Reboot Your Business

Reboot Your Business

by | Jun 23, 2020 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Do you remember at the end of 2019 how we thought it would be really cool to hear Barbara Walters welcome in the new year by saying,
“This is 2020”, the way she did for 25 years.

Little did we know what kind of year 2020 would be, not just in our own little worlds but the entire world.  I’ve seen friends ask if we can go back 6 months and do this over again, but the answer is no, we just need to ReBoot 2020 and your business given the circumstance we have now.

There are some big changes that have occurred in the way businesses operate and yet there are some things that haven’t really changed.

Some call it the differences between tactics and strategies. Wikipedia says:

The terms tactic and strategy are often confused: tactics are the actual means used to gain an objective, while strategy is the overall campaign plan.

In terms of rebooting your business, there are certain tactics that have changed, such as social distancing, or offering curbside pickup for your customers.  Meetings with clients now include video which was a bit on the controversial side 6 months ago or at least cutting edge.

What about the advertising and marketing?  Some of the patterns we saw 6 months ago are continuing while others are completely different.

Broadcasting, the world I work in has seen television’s model having to make some drastic changes while my radio world has been pretty stable for the listeners at least.

On the TV side, they halted production of the network shows and jumped to reruns or come up with a broadcast from home version of many shows which isn’t the same as before.  I don’t know if or when my favorite shows are returning to production.  Meanwhile at my radio station, WOWO in Fort Wayne, we implemented a couple of changes to accommodate our afternoon talk show host who has a weakened immune system due to the anti-rejection meds he is on after having kidney transplant surgery a few years ago.  Pat Miller broadcasts his show from his home every afternoon for the foreseeable future. The host of Fort Wayne’s Morning News on WOWO also did her show from home for 10 weeks since was pregnant with her firstborn.  Kayla did her show live every morning up until her water broke live while she was on the air.  We lined up 8 weeks of fill-in hosts while she is out, but everything on our station sounds normal.

As WOWO radio has experienced a big uptick in online listening as people were now listening from home on their smart speakers and looking at the stats, those numbers are still up there as the travel restrictions are being lifted.

The tactics of listening to WOWO shifted to more devices than just the traditional radio, but the strategy never changed.  We didn’t change our programming or anything like that.  Let’s see how we can apply that to your business moving forward.

Are you going to still provide the same basic services and products as you were before?  That’s the strategy.

Are you offering different or additional ways for consumers to receive your products and services?  That’s the tactics.

Also remember the timeless principles like honesty, fairness, under promise but over deliver. Keep your word and never stop inviting people to do business with you with advertising and marketing.

That’s how you can successfully ReBoot Your Business for the rest of 2020 and beyond.

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Cutting The Cord and The End of Local TV Advertising

Cutting The Cord and The End of Local TV Advertising

by | Dec 16, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

It was about three weeks ago when we became a full fledge streaming household.

And now the end of local TV advertising impacting us has hit our home.

It was a gradual process and our story is both personal and widespread.

If your business has been using the local TV stations to advertise, you’ve probably seen a decline in new customers coming from your TV ads.  Today I am going to share with you my families experience with TV viewing and at the end offer you some alternatives.

My wife and I are Baby Boomers and our 5 kids are all in their 30’s.  My wife and I grew up with over the air TV.  I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana with ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and an independent station (now FOX) as my 5 choices.  If we wanted to watch a show some other time than when it was broadcast, my parents would record it themselves on real video tape cassettes.  (My wife grew up in the Chicago area,where they had a few more TV stations available).

In my 20’s I had cable TV with nearly 100 different channels available for less than 30 bucks a month.  CNN was the 24 hour news channel, TBS and WGN were the two local stations that were now national and then there were things like the Home Shopping Channel, the Weather Channel and American Movie Classics that I recall getting significant viewing in my family but the local channels were still getting the majority of our screentime.  This was the 1980’s and 1990’s I’m talking about.  MTV with video jocks debuted and they actually played music videos the way a radio station would play music back then.  I worked on the air at a top 40 radio station and remember seeing all of this unfold and wondered in the back of my mind, what would happen to radio listenership now that music television was competing with us.

However as you know, the MTV of the past couple decades is nothing like that now.  It’s just another one of the 200+ video channels out there.  Music radio has had other competitive challenges but MTV and their sister station VH1 don’t compete with radio anymore.

