Because not all social media platforms last, no matter how much money the parent company has.  Google has failed numerous times including their Google Plus social platform that they simply could not convince enough people to use and it was killed off.

One last thought on the counting process of users or subscribers.  Monthly Average Users seems to be a standard for  many including the social media world. Monthly is also number that is used in the radio broadcasting world. The Radio Advertising Bureau says that over 90% of Americans listen to radio at least once a month.

I can give you real numbers that are much better criteria to look at when deciding where to spend your ad and marketing money.

In Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Nielsen company does a survey twice a year that gives us weekly numbers, not monthly.  And by taking a deep dive, we can look at specific hours or listener demographics.  Much like the targeting options on Facebook for certain qualitative criteria, we can look at that information for any of the radio stations in Fort Wayne, not just the 5 stations Federated Media operate.

Our oldest station, WOWO is now 99 years old and doing well.  Our other stations which include Sports Talk 1380 the Fan, WMEE, K105, and The Bear are also  doing well with a lot of listeners that want to spend money with businesses they trust.  This is not a Fad, it’s a Thing.  A Real Thing and if you want more information contact me.