7 Considerations For Successful Advertising

7 Considerations For Successful Advertising

by | Feb 13, 2023 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

As I write this on February 13th, not quite 24 hours have passed since I watched Super Bowl 57 and yet the impact of that game is reverberating in my world.

I had no skin in the game, even though the thought crossed my mind to wager since it’s now legal, but I declined.

Many advertisers, both national and local wagered that the game would be a good place to advertise and they ponied up the funds to do so.  Despite my media and marketing credentials, I watched the game as a normal person, live and on the screen.  I am going to review the game that my YouTubeTV account recorded for me, but for now, I’m just like you.

There are very few ads that I recall as being outstanding.  I remember the Pepsi Zero ads, a couple of movie ads (but don’t recall the films they were promoting), and a T-Mobile ad.

Here’s why I remember them:

I’ve seen Pepsi Zero and Mountain Dew Zero at the store recently but decided not to buy, because I like my Diet Dew just fine.  The T-Mobile ad was for $50 home internet service and it’s because I’m already a T-Mobile customer for our phone service and I’ve checked out their internet service before.   None of the ads I saw prompted me to take action and it’s doubtful that any will in the future because, well like I said, none of the other ads are top of mind with me, less than 24 hours later.

Now I know there were other companies advertising, but some of the companies I had never heard of before and I don’t remember them now.  Even the ones that I liked, I don’t recall who they were for.

Oh wait a second, I just remembered one more for Dunkin Donuts.  They used Ben and Jennifer but gave me no reason to buy a donut or whatever they were promoting.

Super Bowl Advertising used to be considered the best place to buy advertising because of the tremendous number of viewers and the supposed impact it would have on your business or brand.

Not really, instead I’ll share with you 7 Considerations For Successful Advertising:

  1. Reach. How many people will your ad reach?  Not just anyone, but the people that are likely to be your customers.  The greater the reach, the more it will cost.
  2. Frequency. How many times will those people be exposed to your ad?  During the Super Bowl all the national ads played only once so they get a frequency score of one. Some brands aired more than one ad like the Pepsi Zero ads I saw, so they get a score of two.  The higher the frequency to potential customers, the better in most cases.
  3. Messaging. A co-worker of mine has been getting a barrage of emails from a local company that have no purpose.  He entered a contest this business has going on for several weeks and every day he gets an email from them, wishing him a nice day, or something like that but there are no offers or calls to actions.  Most people would delete, unsubscribe or report this as spam.  Your Messaging has to have a purpose.
  4. Trust.  Does your advertising build Trust in your company?  Or is it detracting from your brand and image?  If your advertising has to have a lot of legalese or fine print disclaimers, you are not building trust.
  5. The Environment. Not mother earth, the environment of where your advertisement is placed. The advertising media that you are using has it’s own brand and if your brand and theirs are not compatible, that’s not good at all.  I used to work for a group of radio stations that allowed ads for “Gentlemen’s Clubs” after 9pm at night.  Unless you are running a business that doesn’t mind being associated with that, then you better not advertise on that station.  Think about it this way.  Would you want your businesses physical location next to them?  If the answer is no, then consider the same concept for your advertising.
  6. Human Relationship Principles.  Do your ads mimic normal human relationships in their presentation?  Or are they annoying ads that make you want to tune out?  You can use humor, you can use music, you can even use a straight voice, but the very best ads are the one that flow the way our conversations do when we are talking with friends and family.
  7. Trustworthy Marketing Consultant.  The majority of advertising sales people are not trustworthy marketing consultants.  Many are simply salespeople who are limited in their capabilities.  This limitation is either because of their personality, their training, or both.

It doesn’t take a Super Bowl ad to make your business successful, it takes working with someone that can help you navigate and understand what I just mentioned and who has the competence to work with you to dig in and create what’s needed.  Contact me if you want help,  Scott at WOWO.com

The Wait is Worth It

The Wait is Worth It

by | Sep 20, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom

Are you a patient person?

Or does waiting create anxiety?

For me, it all depends on the why I am waiting.

I’m sure it is that way with you too, to some degree.

At the end of 2019 I was cleaning up my email and found a series of newsletters from Roy H. Williams.  Roy goes by the moniker The Wizard of Ads, like my nick name is ScLoHo.  Every Monday for several years, Roy’s newsletter arrives in my inbox.  It’s called the Monday Morning Memo.

Now there’s nothing but predictability in what I just shared with you.  I can count on receiving the appropriately named Monday Morning Memo from Roy Williams on Monday Mornings.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that all things were predictable?

