Your Digital Marketing Is Bologna

Your Digital Marketing Is Bologna

Why do I say Your Digital Marketing Is Bologna?

Especially because I actually sell online digital marketing solutions along with the more traditional radio advertising solutions?

Because it hit me the other day, that those people who only sell digital marketing are often selling the same line of bull, excuse me, bologna that Yellow Pages people used to sell to prove they were a good advertising investment.

Laura from Bain and Company was quoted in an article from Google:

We need to move away from last-click attribution models to something that better reflects a consumer journey, which is nonlinear and has gaps in the data.

In order to tell you why this is important, we’re going to take a minute and explain the old phone book advertising sales technique.  I learned this years ago from a co-worker who used to sell yellow pages advertising before he made the conversion to radio advertising sales.

This is what a phone book used to look like

The phone book advertising sales people would tell the businesses that advertise to track their advertising by asking some variation of this simple question:

How did you get our (business) phone number?

More than half the time, sometimes as much as 90% of the time, the customer on the other end of the phone would say:

I got your number from the phone book.

Which was probably true.  I mean, they had no reason to lie, and yes they really did get your number from the phone book.

But that’s not the right question to ask to track your advertising.

Depending on the other advertising and marketing that the business was doing, along with their word of mouth reputation, the really successful businesses already were being considered by the customer and the phone book was simply a tool to get the phone number to call the business.

The phone book does absolutely nothing to brand a business, it’s just the way we get the phone number.   That’s what I used to say all the time until Google changed the internet and Facebook changed our social communication.

Since the advent of the internet and the demise of the paper-published-phone-book-yellow-pages-directory, the phone books are a lot skinnier.

Only old people have a phone book anymore.  And by old, I’m saying 85 year olds.

Those last couple of statements are broad generalizations.  Yes, there are some 70 year olds who still have a phone book in their junk drawer in their kitchen and a few other people too.

Digital marketers for the last several years have adopted the tactic that the old yellow page advertising sales people used to use to claim credit for making your business phone ring, or any of the other ways your future customers can contact you.

C. T. R. which stands for Click Thru Rate which is the digital equivalent of asking where do you get our phone number.

Both only measure the last action taken and totally disregard all the previous marketing and advertising efforts that led to that last action or conversion.

We are not robots, we are humans.  That’s why I look at all this marketing and advertising from a human relationship standpoint that takes all of the influencing factors into consideration.

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that I sell both radio and online advertising solutions with WOWO radio and Federated Media Digital Solutions and often use a combination of these to drive more business to my advertising partners.

While it is possible to look at Click Thru Rates and other tracking with your online and digital efforts, if I were to tell you that was the only way to determine your success, it would be a lie.  That’s why I say Your Digital Marketing Is Bologna.  There is really nothing wrong with it, just the way you are being sold and I’m sure you prefer an honest approach right?

Talk to me if you want to… talk.

Measuring Return on Investment is Fake Science

Measuring Return on Investment is Fake Science

Measuring Return On Investment Is Fake Science.  At least the way some people try and convince you that it’s measurable.  Or I could say Measuring Return On Investment of your advertising is problematic. Here’s why and what’s really important.

When I talk to business owners and managers about advertising options, they want to feel good about the money they are going to spend.

Did you see that?

They want to feel good.

They want to feel smart, confident, happy and wise.

Often times this feeling comes from examining facts and figures and from calculating the Return On Investment they will get from spending (investing) in advertising.

This is such an imperfect science that we should eliminate it all together but like I said, people want to feel good when they are going to spend money.

I was talking with a friend recently and we came up with a return on investment that looks like this:

For every $3000 he spends, he needs 3 sales to break even and the 4th sale produces a profit. This is based on 3 years of being in business and the knowledge that he has of his average sale, expenses and those operating numbers.

Great information, I wish more business owners knew this.

What we don’t know is how to accurately track the Return On Investment of each individual advertising and marketing message.

Here’s why: His truck is logoed up and has his contact info. When he is driving down the road or sitting in traffic, his truck is planting marketing seeds (impressions) on future customers. You can’t accurately measure the Return On Investment of his vehicle wrap can you?

He takes part in consumer trade shows. Hundreds of people have seen his display and dozens have spoken with him each year. Only a small percentage of the people who see his display (the ones he talks to and gets contact info from) are trackable for Return On Investment measurement.

