by Scott Howard | Aug 23, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
The topic for this week is: Make it Easy. I’ll start with some questions.
How easy is it for someone to do business with you?
How easy is it for someone to get an answer to a question?
How easy is it for someone to find you online?
How easy is it for someone to call you?
How easy is it for someone to pay you for goods and services that you offer?
How easy is it for someone to pay you a compliment? Either in person, or online?
I could continue asking similar questions and I’m sure you could come up with a few more that are just as important for you and your business.
Here’s the take-away I want you to have: Make It Easy.
No matter what the question, do what ever possible to make it easy for people.
Advertising can bring people to you. What happens next is up to you. The WHOLE BUYING EXPERIENCE is part of your marketing.
I understand that there might be some pretty complicated things that need to go on behind the scenes that will Make It Easy for your customers, but sometimes it really doesn’t need to be complicated at all.
Recently I was talking to a business owner who wants to let people know that despite the fact he has a couple dozen employees and managers that work for him, the real person that can solve their ultimate problems is him.
So we created a way to Make It Easy for anyone to reach him. A special phone number that accepts phone calls and texts that rings directly to his personal cell phone. When you call, you talk to the owner, not his manager, not an answering service on the other side of the planet. You get the guy in charge, the one who can make everything Easy.
Some companies empower their front line employees to take care of everything. Instead of having to “ask a manager” or “go up the food chain” to resolve something, the actual person you or I talk with takes care of it, then and there.
A couple more stories to illustrate how this Make It Easy process works. For years my wife and I have had cable TV, Internet and sometimes phone service from one of the two big national companies and every year we saw our bills climb just because they could raise the prices. One year my wife spent 3 hours on the phone with customer service and was able to knock our bill down a little but it went back up a year later even though we dropped some of their services.
This summer I was convinced to cut the cord and go with internet only because I finally figured out all the other pieces to the puzzle to watch what we wanted via internet streaming and over the air local channels.
Our current internet provider wasn’t going to budge on price, so I tried to buy from their main competitor. I attempted to do it online and over the phone. Even using the online chat feature was a nightmare. I nearly gave up until my friend told me exactly who to talk to in person at a local store front location.
I walked in and asked for her by name and she knew who I was because my friend had contacted her earlier that day. Within 15 minutes on a Monday afternoon we had everything set up for them to come out 3 days later to install and start internet service. Plus the price was lower than what I was paying the other company, and lower than I was able to find online with this company. This woman was an expert in the Make It Easy department.
The other Make It Easy story is a follow up on what I shared recently when I upgraded our homes heating and cooling system. We were eligible for a rebate from our electric company with the new system and I started to fill out the paperwork online, but never completed it. In the meantime, a check for $300 arrived from the electric company. Turns out the heating/cooling company took care of that paperwork for me, and I forgot that they were taking care of that for us. They really won in my book in the Make It Easy department.
My work as a marketing coach and consultant and advertising sales person with WOWO radio and Federated Media Digital includes doing what ever I can to Make It Easy for my advertising partners. Last week I updated a couple items on a clients website, not because they paid me to do it, I was just doing it for them to Make It Easy.
Go back over that list I started with and review the questions about how easy is it for people to do business with you and then add a few that are particular to your business, and take action. If you want my help in reviewing those questions and coming up with answers, let’s talk.
You can email me, text me, message me, call me, find me online on social media by simply looking for ScLoHo, that’s me. That’s my commitment to Make It Easy for you!
by Scott Howard | Nov 21, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
How to fix your marketing problems, seems like an answer that nearly every business person and entrepreneur would love to have, right? Today I’m going give you the big answer and give you an example.
The big answer to fixing your marketing problems is:
Be Curious.
Seek Answers.
Talk to Real People.
Read more.
In short, A. B. L. which stands for Always Be Learning.
You can apply this formula to anything that you want to do.
You and I are already doing this.
Take for example the last couple of big purchases I made for my wife and I. Phones and Computers.
I did all the above.