The Monday Morning Memo dated September 16th, 2019 talks about something I talk about too.  I call it the buying cycle, Roy calls it the purchase cycle.  Both of us are referring to the same thing.  And it has to do with time.

Roy used the example of engagement rings. Roy says:

330 million Americans will purchase 2 million engagement rings this year. This means that 1 American in 165 will buy an engagement ring.

There has been a tendency for digital marketers to emphasize the zero moment of truth.  That’s the instant that a person is ready to go out and hand over their credit card for a few thousand to buy that ring. The digital marketers are looking at that as the time to be in your face with their ads for diamonds.  After all, for many of us, it’s now or never.  Actually in the wedding game, a significant number of us get married more than once, so those diamond ring digital marketers may get a second or third chance down the road.

However the buying cycle or purchase cycle as Roy refers to it, is not the same for everything we buy.  I bought gas the other day, something I do about once a week.  Filling up my gas tank is a much shorter buying cycle than buying an engagement ring.

Also it is important to recognize that most of us have habits that we follow with many purchases and unless there is a reason to change our habit, we aren’t going to change them.

Earlier this year, my office moved from the northwest side of Fort Wayne, Indiana to the southwest side.  I live northeast.

When my commute to the office changed, so did some of my buying habits.  Until this move, I never would have used the gas station or grocery store that I use now.  A few years ago the breakfast place I would visit stopped selling my favorite beverage so I changed.

Because you just can’t advertise a sale and it will convince everyone to stop what they are doing and go and buy from you right now… that is why you need to move from a self-centered marketing plan to one that is customer-centered.  Being there when they need what you can offer is critical.  Reminding them and inviting them, every week is what this is all about.

How To Build Instant Trust For Your Business

How To Build Instant Trust For Your Business

by | Aug 9, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

If there was only a way to get someone to trust you instantly…

Actually we were born that way.  We trust from the very start.  Then as we experience life, we discover that things aren’t always trustworthy.

Depending on a persons life experiences and outlook, we develop either an optimistic or pessimistic attitude.  Most of us are a blend of both depending on the situation.

As I’ve talked about in the past, Trust is one of the key foundations of our lives and this applies to everything.

I’m going to focus on the necessity of trust in business and marketing including your advertising.

I’m also going to share with you examples that you can use today to create “Instant Trust”.

Trust is an emotion first, and logic second. No matter what the data says, you have to win the heart, not just the mind.

Certain forms of media are trustworthy for different people.

A century ago, newspapers were the trusted source of information.

Half a century ago, TV was, especially CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite who would end his nightly broadcasts with his signature sign-off, “And That’s The Way It Is”.

All of this was before the online world which gave anyone and everyone a voice.

The most trusted media people in my city are now the local radio and television personalities.

But they are not all equally trusted.

Particular stations and networks have their own brand and people put trust in that brand.  If your business advertises on a particular station that is trusted, there is a transfer of trust that spreads to your business.

In the TV world, we have newscasts on 4 stations and over the past couple of decades there has been a changing of the guard so-to-speak as some TV veterans retired and others took their place.  TV viewership has eroded as alternative sources of news and entertainment have continued to become available.  I no longer have to sit down at the appointed time to watch the evening news to see what happened while I was at the office.  I get news instantly from the apps on my phone, whenever I want. I have not watched a single local newscast from start to finish this year and I see no reason for that to change.

The radio world in Fort Wayne has nearly 2 dozen radio stations.  The oldest is WGL which I worked for a couple of times. Listenership is very small according to the rating data I have access to and the format has changed numerous times.  The next oldest is WOWO.

WOWO will be a century old in 2025 and for more than a quarter century has been a news and talk radio station.  In December I will have completed 9 years at WOWO with many more to come.  When I was a kid I listened to WOWO and it was the most listened to station with over 70% of all of the listeners tuning in each morning.  WOWO is still one of the few stations with over 100,000 weekly listeners.

Federated Media bought WOWO in the 1990’s and owns and operates other heritage stations in Fort Wayne including WMEE, which I once worked for a few decades ago. 98.9 The Bear and K-105 are the other two Fed Med stations that have huge audiences in Fort Wayne and have earned the trust of our listeners.

One of the things that makes WOWO unique however is the whole news/talk format and how listeners interact with WOWO.  When you listen to a music station, you pick the station that plays the music you enjoy listening to.  The radio personalities are there to complement the music and add to your listening pleasure. 70% or more of what your favorite music station plays is music.  Music is the main emotional connection.

With WOWO being a news and talk radio station, we don’t play music.  We talk instead. In the morning, it’s news, weather, sports, traffic, farm reports, and interviews. The rest of the day the newscasts are twice an hour with talk filling in the rest of the hour.  People listen to WOWO to hear people talk.  Big difference.

