by Scott Howard | Oct 3, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
The basics of advertising are pretty simple. It’s all about Reach and Frequency and some people will include the Message and Target.
Here’s how that formula works:
If you reach enough of the right target people with enough frequency with the right message your advertising will work and you’ll be rolling in the dough!
With this in mind, most advertising salespeople will put together a schedule of ads that will be seen or heard by a lot of people who could be your customers if the message is compelling.
There is nothing wrong with the basics. You can apply it to any form of advertising. But the advertising you spend money on is only partially responsible for the success of your business. That’s why we’re going to go Beyond The Advertising Basics and share The ScLoHo Process. 
I look at the big marketing picture and your paid advertising is just a portion of that.
Marketing includes many different elements that add up to how you and your company are perceived by the public.
Every time a person thinks about you/your company, an impression is being made, either positive, negative, or somewhere in between.
These impressions add up to create the overall image of you/your company.
What causes a person to think about you/your company?
- A conversation about a competitor of you/your company.
- An overheard remark about you/your company, or your competitor.
- Online via social media, or research activity about you/your company, or your competitor.
- Advertising for you/your company, or your competitor.
- A hands-on experience with you/your company, or your competitor.
- Other sensory experiences that trigger a thought about you/your company, or your competitor. (The aroma of freshly brewed coffee, the sound of an ambulance, the touch of a little child’s sticky hands).
Okay, let’s get down to the nitty gritty. There are internal and external elements to your marketing.
Let’s start with the internal:
- First customer contact:
- Telephone? How is the phone answered? What is the mood and tone of voice of the person answering? Is it inviting and welcoming or does the person answering sound rushed, bothered, or unfriendly.
- Same concepts for your walk in traffic. What are the impressions you and your staff project to your clients and potential clients? What improvements need to be made?
- Follow up and service. Is there anything lacking? Nearly everyone and every business have at least one area that could use improvement. Find out what could be improved with you/your company.
- Ask, and work to improve, instead of making excuses. There is a bit of truth in every complaint. Also find out what people are not complaining about.
External marketing. This is often what we call advertising. Questions to ask:
- Is it consistent? Do you present a uniform picture to the public of what you are about and why they should do business with you? (The opposite is a scattered, all things to all people, confusing, and blurry image for you/your company).
- Are you using the most effective mediums to leverage your time and resources?
- Who are your most likely customers? Are you inviting them to use you? How are you doing it?
- There are strengths and weaknesses of Radio, TV, Billboards, Internet, Newspapers, Direct Mail, Magazines, and each one of these are effective for the right business, when matched up properly with realistic goals and objectives.
- Networking is one way to get the word out about you/your company, if you understand what it can and cannot do. Give the people you network with the information so they will:
- want to recommend you to others (EMOTIONS)
- understand why to recommend you to others (FACTS)
You/your company, does not operate in a vacuum. Consumers need to know why they should buy from you/your company instead of your competition.
EVERYONE HAS COMPETITION. I want to know why I should give YOU my money instead of spending it on something else or somewhere else.
Too many businesses fail because they fail to recognize this principle.
And finally: Understand that your marketing and advertising needs to be designed to BUILD RELATIONSHIPS with current and future customers.
Building relationships take time and exposure. People want to feel good when they spend their money and it is a combination of facts and emotion that produces that good feeling. The more personal a message is, the easier it is to build that relationship.
This ScLoHo Process of going Beyond The Advertising Basics is my favorite way to work because it is a complete, big picture way of making sure you and your business are growing. It’s not easy and not everyone I work with are willing to dig deep and go beyond those basics I mentioned.
I can work with you either way. But now you are getting a peek at what is available if you are willing to go full in with the ScLoHo Process.
by Scott Howard | Sep 29, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Last time I talked about the ScLoHo Advertising Process with the First Step: Who are You?
I met last week with a gentleman who started his own company less than a year ago and is still in the process of figuring that out because he is trying to match what he wants to do with what people will pay him to do that is profitable and at the same time look towards the future with what he wants to be doing in 5 years.
It’s tough at first, but everyone who is starting a business goes through it and as the years pass, you will continue to change and tweak. 
Today, I’m going to jump forward and dig deeper into the WHO are YOU?
As I help you formulate an advertising and marketing plan there are certain key considerations that will determine what is important and what you should and shouldn’t invest your money on.
First Question: Are you open year round? Most businesses are. The heating and cooling company, the doctors and dentists, the retail stores, they are open 12 months a year. They have seasons, and slow times but they are still open for business.
If the answer to Are you open year round? is yes, then you need a 12 month plan. Every single month you should be visible and inviting people to spend money with you.
Not every business is open year round. Some businesses are strictly seasonal. The Halloween stores that pop up in September but will be gone in November are one example. The guy with the Christmas tree lot set up near Jefferson and Illinois roads in Fort Wayne won’t be selling trees in January, but he’ll be back next year. These are definitely not year round businesses but they are open each year for a period of time.
Seasonal businesses should not spend money advertising during their off season, after their season is over.
Which brings me to a 3rd category.
Event Oriented Businesses.
An example that I work with is the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. They are one of the finest musical entertainment organizations I’ve ever seen and they are one of Fort Wayne’s treasures. You can buy one of a combination of season ticket packages or you can buy tickets to individual concerts. While it would make sense on one hand to advertise year round, every week, a better investment of their limited advertising funds is to promote individual concerts, which is what we do. Event Oriented Businesses need a different advertising strategy than Year Round Business.
If you are not having these kinds of conversations with the people who help you with your advertising and marketing then you may only be a “customer”, not an advertising partner in their eyes.