I was curious, I sought out answers, talked to real people, read reviews, etc.
It’s the way most humans decide on what to buy.
I apply it to my advertising and marketing expertise too
Just last week my son sent me a link to a podcast about CSA Farm Marketing. I’m actually writing this a few minutes after he sent me the link, but by the time this article gets published and I create the podcast version, I will have listened to the podcast he sent me.
I am not a farmer. I had an Uncle Ed when I was a kid who had a farm that I visited a few times but we never really talked about farming. My son Josh on the other hand runs an organic CSA farm in South Carolina. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and it’s a way for small farmers to create a sustainable business model by selling shares of the harvest ahead of time. It’s a pretty cool concept that I had not heard of or thought about until my son started working for one in Ohio years ago.
I will share some specifics lessons from the podcast in an upcoming article and podcast, because at first glance there are some golden nuggets of marketing wisdom tucked in that podcast.
This Always Be Learning concept is something I’ve been applying to build my marketing and advertising expertise for over 30 years because I was curious. In 1986 when I moved my family to Detroit and spent 7 years creating successful radio advertising campaigns; it was a huge learning experience for me as I got to interview dozens and dozens of business owners to find out what they did, why they did it, and how it worked. I was driven by curiosity.
I also read, researched and applied the concepts I was discovering into a working laboratory of marketing experiments with my advertising partners in Detroit.
This passion continued when I started doing this in 2003 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. (By the way, in between say, 1993 and 2003, for about 10 years, I got to work outside of the advertising and marketing world for a living and simply experience marketing and advertising from a consumers stand point. This ability to look at both sides of the marketing transaction, I know gives me a unique ability to see both the big picture and little details from both the business side and the customer side.
A friend of mine told me she was going to spend $20 to take a two hour marketing class offered by the small business administration and a local college. Good for her, I thought. But I’m curious as to what she will be told. Hopefully she’ll get some valuable tips. More importantly, she is starting the process that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece:
The big answer to fixing your marketing problems is:
Be Curious.
Seek Answers.
Talk to Real People.
Read more.
In short, A. B. L. which stands for Always Be Learning.
If you are in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area and want to do this, contact me. I work for WOWO Radio and Federated Media and may have some help in marketing your business available thru those resources. But my true passion is to help you on the right path whether you buy something from me or not.
Let’s talk.
by Scott Howard | Jan 3, 2017 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo
2016 is in the history books. GONE. Forever.
No matter what you did, it’s done.
No matter what someone else did or any of us did in 2016…
It’s time to look forward.
Face it. Some people are scared out of their minds as they look to the future.
Have empathy.
Others have gone through unexpected hardships, be there for them.
While last year was a weird one on a political level, it was also a year that saw lots of other changes going on.
It’s December 28th as I type these words on my laptop. The final week of 2016 with almost a week before this article is published.
Celebrity deaths like Carrie Fisher, her mom Debby Reynolds and George Michael were all over social media in the last couple of days. Add them to the list of big names that the world lost.
This morning I saw the obit in my local paper that a woman that I’ve known, Helen passed away at Christmas time. She was a member of our church and in the neighborhood outreach that I was involved with for the past 3 years.
Earlier today my wife and I had brunch with an old high school friend, Steve and his wife Lesa who were in town for about 5 days. Steve’s dad passed away years ago but his mom is still around. My own parents never made it to 70 passing away in 1998 and 2001.
Death is a part of life, as the saying goes and I don’t want to get stuck there or actually any of us to get stuck anywhere.
Stuck is not a good word, usually.
So today and in the days to come, I urge you to appreciate the past.
Even the crappy parts.
The lessons we learn are from the crappy parts. Don’t get lost wishing for the good old days, or you’ll be left behind.
Cherish, laugh, learn, listen and love.
Let’s embrace 2017 as another year to change the world, one day (sometimes one hour) at a time.
by Scott Howard | Sep 20, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
It’s a question that some people ask out loud and others may not ask me directly but they are thinking, “Why Does a Radio Guy Also Sell Digital Marketing Solutions?”