WOWO Listeners Trust the WOWO Brand.

WOWO Listeners are not annoyed by talking the way they can get annoyed by too much talk on a music station.

WOWO’s advertisers are trusted simply because those businesses are on WOWO.  There is an implied trust and emotional bond that businesses get that advertise on WOWO.    But that’s not all.

WOWO cranks it up two more levels for our advertising partners.

There is what I refer to as a Platinum Level for WOWO Advertisers.  We all know that the Gold Standard is the highest level of any business.  This is a step above the Gold Standard.

Platinum Level Sponsorship on WOWO is the personal endorsement or testimonial of one of either or afternoon host Pat Miller or morning host Kayla Blakeslee.  This is the trust factor on steroids that no other station in Fort Wayne offers.  A Pat or Kayla endorsement campaign means they will be your local spokesperson and do live 60 second ads for your business.

They receive a talent fee for this and WOWO charges a premium for that minute of airtime.   But it’s well worth it.  I’ll give you a couple of examples in a moment.

These live ads are exclusive for a business category.  For example, Pat Miller endorses Fairhaven Funeral Homes.  Fairhaven will be the only funeral service provider Pat will endorse.  Other funeral homes can advertise, but none will have Pat’s voice on them, endorsing them as long as Fairhaven continues.  Kayla Blakeslee endorses Shield Exterior Roofing and so while other roofers can advertise on WOWO, none will have Kayla as their spokesperson.

WOWO Listeners have an emotional bond with Pat and Kayla and they are trusted by their listeners.  When Pat and Kayla are talking about something political, you bet their listeners are emotionally invested.  That emotional trust carries over to our listeners when they also talk about the businesses they endorse.

A few years after I started at WOWO, before Kayla was hosting Fort Wayne’s Morning News, she was the news director and news anchor in the morning.  Charly Butcher was our Fort Wayne Morning News Host until he suddenly passed away 4 years ago this week.  I worked with a small specialty shop that was going to have a special open house on a Saturday and they bought a ton of radio ads on a music station and just 3 or 4 ads with Charly’s endorsement.  After the event, the owner continued with WOWO because he heard customer after customer tell him that Saturday they were at the open house because Charly told them to come.  The music station’s ads did nearly nothing apparently.

Before I wrap this up, I mentioned two levels of trust building beyond the regular ads on WOWO.  The 2nd one is something I started using a lot of when I came to WOWO and they create an implied endorsement of a business to our listeners.  We have news and weather sponsorships that are done live by the WOWO local newscasters.  We have local news 13 hours every weekday starting at 5am, so there are plenty of these “embedded” sponsorship mentions that are live 10 second messages.  This was my secret sauce for success for my advertising partners when I came to WOWO.

Instant Trust? Hmmm, not quite but pretty close.  Contact me for more details.

 

 

Word Of Mouth Advertising With A Bigger Mouth

Word Of Mouth Advertising With A Bigger Mouth

by | Jul 26, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

The very best form of marketing is what we call Word Of Mouth.

Why?

Because it is from the heart, from one person to another and it includes implicitly, the Human Relationship factor we all need: Trust.

Several years ago, I wrote about the Word Of Mouth advantage that my radio station has and you can read what I wrote in January 2018 here.

I found that article by Googling the term, “Word Of Mouth With A Bigger Mouth” and only a few articles popped up, both attributed to me.

I honestly don’t think I coined that term despite what the Google gods say.

Here’s the backstory:

From my teen years to age 26, I spent all of my radio life working on the radio.  I was an overnight radio disc jockey.  That’s how I met my first wife and mother of our three kids.

I also did other shifts on the radio and became the Program Director of one of the stations I worked for.  That meant I was the guy in charge of the music, the format, the air personalities, basically anything except for the advertising.

Most radio ads were forgettable.  The ones that I had to voice and produce were usually written by an advertising sales person and most were lousy, in my opinion.  So every once in awhile, I would use my creativity and write ads for local businesses that were different from the usual stuff I was told to read and record.

However in 1986, I moved from the on-air side of radio to the advertising side when I joined Crawford Broadcasting in Detroit as an advertising campaign Master Producer.  I worked hand in hand with a couple of WMUZ advertising sales people and created some pretty successful ad campaigns for our clients.

