by Scott Howard | Jul 11, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
As a member of the WOWO radio advertising sales team, I have some insider information to share with you.
As a member of the Fort Wayne, Indiana community for the past 20 years, I have some insight to share with you.
As a marketing professional who has worked for other media companies, including those that competed with WOWO, I have some perspective to share with you.
As a Baby Boomer who grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where WOWO radio is located, I also have some history to share with you.
At the conclusion of this article, you will have a greater understanding of WOWO, Fort Wayne, and if we should talk about your business using WOWO to invite people to become your customers.
Twice a year, Fort Wayne radio stations receive the results of an independent ratings survey that tells us who listens and when they listen. Not in any scary, meta-data manner, but in demographic and geographic terms. June 29th, I received the results of the Spring 2018 rating survey.
I was not surprised by the data. I look for a couple of things such as the total number of listeners each week. When a business advertises with a radio station, there is a finite number of people that will hear their ads. Same is true with any advertising medium.
So I want to know how many total listeners WOWO has and once again, WOWO is listed as the radio station heard in Fort Wayne that has the largest number of listeners. Over 99,000 every week just in the 6 counties that include Allen County, where Fort Wayne is, and the 5 Indiana counties that are adjacent to Allen. That includes, Adams, Wells, Huntington, Whitley and Dekalb Counties in Indiana.
WOWO has listeners beyond those counties including the Indiana counties of Grant, Wabash, Kosciusko, Noble, Lagrange, Steuben, and several Ohio counties. The listeners in those counties are not included in the survey, but they are there. We know this because of the advertisers and listeners tell us.
The rating survey also tells me that 95% of WOWO’s radio listeners are grown-ups, age 25 and older.
Again WOWO leads the pack, we have nearly 30,000 more grown-ups listening every week compared to the next most popular station that has less than 70,000 listeners aged 25 and older.
Charly Butcher and the Fort Wayne Morning News Team have nearly 50,000 weekly grown-ups listening to WOWO.
So does Glenn Beck, whose 3 hour national talk show comes on at 9am.
Rush Limbaugh’s 3 hour national talk show has over 60,000 weekly listeners on WOWO between noon and 3pm and local WOWO Talk Show host Pat Miller has nearly 55,000 listeners every week between 3 and 6 in the afternoon.
There is no other radio station in Fort Wayne that has this massive number of listeners week after week, of grown-ups. Remember it’s the grown-ups that have the money, not the 13 year olds.
Why is WOWO so popular?
WOWO is a legacy radio station in Fort Wayne. When I was a kid, WOWO played music and the disc jockeys were allowed to be personalities. Bob Sievers, the legendary morning show host would tell me if school was delayed, but hundreds of farmers all across Indiana, Ohio and Michigan also listened to hear the farm reports.
In the evening, I listened to Ron Gregory when I was supposed to be doing my homework and enjoyed his wry sense of humor and puns.
But the WOWO of today is different. Now over 90 years on the air, mostly on 1190am, WOWO has been broadcasting a news and talk format for a couple of decades.
Politically, Northeast Indiana, or “WOWO-Land” as it is called to include the entire tri-state area leans conservative. With the line-up of conservative talk show hosts like our own Pat Miller along with national radio personalities, Glenn, Rush and Sean Hannity and Buck Sexton at night, WOWO has a strong format that attracts grown-up listeners.
We are not totally a conservative part of the country. Our mayor is serving his 3rd term as a member of the Democratic Party and his predecessor also from the Democratic Party served as mayor for two terms. The City and County Councils however lean Republican.
Our Fort Wayne Morning News with Charly Butcher, isn’t really a talk show, more of a news program with interview segments lasting 3 minutes or less, because it’s jam packed with 4 newscasts, 6 traffic and weather reports, 2 sports updates and 2 farm reports every hour! Interview segments with our Mayor and other city and county officials, state government leaders including the Governor and our Congressmen and Senators are featured live each week along with what ever else is timely and appropriate. And yes, just like when I was listening as a kid, WOWO still has school delays and closings in the morning when the weather is bad.
95% of WOWO listener tune in weekdays between 5 in the morning and 6 at night. I call in WOWO Primetime. 70% listen on the weekends.
There are other stations in Fort Wayne that are targeting the same age demographic as WOWO, but they have half as many or even a third as many weekly listeners.
There are also other stations that have a news or talk format, but again their total number of listeners is a tiny fraction of the weekly listeners that WOWO has according to the latest radio survey I’m looking at.
By the way, this dominance of WOWO is not new, it’s been consistent during the 15 plus years I have worked for WOWO and before when I worked for the other radio station companies in Fort Wayne.
All this information is good and great and wonderful, but how does WOWO perform for business that advertise with us?