Excellent question.
Here’s the answer.
My background is in radio. From the time I was 16 until I was 26, I loved being on the air. Then I moved over to the business side creating ad campaigns in Detroit for my radio clients. I became a student and teacher of marketing, advertising, sales, persuasion, and something I call human relationship marketing.
Jump ahead to 2005 and I started using digital (the web) to market myself using the same concepts I had learned 15+ years earlier.
With me, Scott Howard aka ScLoHo, you get to work with an individual who understands both the traditional broadcast world and the newer digital world. I walked away from my paying jobs in radio twice in recent history to work full time in the digital world. The first time was in 2011, when I joined a website development firm. A couple years later, I joined a multi-million dollar e-commerce biz as their Social Media director.
Now I work for WOWO radio which is one of the stations owned by Federated Media. Federated Media also has a digital division, Federated Digital Solutions. 
Federated Media created Federated Digital Solutions because many of their radio advertising clients were also looking for ways to market themselves online. Federated Media decided to invest in creating another division of the company. During my three years, I have seen our digital division grow and we now have 20+ people working for Federated Digital Solutions.
Those 20+ people at Federated Digital Solutions (FDS) have a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. The goal was to find the best available talent in the country and create the FDS team.
But there’s more.
Several of the digital solutions use outside vendors that we have access to that you simply can’t buy on your own. We also have two layers of expertise working on all of these digital marketing campaigns. There’s the expertise of our vendors and the expertise of the FDS team.
With me, you actually get a 3rd layer of expertise. Me. Scott Howard aka ScLoHo.
Because of my background, experience and knowledge, I really do know more than most of my radio co-workers. No, I’m not a know-it-all, but I do know how to Google to get the answers on stuff that I don’t know.
Here’s something else that’s important.
I care more about my reputation than what I sell.
I care more about your success than what I sell.
When I started at WOWO, I sold next to nothing from the digital solutions offered by FDS. I wanted to see the results and I wasn’t willing to use my advertising partners as test subjects. But as I watched, observed and questioned, I saw that the performance of the Federated Digital Solutions team was top notch. I also got the opportunity to see what other companies were selling and through that comparison, I saw how we were superior to others.
I’ve seen what Nexstar Broadcast Group was trying to sell as digital solutions and it was crap.
I’ve seen the actual results of Dex Media and what they sold to come of my advertising clients and did digging and found a huge pile of manure.
There are a couple of local companies that are selling digital marketing solutions that are worthless. My friend Kevin, called it marketing malpractice when we were discussing what I was seeing, and Kevin is one smart dude when it comes to doing digital marketing correctly.
Advertising agencies, both local and national are understaffed and under-qualified to be doing the digital work they are selling.
This summer I found out one of my advertising partners bought a website for $27,000 from one of these advertising agencies and it’s really messed up. Sure it looks okay to the naked eye, but it is impossible to optimize for the search engines (SEO) due to the platform they built it on. We can rebuild it for less that 1/3 that cost.
One last item in answering the question, “Why Does a Radio Guy Also Sell Digital Marketing Solutions?”
There actually is a study that shows how broadcasting works best in driving people to your website. A couple lines from the article that caught my eye:
Here’s why radio and TV have the advantage: While print media requires hands, broadcast media leaves them free to do other things . . . like type in a URL, tweet something, or click “like.”
Want to talk? Let’s connect
by Scott Howard | Dec 31, 2015 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo
As we say goodbye to 2015, many folks will ring in the new year with resolutions to:
- start something
- stop something
- do better at something
My protest against New Years Resolutions isn’t about resolving, it’s about the timing.
If you really want to change something in your life, don’t wait for the calendar.
Resolve to do it and then do it. If you slip up, then acknowledge it and start again. And again.
Unless we’re talking about writing the wrong year on your checks, then that would be an appropriate resolution to start next year. But seriously, does anyone hand write checks anymore?
See ya next year.
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