WMUZ also was very advertiser friendly.  When I was there for about eight years, our live radio hosts would give a 10 second endorsement for every local business on their show.  They were called Rolling Endorsements.  The way it worked is there would always be a 30 second or 1 minute recorded ad that was immediately followed by a brief live endorsement.  Robin Sullivan was one of the most popular afternoon radio hosts at the time I was there and when Robin endorsed Hilton Mortgage, her listeners took her recommendation as seriously as if their best friend had recommended Hilton Mortgage.

That’s because of the relationship Robin built with her audience on WMUZ, they trusted Robin as best friends trust each other.

That Trust Factor in both the radio station and the radio host is what becomes as powerful as Word Of Mouth Advertising.  Except with the size of the radio audience, it’s not just a one to one Word Of Mouth, but Word Of Mouth With A Bigger Mouth.

Fast forward to 2003.  I’m returning to radio in the advertising world but in a different city than I did it previously.  In the 80’s and 90’s I was in Detroit and now I was back in my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Interestingly the Fort Wayne radio stations I joined two decades ago don’t exist anymore.  All have changed formats.  At the end of 2013 however I joined WOWO Radio which is nearly a century old and has been a news and talk station for more than a couple decades.

With the history of WOWO and the longevity of WOWO as a news and talk station with live and local radio hosts and news personalities, the Trust Factor is alive and thriving.

First off, WOWO itself is trusted by our core listeners.  Over 100,000 weekly listeners make it one of the most listened to stations in Fort Wayne.

Next is the implied endorsement that any local advertiser has simply by being on WOWO.

We can take it a step further with a couple of options that really fit the  “Word Of Mouth With A Bigger Mouth” model.  Similar to when I first learned it at WMUZ ind Detroit in the 80’s but unique to Fort Wayne.

We have live 10 second embedded sponsorship mentions read by the show hosts or newscasters available during live programming.  Since WOWO has live and local newscasts 13 hours daily, Monday thru Friday, twice an hour, that is one option.

The other is a step up from what I saw at WMUZ.  Live Testimonial Endorsement Ads with our morning show host, Kayla or our afternoon host Pat.  Instead of a recorded ad followed by a brief live endorsement, the entire ad by Kayla or Pat is live. This is our Platinum Level of Advertising that is also limited to only a few Trusted Businesses.

In the weeks ahead, I’ll divulge even more details about this Word Of Mouth With A Bigger Mouth on WOWO radio and how we use Human Relationship Marketing Principles to create the Trust Factor including the emotional connection that includes transfer of credibility.

Human Relationship Marketing in a Nutshell

Human Relationship Marketing in a Nutshell

by | Jul 19, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

All of us are exposed to a variety of advertising and marketing messages every single day.  But there is one method that trumps all the others combined and it’s built on what I refer to as Human Relationship Marketing.

Human Relationship Marketing is a different approach than most advertising professionals talk about, but the goal is similar.

Human Relationship Marketing and all the other approaches have the ultimate goal of selling stuff.  But how it’s done is what separates Human Relationship Marketing from the others.

As Humans we have a primary need to Trust.

For us to feel confident about anything, we need to Trust it.  

I Trust the chair I am sitting in to hold me.

I Trust the cook at the restaurant not to poison me.

I Trust the drivers heading towards me on the road at 40 miles per hour to stay on their side of the yellow line.

See how important Trust is to our Human activities?

This Trust Factor is essential to be our Human experience.

As a side note, it goes beyond humans.  Over the years my wife and I have had a cat or two. Our current feline is a little skittish compared to our previous critter who would sleep thru anything.  If you are also a pet owner, you understand the Trust Factor between pets and people too.

So how does this Trust Factor apply to Human Relationship Marketing and what is Human Relationship Marketing in a Nutshell?

It’s pretty simple.  

Human Relationship Marketing includes or mimics the Human Relationship Principles that build Trust and uses those as the foundation for the advertising and marketing.

I’ll give you two examples.

The first is for a car dealer in town that uses all kinds of gimmicks and cliches to sell cars. Every month it’s a new sale.  So far this year, they’ve had their Nickle Pickle sale; Hole In One sale; Swimming In Savings sale; and Shamrock Your Ride. These campaigns are filled with cute word plays and clever puns but do they build Trust?  Not with me or most other Humans I know.

The other example is from my own radio station where our afternoon talk show host talks about how he and his wife have bought or leased 8 cars from his favorite dealership.  Even before they were advertising on WOWO radio, Pat Miller and his wife were getting their cars from this dealership.  My friends, this is the very best form of Human Relationship Marketing using the Trust Factor.  It’s what I call Word of Mouth Advertising with a Bigger Mouth.

Speaking of which, next time I’ll give you my background story on that phrase, Word of Mouth Advertising with a Bigger Mouth.