Advertising and marketing messages overlap. We are exposed to a business via multiple methods which nullifies the results of tracking the Return on Investment of each individual advertising and marketing message.

The web was supposed to be the ultimate source of accurate and fool proof tracking, but it falls victim to the same limitations of measurement that off line marketing has.

You could try combining the two which might help, or produce some really weird and useless ad campaigns like this one from 2012 that tried combining Billboards with QR codes

So how do you deal with Return On Investment as a way to measure the success of your advertising campaign and more importantly how do you feel good about spending money on advertising?

Ask the right questions.

Know the limitations.

Deal with trustworthy people.

Here’s a question I usually ask when I am talking with a potential advertising partner:

How are we going to determine the success of your advertising?

And then we will dig in with the knowledge of the limitations I mentioned and come up with an agreeable formula.

Or sometimes we won’t.

In the situations where we know it is impossible to track a Return On Investment of dollars spent versus dollars earned, we look for other methods to determine the success.

Those methods can include:

Year to Year growth.

Perceived name recognition.

Anecdotal stories.

Increased website traffic.

I even have some advertising partners who spend money with me because of the extra stuff that I do that others don’t.  The marketing consulting and coaching that I really enjoy.

I strive to provide value that goes beyond dollars because I see things differently.   I have a few decades of experience working with a few hundred business people and organizations that were my real life laboratory in this science.

That’s why I say Measuring Return On Investment Is Fake Science. In the advertising and marketing world, it’s an ongoing combination of art and science with the knowledge that it is rare, possibly impossible to be 100% accurate.  But that’s okay.

Why WOWO Radio Will Outlast The Naysayers

Why WOWO Radio Will Outlast The Naysayers

NewsTalk 1190 WOWO Radio in Fort Wayne, Indiana is going to be 100 years old soon.  Despite the most recent doomsday report that AM and FM radio stations would be obsolete before WOWO hits 100, I’m here to present some real reasons that the report is both right and wrong.

Broadcast radio is struggling to remain relevant as consumers embrace streaming platforms, according to a groundbreaking study that examines the disruption to radio caused by digital services.

These trends are crippling radio, which is witnessing historic declines in its audience and its relevance to listeners and advertisers. To survive, radio must innovate, learn from other media, and take control of its path forward into the third decade of this century and beyond.

That’s the intro to a 30 page report that says radio stations like the ones I work for are going the way of the phone book.  Here’s a direct link to the entire report if you want to really dig in.

A dozen years ago, I was making the same prediction. Music radio was going to be a thing of the past.  At the time I worked with legendary Fort Wayne WXKE Radio Icon Doc West and Doc knew the answer to the problem of music radio stations losing listeners to streaming services and satellite radio stations. Live and Locally Relevant. That was the mantra that Doc used to stay at the top of the heap of radio personalities back then.

WOWO radio used to be a music station when I was a kid and the most listened to radio personality before Doc West was Bob Sievers. His morning program on WOWO had 90% of the available audience tuned in.  Farmers for the farm reports, kids like me, waiting to hear the weather, well, actually the school closings and everyone else listened to Bob on WOWO to know what was going on.  Bob and WOWO were Live and Locally Relevant.

My reason for predicting the demise of AM & FM radio back then was the digital age as auto manufacturers were adding internet to their vehicles.  More options for drivers to listen to their favorite music.  I knew it would be an evolving change, simply because it would take time for these internet connected cars to replace the older vehicles.

Your Car, a “radio on wheels”

But then something else has kicked in that I didn’t foresee. The Internet of Things.

The IoT as it is called is the interconnection of stuff via the web that we didn’t need to have connected to the web previously.

The ability for your phone to respond to voice commands was a preview of what we have now with Alexa and the other digital personal assistant devices that are becoming common place.

But back to my headline for this story:

Why WOWO Radio Will Outlast The Naysayers

WOWO radio and our sister stations at Federated Media are embracing the digital age. They were the first in Fort Wayne to jump in and offer the radio programming to listeners on what ever digital platform the listeners wanted.  Then they went a step further and began producing content that goes beyond what you can get by listening to the AM & FM radio signals.  Podcasts, Videos, and plenty of on-demand content that you and I can read, watch or listen to when we want, where we want.

