A Bottle of Happiness

by Scott Howard | Aug 18, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

Today, I’m going to share with you a story that began 135 years ago.

Coca-Cola taught the world to sing in perfect harmony and it also taught all of us some great marketing lessons!

On May 8th, 1886, Dr. John Pemberton sold his first glass of Coca-Cola at Jacobs Pharmacy in downtown Atlanta, Georgia.

Advertising has played a key role in Coke’s worldwide dominance since the beginning when John Pemberton invested $77 in advertising while he was only making a $50 profit.

135 years later, Coke, as it is affectionately known, is served 1.9 million times every day, and remains one of the most recognized brands in the world.

After decades and multitudes of marketing campaigns, Coca-Cola remains consistent in communicating one very powerful and effective message, “Pleasure”, using two very powerful words, “Enjoy” and “Happiness”. A product that makes people, smile, laugh, sing, and brings pleasure to our daily lives, never goes out of style.

A major reason for Coca-Cola’s success is the emphasis it places on the brand instead of the actual product. Coke rarely talks about the taste or ingredients, instead, it focuses on what the product does for you and to you. It doesn’t sell a drink in a bottle, it sells “happiness” in a bottle.

There are a number of marketing lessons local businesses can learn from Coca-Cola’s long history of marketing successes, as well as from their famous marketing blunder.

One of the most important lessons is the value of targeting emotions with your advertising. Who doesn’t remember the emotional appeal of a multi-ethnic choir standing on the hilltop singing, “I’d like to teach the world to sing…it’s the real thing.”

And what can be more nostalgic than the Christmas spirit…everyone has seen the mysterious Christmas gift-giver, Santa, drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Have you ever noticed the Coca-Cola bottler’s trucks are always clean and in excellent repair? They “walk the talk”.

No Knee-Jerk Marketing – Remember the failure of New Coke, followed by the rapid return of Classic Coke? Coca-Cola blinked when a sweeter Pepsi product was winning the Pepsi challenge in blind taste tests. Coke overreacted by sweetening their New Coke to the dismay of loyal customers who wanted “the real thing”.

The most successful marketers hold the course and do not overreact to competitors’ campaigns.

Click here to get the 8 Coca-Cola Marketing Lessons you can use to grow your business.

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8 Principles to Improve Your Life and Business

by Scott Howard | Aug 11, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading an article on Medium.com titled: 8 Pillars of a Satisfied and Happy Life. Here’s a link to it: https://medium.com/mind-cafe/8-pillars-of-a-satisfied-and-happy-life-847d98707e81

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon as I read it and decided that I wanted to add my spin on the 8 Pillars with both insights on how to apply this to you business and also reflections on how I do it personally.

On the business side of my life, I am the General Sales Manager of WOWO Radio, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I lead and coach 6 full time advertising sales people on our Local Sales Team. I moved into this position at the beginning of 2020, a few weeks before Indiana went into lock-down due to the pandemic. This is my 8th year with WOWO and I’ve been in the media and marketing world most of my life, although I do know how to drive a forklift and run a thermoformer too.

On the personal side, my wife and I have been married for over two decades and our 5 kids from our 1st marriages of made us grandparents multiple times. The people on my Local Sales Team at WOWO range in age from my age to my kids age and so I know most of what they go through both personally and professionally. The term, “Been There, Done That”, applies however the world has changed since I was a new Dad, some for the better, other changes not so much.

Pillar Number One from the Medium story:

1. Allow Yourself To Be Happy Before You “Succeed”

Absolutely. As you grow, you need to learn to enjoy the journey. Starting a new business is challenging all the time, not just in extreme circumstances. Give yourself credit for doing the work. One of the ways I measure the activity of the sales team I work with is the types of activity they are doing and how much they are doing. I know that if they do certain benchmarks, success will follow.

Similarly, my wife likes gardening and it makes her happy. It is hard work and the rewards take time to grow, but in the meantime, she is happy doing the work. How about you? Do you have benchmarks in your business or life that you use to measure success before the financial success comes in?

2. Have A Clear Vision

Goals need to be both short and long term. My team has a big picture goal that I shared at the beginning of the year, and then each month I break it down into smaller chunks for each person. Together I work with each of them to help guide them to achieve those smaller goals which will add up to the original long term goal for our team.

I’ve worked for others who had no vision or they were continually changing course which creates frustration and confusion. As a business owner, make sure your team understands the vision for your company too. When my wife and I plan a trip either for ourselves or to visit family, we agree on the important elements and then also plan the details. I learned several years ago how we best travel together and perhaps you and your spouse have learned what works best for you too.