When I returned to Fort Wayne 20 years ago, I was talking with a friend of mine who worked in TV advertising about the impact of cable TV and he said it was minimal at the time.  Despite the fact that Comcast was in 70% of the homes, people were still watching what we call Live TV.  Live TV is what the stations and networks are broadcasting live at the moment.  Well that has changed.

Just like the internet of today is nothing like the internet was when Facebook launched about 15 years ago, TV viewing is different too.  Even the terms have changed.  The words screentime and video are replacing viewership and television and for a good reason.  My first computer was a desktop computer with a dial-up connection in 1998 or so.  It was slow and clunky and you had to sit at a computer desk.  Watching video over the internet was unheard of.

Within 5 years I bought a new desktop for the family, a laptop for myself and we had flip phones now too.

Fast forward a few more years and the kids are all out of the house, some in college, some married, everyone has a phone in their pocket that is more powerful than my first desktop computer and we can now watch video on any number of devices.  The concept of the family gathering around the TV together is gone forever except for special occasions like perhaps the Superbowl.

Meanwhile there’s this company called Netflix that started out as a DVD rental company but has evolved to an internet delivery system.  Amazon has grown from the original bookseller to the seller of everything and their Prime Members are now able to watch movies and shows online too.

YouTube started in 2005 and 15 months later gets bought by Google which continues to support it and make it a huge money machine for them.  Want to learn how to fix a leaky faucet?  Watch a video on You Tube.  I give this example because the radio station I work for, WOWO in Fort Wayne had a long running home improvement show every Saturday morning for a couple of hours. Listeners could call in and talk to an expert free about their home project.  Over the nearly 20 years the show was on WOWO we started to see a decline in listener participation.  From my own experience as a homeowner, I can see how this corresponded with the growth of YouTube.  No longer did I need to wait until Saturday to get my answers,  I could search for a YouTube video on Tuesday and get the answers. YouTube has been listed as one of the top 5 search engines in recent years.

So now you know the backstory of how TV viewership converted to video screentime over the past 30+ years, there is more that has been going on in the past couple years that is hurting local TV viewership today.

It’s two things actually.  Cord Cutting and Television Programming.

Television Programming has had the biggest impact.  The shows that the big broadcast TV networks are showing are not getting the viewers compared to years ago.  Part of this is ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX have failed to recognize who watches Live TV.  It’s not the younger generations.  My kids have no need to watch.  Sure they’ll watch some PBS Kids shows with their kids, but not over the TV broadcast airwaves live.

Most of my 30 year old kids don’t have access to local broadcast TV.  But they have Netflix.  Which brings me to the Cord Cutting revolution.

With my wife and I being empty nesters, the last time we moved we had 5 TV’s hooked up to Comcast/Xfinity which I scaled down to 3. One TV in the family room, one in the bedroom and one in the guest room for grandkids.  Our internet and TV package was $200 per month and going up.  I called this stupid money.  For a couple of years I tried cutting the cord but could not get my local broadcast TV channels.  Finally in the summer of 2018, after researching on YouTube I came up with a way to boost my local TV’s broadcast reception and switch to an Internet only package from Frontier.  $40 per month instead of $200.  However since my wife wanted to watch her cable news shows, I also added another $40 to get the DirectTV Now streaming package, which made it $80 per month.  Still less than 1/2 the price of having cable.

I had to add a few inconveniences, to make it all work like Chromecast on the two main TV’s so we could send the streaming from our laptops to the TV’s but we worked it out.

Direct TV is owned by AT&T and recently they renamed the DirectTV Now streaming service to ATT TV Now and they’ve also been jacking up the price.  What was $40 became $50 and now is $65.   ATT has been losing money on their streaming services and losing subscribers too.  Millions of them have left.  Last month I left too.

Our family now uses the YouTubeTV streaming service.  I did my research and even signed up for a 5 day free trial.  After the first day, I saw a vast improvement in the user experience.  So did my wife.

On the second day, I bought a Roku Streaming Stick to convert our family room TV to the smart TV experience.  Our bedroom TV I bought last year was already a Roku smart TV.   My wife was instantly impressed with the options and quality and the convenience, considering that before I did this she had to lug her laptop from room to room and chromecast her stream to the TV.  This new experience was reminiscent of the convenience we had with cable TV but even better.