I’m impressed and that’s not a bunch of hype. Because of all that I have already mentioned, there are certain characteristics and options that I have with WOWO that are not available anywhere else in Fort Wayne that have created phenomenal results for advertisers that partner with us. Nothing is 100%, but compared to other stations I have worked for since 1986, I don’t have to cross my fingers and hope for the best when I have a true advertising partner who takes my guidance, coaching and follows that plan we create together.
Not every business that I talk to however qualifies to work with me. Want to know if you qualify? Hit me up, and let’s connect.
by Scott Howard | May 9, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
This week, we are going to talk about a subject that goes beyond media and marketing, it’s about being Authentic and Appropriate.
The backstory on this subject is that being Authentic and Appropriate is how I strive to live my life. However I was recently talking to a new friend who works in the radio and podcasting industry and he mentioned those words and I felt a new podcast and blog post article was in order.
I’m in my 50’s and I recall half a lifetime ago (in my mid 20’s) working in Detroit. I went from being a t-shirt and jeans wearing radio disc jockey to wearing a sports coat and tie everyday because I was switching over to the advertising side of radio and would be meeting with business owners every week.
Two versions of the early Scott Howard aka ScLoHo
With help from my family, I spiffed up my wardrobe and became an equal to the business people I would meet with. At least that was the impression I was trying to convey. I probably carried it off pretty well, or is it pretty good? See, I really don’t care which is grammatically appropriate, that’s my authentic self talking.
But back to the subject of being Authentic and Appropriate. We want to trust people and trust the businesses run by people. Being Authentic is key. However, you need to temper your authenticity with being appropriate. In my personal example, if I decided I never wanted to wear a tie and sports coat when I took the job in Detroit, because I wanted to be the authentic Scott Howard radio guy who only wore jeans, I wouldn’t have lasted. Instead, I decided to grow my wardrobe and who I was. I didn’t toss all my jeans and t-shirts, I just wore them in my casual settings.
Now let’s see how this can apply to your business. What are some characteristics of you and your business that are important and needed to inspire trust and confidence?
Two examples come to mind of people I’ve met with recently. There’s the pharmacist that wears a white lab coat with his name on it. In his off hours, he can be seen in shorts, and barefoot wearing a t-shirt. If he dressed like that during business hours, he would lose the trust and confidence of his customers in many cases.
The other example is my favorite heating and cooling company. All of their techs wear clothing with brand logos and their trucks are also branded so when they pull up in your driveway, you know who it is. Imagine someone pulling up in a rusted out van wearing tattered jeans and an old sweatshirt coming over to check out the furnace. My wife wouldn’t open the door to someone like that. Not that she is a snob, she wants to feel secure that the person is trustworthy and appearances count.
You can apply this authentic and appropriate principle to all you do and to all your employees too. Be yourself, let others get to know you, but don’t share questionable stuff unless you are prepared to face the consequences.
And that brings me back to the media and marketing of your business. In all of your ads, skip the hype and keep the fine print to a minimum. Yes, you may need to have some disclaimers for legal purposes, but please don’t be a shyster. We as consumers want to spend money with businesses that we believe are honest and trustworthy.
I started out telling you that what prompted me to write this piece was a conversation with a new friend. His name is Matt Cundill and for a couple of years he has been hosting a radio insider podcast from his home in Canada. Matt is an extremely talented voice talent and his podcast is targeted to people in the programming side of radio which is his background. Here’s a link to the podcast that I was on, or just search for the Sound Off Podcast, Matt posted his interview with me on May 1st, 2018.
Matt summed up our conversation with these words,
The more I spoke to Scott about what makes a successful sales person, the more I realized that it has more in common with being on the air. Be authentic, tell the truth, work with the long term in mind…
Good words of wisdom for all of us.
by Scott Howard | Apr 18, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
One of the weirdest things I sometimes hear from business owners is, “we are busy enough, we don’t need to advertise to get new customers.” Sorry, but you ALWAYS need new customers, and today, I’ll tell you why.
I had a conversation recently with a new business owner about the reality of his customer retention. This young man is smart, has advanced degrees in the medical field and has been in his profession for awhile. However he is also a new business owner who just celebrated his one year anniversary.
From all indications, he has made some good choices during the past few years. He knows about his competition since he used to work for them. He bought an existing business that had 4 decades of history in the neighborhood.
He even advertises, mostly continuing what the previous owner was doing, but I uncovered a couple of items that he was unaware of, that as a business owner, you should know.
While he had some understanding of what areas of his business were more profitable than the others, he hadn’t taken the time to figure out a Return On Investment formula that is important if you are going to spend any time or money on advertising. As we talked about some of those figures, they were eye opening to him.
