by Scott Howard | Jul 22, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
I rarely rant publicly about stuff like this. Oh, I used to… a few years ago I called out Arby’s and JC Penney. It got some attention. But today, I’m going to do it again and this time Panera Bread’s online marketing department is getting my attention.
Over the weekend I received an email from Panera urging me to use a reward I earned. It was $5 off an order and expired on July 21st. So Tuesday my scheduled meetings allowed me to visit Panera for lunch. $5 off would mean about half off.
The email
I stopped in at noon, they swiped my Panera key fob and I placed my order. But there was no discount. They checked and said the reward was only for online orders. I missed that detail. My fault.
A little disgruntled but hungry, I went ahead with my order. As I was eating, I thought, what can I order online before I leave to take home? So I checked.
My online rewards dashboard
See the Order Online link in the upper right corner? I clicked it and here’s what I got:
Looks like No Soup For You!
Okay, Panera, this is bad. Most people will not speak out about this circle of marketing failure. But then, I’m not like most people.
I have worked fulltime in internet marketing and I know that sometimes those IT people don’t communicate with the marketing people. But they should. And unless your website is really broke, don’t do “system maintenance during your prime time busy hours. Do it overnight on the weekend. Not lunchtime on a weekday.
End of rant.
As a side note:
This week I am organizing an email campaign for one of my advertising partners that kicks off in August that was pretty simple. And I’m also organizing another online campaign that includes weekly email offers, a text club offer, YouTube video mentions and social media contesting with Facebook and Twitter in addition to radio ads on WOWO. We’ll kick this off next month for a local movie theater.
Both of these will be fun, not frustrating.
by Scott Howard | Jul 21, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Ever wonder why some businesses succeed and others fail? There is an easy answer and we’ll tackle that today with a short answer and some homework for you to do.
This applies to individuals too, by the way, so just because you don’t own a business, hang on and you might learn something.
Businesses aren’t born out of thin air. They begin with an idea. 
Actually many of them begin with a problem and that leads someone to start thinking of ideas on how to solve that problem.
Those ideas can lie dormant, or they can grow up into a dream.
However having a dream is just the first stage of a successful business. It’s also the first stage of a business that fails.
Let’s continue.
To convert a business dream into reality takes some organization and one important step is to have solid goals. Some never progress to this stage and can’t really be called a legitimate business, but we’ll focus on those that take their dreams and formulate goals for their success.
Ideas > Dreams > Goals > Plans
Now we have the tough part, planning and working your plan.
You may get extremely lucky and your original plan may work out perfectly, but as I said that would be extremely lucky. A more realistic scenario is that your original plan is going to need to be revised and adjusted as you move forward.
Some of it is just some tweaks, others may be complete overhauls. You may need to rethink and change some of those plans due to changes completely out of your control such as technology changes that I mentioned the other day. You may need to make changes for any number of reasons but believe me, changes will need to be made sometime.
The reason most businesses either succeed or fail lies in how well they convert those dreams into reality and then adjust those goals and plans accordingly as the world around them changes. 
Your homework assignment is to go back and start writing down the ideas that lead to the dreams that evolved into goals and the plans that you put in place to make it all work. If you have never done this exercise, you really, really need to do this ASAP.
Need help figuring this out? Ask me, I’ve been helping people do this for quite a while.
by Scott Howard | Jul 16, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Last week I meet with a friend and as we were talking, Bryan mentioned he wanted to created T.O.M.A. for his business locally.
He actually said TOMA. It’s pronounced “Toe-Ma”. It is shorthand for Top Of Mind Awareness.
That’s an excellent goal for a business to have. It needs to be refined and tweaked but the general principle is there.
Top Of Mind Awareness is what prompted my wife to spend a few hundred dollars this month.
So what is T.O.M.A.?
Top of Mind Awareness is being at the top of a potential customers mind when they have a need for your services or products.
On the 4th of July weekend, the temperature in our house climbed to 83 degrees. We have our central air set at 73 so we knew something was wrong. Three companies came to mind.
- Rolf-Griffin. They were the company we used over the past 8 years at our previous house.
- Doc Dancer. They have been around “forever” and I know the 2nd generation owners and see Nancy and Bill at least once a month. I went to school with them 30 years ago too.
- Brockmans. They installed central air in a house I bought 13 years ago and left a good impression.
All of these businesses do some advertising of various sorts along with several other heating/cooling contractors.
All of them were Top of Mind with my wife and I, in a positive way and that was the order they were called last week.
Actually only the first two were called.
The woman my wife spoke with at Rolf-Griffin could not find us in their system, even though we had been an ongoing customer for 8 years. A service call was going to be a minimum of $99 plus parts, labor and who knows what else. That $99 was to be paid no matter what. My wife, who is a pretty good negotiator, hang up in frustration.