So here we have two baby boomers doing what the younger generations have already been doing and that is abandoning local broadcast TV and traditional cable TV for a streaming package that offers more at a fraction of the cost.  YouTubeTV in Fort Wayne does offer the local broadcast channels live if we want to watch them.  However the programming from CBS, NBC, ABC or FOX, we are more likely to watch later, not live and we can do that easily.  When we watch Bull, or NCIS on our own time schedule, we don’t get any local ads.  This is much different from decades ago when my Dad used to record his favorite shows and they included the local TV commercials.

Here is the advice I give my friends and clients regarding local broadcast TV advertising.  Buy the local news. Skip the rest.  However even that idea is questionable.  My local newscasts are now broadcast online live without the commercials.  Because they are doing whatever they can to find viewers.  The sad part for you as an advertiser on those local TV newscasts, is it doesn’t include your business.

Here’s the other advice I give.  Buy ads on my radio station.  WOWO radio has remained the most listened to radio station for decades for grownups age 35 and older.  You know, the people who are buying stuff, big stuff like homes and cars and kids stuff and grandkids stuff and vacations and well, you name it.

WOWO is wrapping up the year with another record breaking year in producing results for our advertising partners and I expect this to continue for many years ahead.  Sit down with me and I can share more with you.

UPDATE: I just received information that the time spent with radio each week is DOUBLE the time spent with TV. 

According to a new report from Nielsen, the ratings firm says adults 18 and older spend just shy of six hours with their TV-connected devices every week. Time spent with radio is nearly 12 hours per week. Also News/Talk (like WOWO Radio) is the most popular radio format nationwide.  Details are here: https://radioink.com/2019/12/18/radio-listening-dwarfs-tv-watching/

Also if you are looking for Sound ADvice on business and marketing, fill out the form below for my Sound ADvice weekly newsletter.  We take time off during holiday weeks but every other week, it will appear in your email Wednesday mornings.

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The ScLoHo Difference

The ScLoHo Difference

by | Dec 9, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Last month I was helping an advertising partner with their TV commercial.

I do not sell TV advertising, I don’t write or produce TV ads or videos.

So what did I do and why did I do it?

I am sharing this with you as an antidote to what someone told me recently is The ScLoHo Difference.

First off, I sell advertising in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  This puts me in a bucket of about 100+ people in Fort Wayne who you can buy advertising from.  That number may be closer to 200 different people when you count the online options.

So let’s narrow it down to legacy media or traditional media such as TV, Radio, Print which includes direct mail, newspapers and magazines and we are still close to 100.

In the radio business, we have less than 50.  My company alone has 23.  I work specifically for WOWO radio where we have a team of 5 full time and 2 part-time sales people.  That narrows me down to one out of about 5.

This fact, that I am one of the 5 people that can sell you ads on WOWO radio is definitely part of the ScLoHo Difference.  However that is just a minor detail.

As I was telling my friend and advertising partner, I sell advertising campaigns to support my real passion of helping businesses with their marketing.

I’ve even come up with a phrase that further defines the marketing philosophy that I work with.  It’s called Human Relationship Marketing because it uses Human Relationship Principles.

Now, let me tell you, this is a different approach from all of my WOWO radio co-workers. Each of us at WOWO have our own approach that is as different as our personalities.  It’s also different from anyone that I have met who sells advertising in Fort Wayne, which leads me back to what my friend and advertising partner was talking about as she really noticed the ScLoHo Difference in our conversation.

Here are the details of what led her to notice my different approach:

Along with advertising on WOWO radio with me, their company also does other advertising including print and TV.

Their television advertising sales person was working with them to create a commercial that would take advantage of the coop dollars they have earned and was doing the typical easy route.  That involved using the corporate video and slapping a dealer tag on the end.  In this 30 second ad, 23 seconds was all about the big company and the last 7 seconds was completely different, with my advertising partners name, logo and jingle.  It felt like two seperate ads.  The corporate ad had dramatic movie music in the background, while the local company tag, had a bright cheerful feel, because that’s the way their jingle sounds.  The TV people did put the company logo in the corner of the corporate video but it still wasn’t enough.

The company (my friend and advertising partner) reached out to me to get my ideas and I met with them after I came up with an idea that would solve their problem.