But when I told him that he is likely losing 20% of his customers each year, his jaw dropped.
This was something that had never occurred to him.
(By the way, he’s not the one that I quoted at the beginning of this piece, that was another business owner that I visited last month that I don’t want to work with. That guy will likely be out of business in the next 5 years or sooner.)
Back to the bright young business owner. I shared with him some simple facts of doing business that I wrote about a few years ago. Here’s what happened to the customers you no longer have:
Some have moved out of town.
Some have died.
Some simply don’t need what you are selling.
Some have found an alternative.
It’s the last one that should concern you the most.
You need to find out what that alternative is and why it became an alternative for your customers.
You also need to find out why you are losing customers.
No matter how many new customers you have coming in your front door, if you can keep them from going out the back door, you should see your profits increase.
This is true of nearly any business that is at least a year old, and something you should plan for.
There are ways to attempt to decrease the percent of customers you lose each year and that involves taking a strategic look at your marketing plan, not just advertising. This is one of the fun things that I really enjoy doing and I am good at.
When I help you develop a Marketing Strategy Model, I will ask you questions that you may have never thought of. I may also tell you to do somethings that you might find go against the flow of what you think needs to be done.
Some of the things I have told others is they need to raise their prices and stop using discounts. That is not applicable to everyone, or all the time, but that kind of advice made sense to the advertising partners I work with that followed my direction and have made positive changes in their operations. They actually did lose a portion of the customers, but it was the ones that were the most difficult to work with and they replaced them with customers they enjoy working with.
This 20% rule also applies to what I do in my business. Since I joined WOWO radio in 2013, I have worked with over 100 companies. Each year most of them continue but some don’t and for various reasons.
Last year a long time advertising partner that I worked with for 10 years had health issues and decided to slow down. Actually losing 20% of their customers for the next few years was a good thing.
This year, another advertising partner is being affected by regulation changes in their industry, so we are on hold for now.
What this means for you is that I always have time to consider adding new customers. Depending on your needs, you could be what I call an advertising partner, which is the highest level of my involvement with you, or, at the other end of the spectrum, we don’t work together to help your business grow.
It all starts with a conversation, usually face to face and if you want to see how this works, contact me.
by Scott Howard | Apr 11, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
A recent conversation I had with a new advertising partner included a variation on the question, Did The Advertising Work?
It’s not an easy question to answer if you don’t know how to measure and that’s why I ask questions that pertain to expectations and responsibilities.
Let’s take a moment and talk about this in more depth.
Advertising is limited in what it can actually do.
Advertising is about the invitation.
Any advertisement, I don’t care if it’s online, on the radio, TV, a poster in the coffee shop, a billboard, a magazine ad, they don’t sell stuff. They are only invitations.
And everything I just mentioned, those advertising mediums, radio, TV, online, a poster, a billboard, and magazine ads are simply delivery vehicles of your ads. Each has a different audience that they can connect your business with.
So what is it about advertising that makes money?
Advertising is not really a money machine, it’s simply the beginning stages of your money machine.
And what is this money machine I’m talking about? It’s you and your business.
I’m going to a real life example. A few years ago, on WOWO radio, I started a campaign for a coin and jewelry retail store. Over the years we expanded and grew their advertising and these days their name is on WOWO every hour in the morning and every hour in the afternoon during our live shows. That’s 7 times per day, 5 days a week. 35 times per week. When we began, we were only doing about 10 or 15 times per week, but because they believed the advertising was working, we grew to the level that we are at now.
But as I mentioned, the advertising is just the invitation, WOWO is the connector between our listeners and the business, the real selling occurs when people come to the store and talk to the staff. This is true with nearly all of my advertising partners. Most of them cannot measure exactly their return on investment for the dollars they spend on advertising, but when we look at the big picture and anecdotal information, they know the advertising campaigns are bringing people to them.
The real answer to the question, Did The Advertising Work? is did the invitations to your business go out properly?
However, I personally go a step further then just making sure your ads ran… I also function as a marketing coach and consultant. Marketing includes the advertising, but it can also include everything else that involves connecting with potential customers and converting them into happy buyers of the stuff your company sells.
The new advertising partner I mentioned at the beginning of this piece is going to get my help in converting potential customers. I will be meeting with them to find out exactly how they interacted with the leads we sent them and give them some tips and tweaks for how to convert more of these leads into happy buyers. I actually already did this last week when we were discussing pricing and profit margins.
What are the right questions you need to ask about your advertising? Perhaps this piece has given you some insight on the subject. Contact me directly if you would like my help with a personalized consultation.
by Scott Howard | Mar 28, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
The President does his annual State of the Union Address, the Governor and Mayor of Indiana and Fort Wayne do their annual State of the State and City Addresses, so how about a look at The State Of Media Advertising?