3. Devote Yourself To Something Meaningful

I really dislike most advertising salespeople. At least the way they do business, too many are focused on themselves, not on their clients success. That has been the secret to my success. To help others succeed, using the wisdom, knowledge and experience I’ve learned. That’s one way I devote myself to something meaningful. I also am involved serving on a non-profit organizations board to give back to the community. How do you and your employees give of yourselves?

4. Become a Lifelong Learner

The day I stop learning is the day I stop living. My formal education is not documented with college degrees but I keep getting invited to speak at numerous higher education colleges and universities. Be curious. Learn from others, listen and ask questions and figure out how to apply it to your life, your business or the people around you.

5. Do Not Settle For Less

I’ve done this a couple of times. I’ve walked away from the world of advertising and took a break, but then I returned. Some people decide not to return to their dreams and by doing that they never know if they could accomplish what they once sought. On the personal side of life, this is very personal. On the business side, you are going to have to decide what is important and what isn’t. I used to work with an auto repair shop that was going to be open 24 hours a day. Then when the owner discovered that it wasn’t a sustainable way to run his shop, he settled for less hours. He also discovered how to merge what his customers really wanted with his vision and came up with a business plan that was unique, and he’s doing great now.

6. Remember To Have Fun

I took my WOWO Local Advertising Sales Team out for a morning of golf and lunch last month. It was a team building event but it was more than that. It was a time to set aside time to just have fun. It wasn’t a reward for hitting a certain goal, it wasn’t earned based on performance, it was simply a guilt free way to hang out on a day when others were working and have fun.

At work, at home, having fun is something we all need to include in our lives regularly, not just special events. How do you accomplish this?

7. Take Care Of Yourself

At the end of 2020, I decided to improve my health by dropping a few pounds and lost 20 pounds in about 6 months. I’ve maintained that and am slowing dropping a few more this year. Stress is the silent killer for everyone it seems. 99 out of 100 people you see this month have something stressful going on in their lives that you may never know about. You need to take care of your health, and encourage those who work for you to do the same. Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual health are all needing our attention. The H. R. Department at WOWO’s parent company, Federated Media sends out reminders about this and also provides resources that members of my team have made use of.

8. Cherish Those You Love

This is the last pillar from the Medium.com article, but it’s not the least important. I’m blessed to have loving relationships with my family and we work at making sure we stay in touch and express that love.

While the dynamics are usually different in a business setting, how would the culture improve if you really told your staff individually what you appreciated about them?

They need to know that they are appreciated and why. The companies that have problems retaining employees are the ones that have the worst company cultures. As a business owner or manager, you set the example. A genuinely positive work environment is also appreciated by your customers and clients too.

I hope you’ve learned a few things today, and perhaps go back and answer those questions I mentioned to see how 2021 can be even better for you and those around you.

Transactional vs Relational Customers

by Scott Howard | Aug 4, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

One is more profitable. One is more needy. Both are important to the overall success of a business. Understanding how to identify each type and how to turn transactional customers, when possible, into relational can be a huge boost to your business.

Every business has basically two types of customer profiles:

1.) Transactional Customers
       – Only care about price
       – Have no brand or business loyalty
       – Demand more, but pay less
       – Consider themselves buying experts
      – Often return merchandise or complain about service when they discover the “cheapest” solution was not the best solution.

Warning:
Don’t confuse “traffic” with sales. Because transactional customers contact you so often per purchase, their “traffic” can cause you to think the majority of your customers care only about price. Seldom is this the case.

2.) Relational Customers
     – Want a salesperson or expert they can trust
       – Need help and advice
       – Are more loyal to brands and businesses
       – Are less demanding and more profitable
       – Become repeat customers

Relational customers make fewer visits per purchase than transactional customers but generally account for a minimum of 50% of sales and more than 70% of profits.

The Bottom Line

We attract the kind of customers, relational or transactional, by design. If you would like to design a more profitable business and attract more relational customers, click here to see our Profitable Customer Marketing Checklist.

What I just shared with you arrived in a few hundred peoples email this morning. It’s this weeks edition of my Sound ADvice newsletter and you can have it delivered to your inbox too by filling out the info in the Sound ADvice newsletter box below.

Let me take a moment add a few more insights.