When we first sat down to talk, my friend and advertising partner, out of frustration, asked why her TV advertising salesperson didn’t understand that what they produced was a disjointed mash-up of two separate ads and essentially a bad commercial for their company.

The reason perhaps is the way most advertising salespeople are wired.  Their first priority is sales.  Their Sales, not their customers sales.  Sign a contract and then we will put together some creative stuff that becomes your ad and hope and pray for the best.  Too often this ignores the Human Relationship Marketing Principles that I use as my starting point.

I know what I just said sounds harsh. It is.  I don’t fault the salespeople who are selling simply to make their own budgets, most of them have been trained to sell that way.  Many are successful, but how successful are their clients?  And how much more successful could they be if they took a different approach, more like a marketing strategist, instead of an advertising salesperson?

Back to my friend and advertising partner and what I suggested they do…

The company has a recognizable jingle that I has been in place since the 1970’s or perhaps even longer.  I use it and their advertising slogan in the ad campaign we have been airing on WOWO radio.  I told them to drop the audio track from the corporate video and replace it with their recognizable jingle bed. It created a warm and happy feeling for the entire ad and tied it all together.  No one else came up with this idea, apparently.  The TV station was instructed to do what I suggested and the ad is now playing.

Like I said the ScLoHo Difference is more than the ability to sell you an advertising schedule on WOWO radio, you also get my thought process and idea creation that we’ll put into action with the campaigns we do on WOWO and also other advertising outreach that you are considering.  Want to know more?  Contact me.

 

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Where Are All The TV Viewers?

Where Are All The TV Viewers?

by | Oct 10, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

My wife and I are Baby Boomers and we have been the generation that most advertisers targeted their marketing to over most of my lifetime.

That is until we “aged-out” of the 25-54 age demographic.

That started happening in 2001 when the oldest Boomers who were born in 1946 turned 55.

This is the year, 2019 when the youngest Boomers who were born in 1964 hit double nickels.

About 10 years ago however is when the marketing people started to wake up and realize that the Baby Boomers still were a valuable demographic for a lot of products and services.  That was when the first Boomers were preparing to hit that magic age of 65, the age of retirement in the United States.

Except Baby Boomers were not like the previous generations that were in the 60’s.  They were not in the last couple years of life, they were living a full and rewarding life.

The kids were finally out on their own, yes even out of the basement and grandkids were coming.  Some Baby Boomers still have parents alive too.

The wealth was and still is in the hands of the Baby Boomers.

Baby Boomers grew up with the mass media of radio and TV.  We remembered AM Radio and Black & White TV and saw the transformation to Color TV and growth of FM Radio.

Radio has been our portable entertainment with every vehicle on the road being a virtual sound machine while TV was our home entertainment with news and prime time shows dominating our evenings.

So it is no surprise that even with the advent and growth of the internet and all the advances from dial-up AOL to always connected smart homes, traditional TV and Radio stations were still relevant to the Baby Boomer generation.

I have seen plenty of studies that have shown the shifting audience demographics for TV especially that is top heavy with older people.

More than half of all traditional TV viewers are age 55 and older.

Traditional TV encompasses both the traditional broadcast and traditional cable TV networks.

However in 2019, for the first time ever, traditional TV viewership in the age 55+ is now declining.

Here’s what Mediapost said about this:

It’s no secret that linear TV viewing has been declining as American consumers — especially younger ones — shift to digital alternatives, but a new analysis from the equities research team at UBS shows that even older TV viewers have begun eroding for the first time.

While total viewers (two years or older) have been eroding for some time, the fact that TV’s most diehard and heaviest viewers also are abandoning the medium should come as a wakeup call for many in the TV and advertising industry.

The article also shows data that over the past ten years TV has lost 50 to 60% of their younger viewers and the only age group that grew was the Baby Boomers  but now they are watching less TV.

I can tell you why, from personal experience.

We have access to 100 channels and there’s “nothing on”. At least that’s the way it seems.

A lot of the shows are targeted to younger viewers and are simply stupid or overly sexually juvenile. The jokes would have made the teenager in me snicker, but that was over 30 years ago.

Here are the actual shows that I will watch with my wife either live or on demand almost every week, now that the fall TV season is back:

NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, Jeopardy, Bull, The Good Doctor, Chicago Med.  The first four are without fail, the last two are likely to watch.