Listen to what you want, when you want

Our music stations, in Fort Wayne including WMEE, K-105 and 98.9 The Bear have been Live and Locally Relevant for decades!  WOWO Radio with our News and Talk format for the past 20 years has a couple of national talk shows in the middle of the day, but every 30 minutes, we have Live and Locally Relevant news updates.  Fort Wayne’s Morning News with Charly Butcher starts the weekday and afternoons with the Pat Miller Program, bookend each weekday with Live and Locally Relevant programming.

In case you still need another antidote as to the importance of local media, during tragic events like Hurricane Harvey, it was the local Texas radio stations that were the dominate source of information. Television isn’t portable but radio is.

But what about the radio audience overall?  Is it shrinking?

After the report from the naysayer, two more reports came out to counter his claims.  You can read them here and here.

But what I care about and so do the businesses I work with who use WOWO Radio to advertise by inviting our listeners to become their customers, is what is the state of radio listenership in Fort Wayne Indiana?

I researched it for this story.  I have access to the Eastlan radio surveys from 2013 thru today that measures radio listener habits every 6 months in Fort Wayne.

Between 2013 and 2017, the total number of people age 12 and older who listen to a radio station in Metro Fort Wayne has grown by 25,000.

Boom.

Mic Drop.

396,000 weekly listeners in the spring of 2013.

421,000 weekly listeners in the spring of 2017.

How’s WOWO doing?  Every survey that I have access to (including before 2013) show that WOWO radio continues to lead the pack with over 100,000 listeners every week, and 98%+ are grown ups.

In about 8 or 9 years WOWO will be celebrating a century of service.  Now is the right time to join the other advertising partners who benefit from being on WOWO.  Contact me to find out how.

What’s This GeoFencing Thing People Are Talking About?

What’s This GeoFencing Thing People Are Talking About?

GeoFencing is a term that I have used regularly and repeatedly for the past 3 years and apparently others in the advertising and marketing world have too.

But it has caused a ton of confusion because some people who are selling this service don’t understand how it works, what it does and so today I’m here to set the record straight.

Save this article or podcast as a reference so when someone tries to sell you GeoFencing, you know if they as much or more than they do.

Here’s a modern day explanation of GeoFencing:

GeoFencing is drawing a border or fence around a location that is then used to identify potential customers because they stepped inside the GeoFence. 

Here’s how I offer GeoFencing as a digital marketing tool:

Along with the radio options I offer with WOWO Radio to invite potential customers to your business, I also have a number of online options I offer through the Federated Digital Solutions division of our company.

Custom Audience Targeting has been proven to be one of the most highly effective online options. We use Custom Audience Targeting to determine who to serve online digital banner ads to.  Depending on the business, we will use a combination of the following 4 tools to find the right people.

  1. Site Retargeting. This is serving ads to people who have visited your website.  We know that they are potential customers because they have visited your website and we want to keep you Top Of Mind after they leave, because a majority of first time visitors don’t buy on the first visit.
  2. Search Targeting.  These people are qualified because they did an internet search for you or the products or services you offer.  Search Targeting is an exclusive offered by our vendor partner for Digital Display Banner ads.  Keywords are an important criteria in finding the right people using this tool.
  3. Contexual Targeting. Also called Content Based Targeting.  Potential customers are identified because of their browsing habits.  The content someone reads online in an article or email has keywords and phrases that match the words and phrases for my advertising partner.
  4. GeoFence Targeting. When someone enters a certain geographic zone, border or fence, they are qualified to receive your ads.

I don’t sell these four tools separately.  We offer them as a complete solution, a Custom Audience Targeting solution to find the right people to serve ads to for your business to drive them to your website.

Here’s why we do it this way:

Each business is different and there is no “one size fits all” formula for using these 4 tools.

A business has to have enough organic traffic that it makes sense to allocate enough ads to the site retargeting tool and at the beginning of a campaign, many businesses don’t have enough.

That’s why the other 3 tools are also used.  Or at least 2 of the tools are also used.

See, GeoFencing isn’t appropriate for all business either.  Why?

Some business don’t have a physical location that their customers come to.  A plumber for example.  When you need a plumber, you don’t go visiting plumbers and ask them to follow you home.  You call them and usually you have no idea where their shop or office is.