All of us have a little bit of transactional and relational buying habits in us as consumers. All depends on the item or service we are considering spending money on as to what our priorities are. The problem I see that too many businesses don’t understand is that they think price is a higher priority than trust when we are spending money.

Several years ago, I was doing a Customer Needs Analysis with a HVAC dealer and he was talking about their quality and experience and all these great things that were relational. But his marketing was focused on offering discounts and I asked him if he liked giving away money. He was a little insulted until I challenged him to market his company the way he talked to me. He was afraid to because his competition advertised price discounts and he was playing follow the leader.

I talked to another HVAC dealer and got them to minimize the discounts in their marketing and focus on trust and expertise. They took my advice and saw their sales double over time.

Want help figuring out how to market your business and you are in northeast Indiana? Contact me. I’ve been doing this successfully for years and am currently the General Sales Manager of WOWO radio. My team and I will be glad to help. Scott@WOWO.com is my email.

Radio is Back On The Road

by Scott Howard | Jul 28, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

It’s back.

Radio is back on the road.

In case you haven’t noticed this summer, a lot of us have been doing what we were discouraged from doing last summer.

Spring and Summer 2020 was the year of cancelled vacations, limited gatherings and working from home.

2021 has been much different. Forbes magazine proclaimed:

As The Country Opens Up, Radio Listening Is Returning To Pre-Pandemic Levels

And it’s true. Here’s more:

The pandemic forced millions to stay-at-home as businesses were temporarily closed, curtailing commuting hours. As working-remotely became a way of life, some office workers moved away from central cities to sparsely populated outer suburbs and second homes. These workers relied on Zoom calls, emails, chat rooms with more “personal time” to consume media.

I decided to ask my team about the way they have been doing meetings now and 90% of the meetings that they would have done in person in 2019 they are doing in person in 2021. What about the other 10%? Zoom meetings have created another option that they can used for meetings that is convenient in situations where time is a premium and distance would be challenging.

The Forbes article also addressed another issue that I’ve been hearing for years.

Even with the increase in web enhanced connected cars, the most popular source of audio infotainment in cars remains AM/FM radio. According to Edison Research in first quarter 2021, terrestrial radio accounted for 87% of all ad-supported in-car listening, followed by SiriusXM (6%), podcasts (5%), ad-supported Pandora (2%) and ad-supported Spotify (1%).

Our Federated Media radio stations, including mine, News/Talk WOWO have multiple methods for listeners to listen. WOWO can be heard on 1190am in the Indiana, Ohio and Michigan Tri-state area and if you are local to Fort Wayne, Indiana, you can also listen to WOWO at 107.5fm. Streaming online is another way WOWO listeners tune in, either on the WOWO App, or any of the other popular audio streaming apps, or by going to WOWO.com and click on the listen now button. There’s even a WOWO Skill for Alexa and our other Federated Media stations.

Yes, I’ve wandered off the subject of radio is back on the road. When you going wandering on the road this year, turn the radio on like nearly 90% of Americans are doing. And if you run a business and want to explore how to get these commuters to drive to your place, contact me, Scott@WOWO.com

The Value of a Single Customer

by Scott Howard | Jul 21, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

When a person walks through the doors of your business, in-person or online, and purchases something from you for the first time, at that moment, they become your customer, your patient, or your client.

The question is, what is the value of that individual to your business or practice? Is it the amount of profit from this one-time purchase or, is it the potential lifetime value they create?

Most experts will tell you that the cost to acquire a new customer is ten times more than what it costs to keep them.

With that said, most successful business owners have a well thought out advertising plan, or at minimum, an advertising budget intended to acquire and attract “new” customers, but very few have a plan to keep their “current” customers, patients, or clients.

Since we agree that keeping them is far less expensive than acquiring them, understanding the true Lifetime Customer Value should be enough to persuade you to at least consider implementing a plan to keep them.

There are 4 factors we need to consider when calculating a “Lifetime Customer Value”:

1) Average profit per individual sale including upsells and add-ons

2) # of purchases per year

3) # of years they will remain a customer

4) Word-of-Mouth – average # of people they persuade to do business with you

Paid media advertising is the best way to acquire new customers. Word-of-Mouth advertising is the best way to multiply your customers, and over-the-top customer service is the best way to ensure your customers become repeat customers.

Understanding the “Lifetime Value” of your customers will inspire you to create a strategic plan to serve each customer with more passion.

Click here to get our Lifetime Customer Value Worksheet to help you calculate the LCV of your customers.

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