My wife will watch Dancing with the Stars and the Bachelor series, but I won’t. I may watch The Voice.

That’s it. Each year the number of shows we watch declines.  Not because there are less programs available, but the networks are trying to reach the younger audiences they have already lost which is stupid.

My kids are all in their 30’s and none of them watch traditional TV.  There is nothing that will change that so the networks need to wake up and do what they can to keep the viewers they have from abandoning them.

Now we do watch other things on TV.  The network news channels get a healthy amount of evening viewing along with some occasional HGTV, and we also stream stuff like Amazon Prime Movies. Netflix is a must have for my kids and their families.

As a side note, since I work in the radio business, there is also an undercurrent among the youngest, I’m talking teens and 20 year olds to listen to less traditional radio than people of that age group did decades ago, for many of the same reasons they don’t watch traditional TV. However for grown-ups age 35+ radio listening is still as healthy as ever.  I have specifics for the Fort Wayne, Indiana market if you ever want to see who listens to what, contact me. Scott@WOWO.com

Last week I read the results from the first week of the new Fall 2019 Fall TV Season and it’s not pretty.

The article I read says: TV’s broadcast network premiere week for the 2019-2020 season showed more double-digit percentage declines. 

If you are a business that uses TV to advertise, let this be a warning to you that the audience that you are trying to reach is shrinking.  If you want to see some viable solutions and alternatives, let’s talk.

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Why We Don’t Have Phone Books Anymore

Why We Don’t Have Phone Books Anymore

by | Jul 31, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

I could have titled this:

Dead Advertising Mediums.

Read this from Roy H. Williams:

Google is the new phone book. Like the Yellow Pages of yesterday, it is the principal resource for buyers who are currently, consciously in the market for a product or service and have no preferred provider. Like the White Pages of yesterday, Google delivers your telephone number, street address, (and business hours) to customers who have already chosen you as their preferred provider.

 

Customers who come to you through mass media will often be credited to your digital efforts due to the “White Pages” function of Google. They had already chosen you as their preferred provider, but were looking online for your street address, phone number, or business hours.

 

That is the 7th and 8th points from a newsletter that Roy H. Williams wrote earlier this year that I’m doing a series on right now as a ScLoHo extra.  Go here to read all 20 points.

Advertising in the phone book is a complete waste of money in the United States of America.  

I’ve been preaching this for years.

I have nothing against printed ads, it’s just, like Roy says, not needed at least in the phone book.

I have nothing to add to what Roy said, except an observation from earlier this month.

On Wednesday July 3rd, I was in the waiting room of a service department getting my car’s air conditioning back in shape for the 90+ degree temps and here’s what I observed.

About a dozen people ranging in age from about 8 to 80 were also in the waiting room.  One was reading a book, everyone else had a mobile phone or tablet that they were using.

A TV was on, but was being ignored by most everyone.

There were also two newspapers that sat untouched on a table until I opened them up.

The Wall Street Journal and our local morning paper the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

The Wall Street Journal had 28 pages total and an appropriate number of ads, but they could have had a few more.

But 28 pages, that is pretty slim for a national newspaper.  Kind of sad.

What was worse was the local paper.

24 total pages.  Maybe 4 pages worth of ads plus the classifieds.  They could not make money with this pitiful amount of paid ads.  This was the day before the 4th of July and a few decades ago it would have been stuffed full of ads for holiday sales and now… nothing.

Sadly for the future of these papers, no one cared to even read the paper.

As a kid, I used to be a paperboy, delivering every afternoon when I got home from school.

These days, no one seems to read the daily newspapers and with a lack of readers the advertisers ads are not getting seen.

Everyone sitting in the waiting room was watching and reading their own personal screens.

Is it any wonder that there are so few ads and so few pages printed?

Mass media isn’t dead, but certain mediums are.

Contrast the phone book and newspapers with the data about the mass media I work in.

Radio.  Surveys continue to show that over 90% of people in the United States of America listen every week.

We got the results for radio listening in Fort Wayne and my station, WOWO radio has the largest weekly audience with over 140,000 people choosing to listen to WOWO every week.  Unlike the newspaper that just sits there untouched.  Or the phone books that get tossed in the recycling bins the day they are delivered.

If you are paying to advertise in the phone book or a newspaper, let’s talk.  Email me: Scott@WOWO.com

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