I do have a couple of examples of some really cool GeoFencing campaigns that were highly effective.  One is a doctor who GeoFenced other doctors.  My doctor has a different business model and the offices we GeoFenced were using the traditional business model.  We were able to track new patients that came to my doctor after visiting the GeoFenced doctors.

Pretty cool, right?

How does your phone identify you as someone who qualifies to see these ads?

Simple answer: Location Services.

This is built into all of our smartphones and most of the apps on our phone use it.

Your phone’s technology is telling others where you are.

When you (your phone) goes certain places, you are being tracked.

Who is tracking you?

 

Facebook for one. Google for another.  Any app that relies on knowing where you are to provide you with important information.

I just took a quick check of the apps on my android smartphone and some of the apps that are tracking me include:

  1. My camera
  2. Chrome web browser
  3. My Contacts
  4. Emergency Alerts
  5. Facebook
  6. my bank app
  7. all things Google
  8. my hair cutting app
  9. Xfinity Hotspots app
  10. iHeart Radio app
  11. LinkedIn app
  12. Google Maps (duh)
  13. Facebook Messenger app
  14. My car insurance app
  15. Panera app
  16. Starbucks app
  17. Google Photos
  18. Redbox app
  19. Regal Cinema app
  20. the Weather Channel app
  21. Twitter
  22. Instagram
  23. YouTube
  24. Yelp
  25. a couple of local news apps
  26. a couple of national news apps

Turns out that nearly every app on my phone is tracking me.  And the same is true for you.

The Location Services app built into your phone that communicates with the GPS systems that allows your phone and the apps to know where you are so your phone and the apps can tell you where the closest Starbucks or Panera is located without you having to know where exactly you are.

This location service also is important when there is bad weather heading our way to alert us, or if we are using our phone’s navigation service to guide us down the road. When you post on social media and it asks you if you want to include your location, that’s all possible due to this same technology.

 

GeoFencing by itself is not a marketing solution.  But it is a marketing tool that when used properly can be pretty powerful at finding the right people to target your online ads to.

Before wrapping this up, I’m going to clear up a couple more misconceptions about GeoFencing and the rest of this Custom Audience Targeting that I offer.

  1. Everyone that walks into your GeoFence is not necessarily going to start receiving your ads. You are buying a certain quantity of ad impressions and there are usually going to be more people who enter your GeoFence than you have bought ads for.  I can show you the formula we use that estimates the number of people you will reach with your ads.
  2. The ads don’t just pop up all over your phone instantly.  That would be annoying.  However there are plenty of apps that are advertising supported along with websites that have space for ads and that’s where your ads show up.
  3. There is a Huge Difference in the methods and capabilities of both the companies and the sales people that offer digital advertising campaigns.  I have seen the programs offered by local Fort Wayne radio stations, the “phone book companies (Dex & Hibu) and independent digital advertising agencies, even some long standing traditional ad agencies and through thorough research and verification by myself and other experts, in nearly every case, no one was able to provide a better service than what I have with the Custom Audience Targeting Digital Ad Solution with Federated Digital.

That’s enough for now, want to know more and see if this is appropriate for your company?  Reach out to me and let’s talk.

 

 

Do You Want Our Money?

Do You Want Our Money?

Today, I’m going to talk to you from my generational perspective and I have one question for you:

Do You Want Our Money?

I am a young Baby Boomer.  I am also a WOWO Radio Listener.

And I work for WOWO in the advertising sales department. That means I am the dude you can talk to about buying advertising for your company on WOWO.  You can email me directly at my work email.  It’s Scott@WOWO.com

But the rest of this piece is about me and my generation, the Baby Boomers.  I just read an article from Mediapost that says that too many businesses are losing out because they are ignoring the Baby Boomer Generation with their advertising.

As a member of that age group and one that also deals with requests from advertising agencies, I totally agree.

First of all, let me set the stage with some facts from the Mediapost article and elsewhere. 

The Boomer markets (those between 53 and 71 years of age) are comprised of approximately 78 million customers.

That is the biggest demographic group (age wise) in this country. It’s also the group that is spending the big bucks that younger generations wish they had to spend.

According to a Pew survey, Boomers are outspending every other affluent category by $1 trillion per year. It was predicted that annual spending would exceed $4.6 trillion per year by 2015, and it has. The aging Boomer customer is today’s target population and, even more so, tomorrow’s.