Call number 2 was much better. Doc Dancer would give us a new customer discount on their service call fee and they fit us in that afternoon. That’s why Brockmans never got a call. They were 3rd on our T.O.M.A. list.
There are many ways to build Top Of Mind Awareness and we’ll discuss those in the days ahead. Also I need to share more about this experience in another article or two.
Let me ask you this: What are you doing to build Top Of Mind Awareness for you and your business? Have you even thought about this? Want help? Contact me.
by Scott Howard | Jul 15, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
See this picture?
My daughter shared it on her Facebook page Monday night. Actually she shared a post from the Facebook page of the Roanoke Village Inn that included this picture. She and her family lived a few blocks from there before they moved west.
I saw the picture and shared it on Twitter Tuesday morning:
Tuesday evening, I was notified that it was picked up in a story on Mashable.com which you can read here and scroll down a bit.
While this picture went slightly viral, it was a bit of luck and not planning. The Village Inn probably had no idea that the picture went beyond their 742 followers.
There is a marketing lesson for those of you who are trying to “go viral” and hit it big. It’s not likely to happen. Or if it does, it is fate or luck and do you want to bet your business success on that?
For help with a real marketing plan, reach out to me.
And the Village Inn is scheduled to reopen today after spending Tuesday cleaning up, which is good.
by Scott Howard | Jul 14, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
I saw another statistic last week that makes me glad I don’t work in the television business. The article from AdAge.com starts with the headline, “Televisions Are No Longer the Screen of Choice for Kids”.
Who are the kids they are referring to? Well, it appears that they are toddlers, which are age 1 to 5 or so. I have 8 grandkids and 6 of them are in this age range. 
Instead of watching on the tv in the living room, family room, or where ever room, what are they watching and where?
Looks like tablets are winning big. The web is winning big, and who is losing? Traditional TV Broadcast Networks. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS.
30 years ago I saw the rise of cable TV which was the beginning of conditioning us to pay for extra tv channels even though we could watch 3 or 4 channels with the most popular programs free.
Look at the shows that have been getting the Emmy nominations and awards the past several years and you’ll see what I have witnessed as more and more of the shows are only available via cable or internet.
A former coworker of mine from the radio advertising world now works in tv advertising. His job is to get results for people who give him money for advertising on his tv station, just like mine is to get results for people who give me money for advertising on my radio station.
But the odds of success are drastically stacked against him. The last time I watched any program on his TV station was a sporting event. Last winter.
Of the traditional broadcast TV networks, I watch CBS the most, followed by ABC, NBC, PBS and FOX. But when you add up the actual hours each week, there are some cable channels that get more viewing time than any of those broadcast networks.
You’ve already lost me as a potential customer if you are only using my local broadcast tv channels because, I don’t watch with enough frequency to have an impact. The 10 or so cable networks I tune into at least once a week are not being used by local businesses to reach me either.
Hang on a second, I started talking about toddlers, 5 year olds, the kids of my kids, and now I’m talking about my baby boomer TV viewing habits…
The point is, the broadcast television networks with their local stations have already lost the baby boom generation which is currently age 51 to 69. We are the ones who watched TV before cable. My kids, the millennials are the ones who are switching from cable tv to web tv services like Netflix and Hulu. Their kids, the ones the study talks about, we honestly have no idea how they’ll be watching what we call TV when they become adults in 15 years.
But the death of local TV advertising has already begun…
by Scott Howard | Jul 13, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
There are times when I need to walk a fine line.
In the marketing worlds I work in there are times when something is just not good.
The two areas I work in these days are radio broadcasting and digital marketing with WOWO Radio and Federated Digital Solutions. This isn’t a new field for me, I’ve worked in radio for decades and the digital world for 10+ years.
Click on this picture to read the sad story about this “ugly baby”
The past couple of years, I have had to tactfully tell business owners that their baby is ugly.
It’s hard. Recently I had a former advertiser show me his new website and while it was an improvement on his previous site, it was still lacking many of the elements needed to bring it up to todays standards.
And I’m not just talking about my standards, I’m talking about industry standards.
I’m going to give you a couple of websites that you can use to see if your website measures up or if it needs an overhaul. Be prepared to learn a few things.
First off, there is the mobile-friendly test. Google will now punish your website search ranking if your site is not mobile friendly. Click here and find out if your site passes. Oh, Yahoo and Bing are also penalizing you too.
Another place to check is Hubspot’s Marketing Grader. You’ll get a report with a score and suggestions on what to do.
This is a good starting place but instead of simply relying on these automated tools, you really need a professional evaluation done by a human being (ME) that can sort through these reports, do a few other checks and evaluations and tell you if you have an ugly baby or just need to give her a good cleaning.
We can also talk about the purpose of your website to determine if you need to hire a professional team and create a custom site, hire a smaller developer, or perhaps do it yourself.
Are you prepared to see if you have an ugly baby of a website? Click on those links and then let’s talk.
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