As we wrap up the 1st quarter of 2018, several items are going on that you need to know about.
First off, the television industry is going thru a transformation similar to what the newspaper industry and phone book business went thru years ago.
The short story is they are suffering. And so they are making changes.
But first let me fill you in on the paper stuff I mentioned.
Phone books have shrunk because of a couple of technology changes. One was the rise of cell phone usage and the dropping of residential landlines. Next was the rise of the web combined with smartphones that now allow us to talk to our phones and have it dial the business we want to call.
Newspapers are an anorexic shell of what they used to be. And again the villain is the internet. It’s not really fair to call the internet a villain, because for us as consumers, the internet is our hero. However, both the phone book and newspapers are only possible if there are advertisers paying to be in those print publications. And they depend on readers reading them. That has dropped year after year.
In Fort Wayne, we had two daily papers that operated under a joint operating agreement for advertising but finally last year, the afternoon paper went to an online only version with the exception of getting a page or two included in the morning paper.
Earlier this month, while waiting for a meeting, I saw a couple of local newspapers in the reception area. It was the Thursday edition and I know they printed it at a loss. Less than a dozen ads in the entire paper except for the classified section. Some sections had zero paid ads.
My industry, the radio broadcasting businesses is well over 100 years old and has had to deal with technology changes. AM radio stations used to broadcast network programs all day and night. CBS and NBC radio networks operated the way that broadcast TV networks do now. As a matter of fact, some of the early TV shows in the 1950’s originated on radio. With the growth of television, and decline in network radio programming, radio stations became more local and they also discovered a new focus.
That local focus included music and records. When I was a kid in the 60’s and 70’s listening to the radio was how we listened to new music. Some stations had personalities that were local celebrities and that was what drew me into a career in radio.
I could continue this history trip down memory lane, but let’s jump ahead to 2018. The internet is no longer the bright and shiny new thing, it’s an intricate part of our lives. This is having an impact on the TV business as mentioned in some stories I read in Mediapost. For example:
TV Enters Permanent Ad Recession
Declines in national advertising revenue have occurred in 8 straight quarters. Starting in July 2016 thru this week, advertising revenue for broadcast TV has been down between 1 and 4%.
Why? Well we have more viewing choices and some are really taking off. Netflix and other web based screen options have been posting gains over the years and that has hurt broadcast TV.
Some broadcast networks are attempting to fight back by reducing the number of commercials they will air.
Fox’s Two-Minutes-Per-Hour Ad Plan: The TV Times They Are A-Changin’
Fox will attempt to lure viewers back to their network by decreasing the number of commercial minutes down to 2 per hour and those two minutes will be very expensive for advertisers to buy. This might be a good move, but they are focused on the wrong problem. The real problem is having shows that people want to watch.
NBC created a hit recently with This Is Us. ABC has The Bachelor and Dancing With The Stars. CBS continues with hits like NCIS. None of these shows cut their commercials to keep viewers.
These TV networks are doing more than just reducing commercial time. They are adapting to the technology. My wife and I now watch more prime time TV on our schedule, with the on-demand feature from Xfinity. People can binge watch on their laptops or smartphones. Will the broadcast TV networks survive? Only if they have advertising support or subscription support.
The digital revolution that TV is going thru is also one that newspapers are trying to use by adding paywalls to their online content. But those dollars will never replace the lost ad dollars they used to bring in when newsprint was in its heyday.
Radio is also at risk, but for the most part it is less dependent on national trends. iHeart radio, the owner of over 1200 radio stations in the country filed for bankruptcy protection, but their downfall is not really a radio issue, it was a series of financial decisions that led to them owing billions in loans.
My company, Federated Media which owns WOWO radio and close to a dozen stations in Indiana is a privately held company and we are doing well. We also have a digital division that was started years ago because our advertising partners wanted someone they could trust to help them with the digital marketing revolution.
Which brings me to another Mediapost article and question:
Has Marketing Gone Too Digital?
The reasons are numerous. Most of the problems are related to marketing people abandoning something that is working and jumping on the digital bandwagon without fully understanding it. And the digital world is constantly changing.
I keep an eye on this stuff for my own interest and also for the best interest of my advertising partners and even before the outrage over Facebook and privacy issues that are still being sorted out as I write this, I pulled some of my advertising partners Facebook Ads and moved their digital spending to a couple of other options that have been very successful. Contact me if you want to know more.
Here’s the big picture to keep in mind. The technology isn’t going to retreat. And just because something is new and shiny doesn’t mean you should be an early adopter and abandon what is working. But neither should you stubbornly hang on to the old ways and ignore the future.
Want help? Let’s talk.
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