trust | The Genuine ScLoHo aka Scott Howard

How To Build Instant Trust For Your Business

by Scott Howard | 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.

You Have To Be Trust-Worthy

by Scott Howard | Aug 2, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Now I know that Trustworthy is one word, however I want to dig a little deeper into this idea and what it means to the success of your business. That is why I hyphenated Trust-Worthy in the title of this article and podcast.

If you’ve been listening to the past few podcast episodes or reading these articles, you may have picked up on the importance of Trust.

The Trust Factor is a foundational Human Relationship Principle that needs to be included in your marketing.

Well, last month I saw a story from MarketingCharts.com:

For Many Americans, Trust in Businesses Must Be Earned

Before my time, I’m talking 50 or 60 years ago, I think we were a more trusting country. At least that is my perception. In the past couple of decades, since 9/11/2001, Americans attitudes have become further clouded as a country regarding Trust.

That overall skepticism is an attitude that has spread to business, especially big business. Also the past two years we have been through a tremendous number of events that have made us less trusting.

Even those of us who are generally optimistic have struggles trusting in things like, “Will the restaurant I want to go to be open today?” I had that challenge last week when I discovered that my usual Monday lunch spot was now closed on Monday’s as a way to cope with staffing issues.

Here’s a few numbers from the article:

In its survey of 2,200 US adults, Morning Consult found that 42% agreed with the statement: “I tend to trust companies. They must do something bad to lose my trust.” By comparison, an almost equal share (39%) agreed more with the statement: “I tend to not trust companies. They must earn my trust.” The remaining fifth (20% share) said they either didn’t know or did not have an opinion.

And:

In the US, businesses that are trusted will be rewarded… Some 39% share of respondents in the US agreed that when they trust a company, they go out of their way to purchase from them.

Here’s a couple more stats from this survey:

There are penalties from consumers’ loss of trust in brands. Slightly more than half (54%) in the US said they have lost trust in a company or brand, and among those 42% stopped using them and started using their competitors’ products, while 39% stopped using them and claimed they will never use them again.

About a year ago, I was on a lunch break at a restaurant that was busy but they didn’t indicate their would be an extraordinary wait time. Turns out that was a big mistake. We sat for over 20 minutes before anyone took our order and finally when our food arrived we had them pack it to go because we were there over an hour and had to get to our next meeting.

Multiple times we attempted to flag down a host or waiter and were told they would be “right back”. After placing our order, we were still not given any warning that they were slammed and understaffed.

We left hungry, with a bad attitude and have not returned since.

One more quote from the story:

Factors That Build Trust

Within the US, two factors stand out as being the most important in building trust: good value for price; and high-quality products and services.

This survey was about brands, not individual businesses but the same principles apply:

Over communicate if things are not what is typical for your business.
Don’t ignore problems, there are long term ramifications to the health and success of your business if you do.
You need to do everything possible to earn the trust of your customers and clients, all the time.
We don’t expect perfection, but please own up to mistakes and problems.

That is how you become worthy of trust.

Are you Trust-Worthy? Next time, I’ll share a way to let others know.

The Difference between Principles and Practices

by Scott Howard | 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.

Referrals Rule

by Scott Howard | May 3, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

When you hear the words “so-and-so referred me/or suggested I see you”, it’s almost like money in the bank!

You’ve probably heard that it can cost five to ten times as much to attract a new customer as it costs to maintain and keep an existing customer. And, that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. While finding new customers is important, finding more new customers and keeping them is the true secret to success!

Bain & Company and Harvard Business School reports that 80% of businesses believe they deliver a superior customer experience to capture repeat and referral business, while only 8% of their customers agree that these companies provide superior service. They also suggest that a 5 percent increase in customer retention can lead to an increase in profits of between 25 and 95 percent. Both sets of numbers should grab your attention!

While your customers are bombarded with messages from your competition, it makes sense to craft your advertising to attract new customers, but also keep you front and center with current customers.

Many businesses use internet tools like email or social media to pursue customer loyalty and use intrusive broadcast media to attract new customers. While that strategy is certainly valid, they often under-estimate what intrusive media, like radio, can do to serve as a reminder to their current customer base.

What do you do, or can you do, to provide “over the top” customer service? And, do you tell people what you do? Customers expect good service, but it’s when you go over and above that they start to tell their family and friends.

In business, customer perceptions become their realities. If 92% of customers don’t perceive you deliver superior service, they are vulnerable to the aggressive appeals in your competitors’ advertising.

There is a reason that successful businesses like McDonald’s, Home Depot, and GEICO continue to invest more in broadcast advertising…. they understand that to GROW their business they not only need to keep their current clients, but they also need new customers. New customers come from one of three ways: referrals, advertising, or luck!

Want to get luckier by getting more repeat and referral business? Click here to read 12 Ways to Generate More Repeat and Referral Business.

Truth Detection

by Scott Howard | Apr 12, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

Marketing and advertising are all about winning in the court of public opinion and it’s a tough and skeptical jury you are facing. Many of us have been misled by sales pitches or outrageous advertising claims in the past. In short, they are justifiably skeptical of offers made via advertising today.

When preparing for trial, good attorneys are prepared. They have a plan of attack and will often present their case from different angles. Advertising, over the long haul, should be approached in much the same fashion.

There’s an old saying, “facts tell and stories sell”. This is true whether in the courtroom or in advertising. Facts can and will validate your claims. However, it’s a good compelling story that makes it believable and memorable.

In the courtroom, lawyers will tell the same story from several different perspectives and angles. Advertising should use the same approach. Different stories told from different angles will have a different impact on different jurors/consumers.

In many famous court trials, the attorney that can tell the best story, using the cleverest lines, oftentimes win. Remember the famous line, “If it doesn’t fit – you must acquit”. Many experts agree that this one line is what swayed the jury.

The smoking gun is an irrefutable piece of evidence that convinces the jury “beyond a reasonable doubt” that your case is sound. In advertising, there are several ways to convince the public that your business is the one they should choose!

For your advertising to be successful, you must, over time, convince the public that your business is a viable and reputable option.

Does your advertising win in the court of public opinion?

Click here to read the Eight Ways to Validate Your Advertised Claims.