The Mediapost article talks about the digital disconnect:

Seventy percent of all Baby Boomers surf online. It’s estimated that those 50 and up spend more than $7 billion every year in online purchases. Several media surveys discovered that approximately 17% of all those surveyed in the 45 and over age groups believe that online advertising is intended for them.

Look at those numbers for a second.  70% of all of us Baby Boomers surf online.  That includes the retired ones, by the way.  But less than 20%, the number I quoted is only 17% of Boomers believe online advertising is intended for them. 

This is a wake up call to anyone under the age of 50 who is responsible for advertising and marketing.  I don’t care if you run your own business, your parents business or work for an advertising agency…  you need to pay attention and understand there are a whole helluva lot of people over 50 that can make you successful if you simply invite them to spend money with you instead of ignoring us.

A few more quotes from the Mediapost article:

Be willing to change your frame of reference (paradigm shift). Don’t let “Boomer customer myopia” interfere with an intelligent approach to improving Boomer customer satisfaction.

In other words, the first step is recognizing the opportunity that I’m talking about and be willing to adjust your marketing tactics to invite Baby Boomers to spend their money with you. 

Avoid using the age of target markets as the determining factor… Use your knowledge of life stage changes to determine your approach to service and marketing communications improvement.

I’m going to share with you what they mean regarding Life Stages in a second.  But first a couple of words on how I can help you.

In the digital world, I have been advising companies for the past dozen years on how to improve their ability to be found with some basic Search Engine Optimization practices that remain relevant.  I even stepped away from the radio world a couple of times to work full time in the web and social media worlds.

Today, along with connecting you with Baby Boomers via WOWO radio, I also have some proven digital marketing solutions that I can offer through the Federated Digital Solutions division of Federated Media.  I saw proven because I have the data to show the results and we can talk about how to create a custom digital solution for your company if that is appropriate.

And then there is the mighty 1190 WOWO radio.  Now over 90 years old as an AM radio station with one of the biggest audiences in Northeast Indiana including Fort Wayne, Allen County and surrounding counties for miles and miles, stretching into Ohio and Michigan.

Listeners can also listen to WOWO locally on 107.5 FM and online via their favorite apps or the WOWO.com website.

But here’s what you need to know about connecting your business with Baby Boomers via WOWO radio.

It’s a no-brainer.  Ever since I started with WOWO in 2013, the weekly total local audience according to the ratings service has been over 100,000 listeners.

There are a couple other stations in town that have over 100,000 weekly listeners but they have a significant number of kids that make that total add up to 100,000.

WOWO’s listenership according to the ratings is 99% grown-ups.  Adults  age 25 and older who buy stuff.

Half of those adults are Baby Boomers like me. 

By comparison, 2nd most listened to radio station by Baby Boomers less than half the number of listeners. If you want to know why this is important, take a look or listen to last week’s advertising nugget about reach and frequency.  WOWO actually reaches more Baby Boomers than any other Fort Wayne radio station, by an over 2 to 1 margin.

Just recently I was negotiating with a media buyer that wants to buy advertising that will reach 25 to 54 year olds.  That is a popular sweet spot in a lot of advertising agency mindsets.  And sure that may have been the correct sweet spot to target a couple decades ago when Baby Boomers were that age, it’s very limiting thinking now as I have just demonstrated.

Before I wrap this up, I want to expand on why companies need to consider Lifestyles not just age demographics.

I’m 57.  

A good friend of mine, Kelly is also 57.  His daughter is heading off to her 1st year of college right this very moment.

My wife and I have 5 kids from our previous marriages and 9 grandkids.  While Kelly’s daughter is starting her college days at Indiana University, our oldest grandkid is starting his college days at Purdue University.  Our youngest kid is 29 with three boys.

Yes, Kelley and his wife and me and my wife are all Baby Boomers but with very different lifestyles going on.

I also tend to have a wide spread of ages in my friendship circle.  The oldest is 18 years older than me.  I also hang out with those that are 30 years younger than me.

It’s not just the age, but the lifestyle that you need to pay attention to when planning your advertising.

I’ve done enough talking, I want to hear from you as I ask once again on behalf of myself and the other 78 million Baby Boomers, “Do you want our money?”