Sadly, I know some professional advertising salespeople in town who only know how to sell, but not dig deep and help figure this stuff out.
Recently I met with a friend who spent $2000 to promote an event and she wasted about $1500 of her budget on a TV campaign. We asked people who attended her event how they heard about it and when I was with her, no one said they saw the TV ads. She asked me if WOWO radio would have been the better advertising choice and my first response was no. Based on the conversations we had with people who attended her event, she needed to invest more in online marketing solutions and, well, we’ll dig deeper soon so I can help her plan for next year.
Want help digging deep? Ask me.
by Scott Howard | Sep 27, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Today, I’m going to start to share how I work with:
The First Step in the ScLoHo Advertising Process: Who Are YOU?
The concept of one size fits all is a big fat lie.
Adjustments have to be made to accommodate the individual.
This is true in most things in life including your advertising and marketing, which I’ll get to in a second.
First a couple of examples in real life…
My wife and I have our own cars. I am a foot taller than her. I can’t get in her car until I push the drivers seat back. I don’t fit. When she drives mine, she does the opposite.
Coffee. I am a simple guy. I drink it black unless I’m at a coffee shop and then I often order a white mocha. 
The Mrs? Never a black coffee. Everything from an iced coffee to a hot one has a special combination of chocolate drizzle, sprinkles, 2 or 3 pumps of vanilla, (I don’t know, but she knows exactly the correct number)…
I’m not picking on my wife, I’m just pointing out that all of us have our own desires and the one size fits all concept doesn’t work in most areas of our lives. Neither one of us would be happy if we had to always live with the others preferences.
You need to approach your advertising and marketing with this custom approach too.
This means you probably shouldn’t copy what your competitor is doing. Why?
Because there are differences between you and them that are just as different as my wife and I’s coffee shop orders.
But there are also some similarities that you need to be aware of.
How do you know what to do and what not to do and sort thru all the advertising and marketing options?
Slow down Skippy.
Take stock of you and your business. Not just the physical stock sitting on the shelves, your tangible inventory, but the guts and grit.
Why are you in business? What business are you really in? What does success look like for you?
These are just some of the beginning questions that need real answers. Problem is that you are most likely to closely involved in your business to be objective.
That’s where I like to come in. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share with you how and if you want me to personally work with you and your business, let me know.
by Scott Howard | Sep 22, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
A great article from Mediapost that I read this week was about Baby Boomers defying certain stereotypes, especially when it comes to tech and online activity.
Numbers show that Baby Boomers are a valuable customer that you can reach online
Since 1/2 of WOWO radio’s huge audience is the Baby Boomer generation, it makes sense to share this with you and as WOWO is my radio station that I work for and it also helps explain what I shared earlier regarding Why Does A Radio Guy Also Sell Digital Marketing Solutions.
Here’s a few highlights:
- Of the many misconceptions about baby boomers, perhaps the one most perilous to marketers today is that those in the demographic aren’t tech savvy. In fact, according to a 2016 Boston Consulting Group survey, boomers’ top 20 favorite brands include Amazon, Apple, Dell, HP, LG, Samsung and Sony. In my own personal experience as a Boomer, I use Amazon weekly and have bought products from Dell, HP, LG and Samsung. (Sorry Apple & Sony).
- …contrary to stereotypes, aging doesn’t cause us to lose long-term memory. Instead, the change is a reduction in memory recall. For marketers, repetition is an effective way to ensure messages are properly processed and later recalled. This is why the Custom Audience Targeting with Digital Display Ads I offer works well, just like the ads I air on WOWO for my advertising partners.
- In fact, a study by visual engagement analytics firm Sticky found that baby boomers engage with digital ads significantly longer than do millennials. Again, this explains the success I’ve seen with my advertising partners who are inviting older adults to their websites.
Want to know more? Let’s talk.
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 | Sep 15, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo Sales Tips, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Pay attention as I tell you a true story and see if it applies to your business:
I’ve got a great client, they are a true advertising partner.
Our partnership began last year when I volunteered to help them formulate an advertising and marketing plan that they could use with me or without me.
They decided to use me and a few of the advertising solutions I have available thru my radio station, WOWO and our digital division, Federated Digital Solutions.
I also help them plan and buy other advertising from others. I am their unpaid advertising consultant. But I am going beyond the advertising world with them.
I want them to be as successful as possible and anything I can do to help them to help their customers solve their problems is what I am attempting to do.
I have observed a disconnect at times in how they are communicating with the potential customers that are calling them, and it’s costing them business. 
Oh, they are very successful despite this, but they can do better.
They are a service business. If you need them to fix something at your home, you call them and they send out a technician who will diagnose the problem and offer to fix it.
But here’s where I have been observing the disconnect…
I have witnessed phone calls where a potential customer calls and asks questions and what they really want is their problem solved. Not a conversation over the phone or even possible answers over the phone.
If you are a service business and your phone is ringing with potential customers on the other end, they have problems they want you to fix. This wasn’t happening all the time with my advertising partner.
I listened to calls that the service manager took and he wasn’t setting up appointments for his techs. I listened to phone calls that the owner answered and they weren’t consistently setting up appointments either.
Advertising can make the phone ring. It’s up to you and your crew to convert those calls into happy customers.
You may not be aware that there is a problem. My advertising partners were not aware. Business was booming and they were busy.
But they could be busier.
So I’m going to do a training session with the office staff. I’m going to teach them how to answer the phone.
I’m going to teach them to answer the phone when a potential customer calls with a problem and set an appointment so they can help solve those problems and create more happy customers.
I care about this stuff. You should too, if you own or run a business. Are you missing some customers?
Want help? Reach out to me. My contact info is below.
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
TuneIn
Deezer
CastBox