by Scott Howard | Oct 3, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
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.
by Scott Howard | Sep 26, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
What is the very best form of advertising? I was asked a similar question recently.
I belong to a business networking group that limits membership to just one person from each business category and I sort of occupy two categories. Radio Advertising with WOWO Radio & Digital Marketing with Federated Digital Services.
If I had to choose just one, not both of those categories, which one did I want to hold onto, is what I was asked to consider. I was even told that I don’t need to decide now, but in the future that might be a choice I have to make.
I knew the answer without hesitation and this may surprise you.
But before I share with you, what I told them, I’ve got a little story that demonstrates the why behind my answer.
The purpose behind your advertising and marketing is to build profitable relationships.
I have a retail store that has consistently used my radio station, WOWO for three years. Before I met them, they would never commit to any advertising to more than 2 months. This business is over 40 years old, but moved to a new location a few years ago. So why do they advertise with WOWO every month? Because our listeners tell them that they were told by Pat or Charly to visit their store.
Here’s another story:
I work with a Doctor who took over two practices last year. We started by using a Custom Audience Targeted Digital Display advertising campaign and he saw his practice grow. I could show him the number of visits to his website that were produced by his digital advertising campaigns. Then we decided to expand and add a few ads on WOWO radio. I visited him 10 days after his radio ads began and his first words to me is that he has people telling him that they heard about him on the radio.
I could tell you a few more stories but I think you are starting to catch on.
If I had to pick between selling only radio advertising campaigns on WOWO or selling only digital advertising campaigns online… I pick WOWO Radio for the Win.
This is not to downplay the power of the digital marketing campaigns that I’ve run for some of my advertising partners. Earlier this year, one of my advertising partners was able to track 482 leads in just a couple of months that were generated from the Custom Audience Targeted Digital Display advertising campaign we created. This was more than they could handle and leads were not being handled properly. That company wasn’t prepared to take care of the business we were sending their way. Digital can work when properly executed from beginning to end.
But let me remind you:
The purpose behind your advertising and marketing is to build profitable relationships.
And for some businesses, getting clicks and leads online is exactly what they want. However, most local businesses that I work with want reassurances that their advertising investments are good investments and when you get people telling you they heard your name on the radio, that is reassuring.
Face it, most of us are not going to tell a business person that we are in their store because we saw their digital ad. Digital ads aren’t personal in that way. At least yet. One day, I’ll probably get served a digital ad that says something like, “Scott, are you ready to buy this phone? Click here.” That will be kind of creepy.
The reason for the success of many advertisers on WOWO is the human relationships that are developed. Our loyal listeners feel a fondness for our talk show hosts who are on the air every day. They connect because they are what we call actively listening which is different than passive listening like you often do with a music radio station that is simply playing in the background.
That fondness matures into a trust factor between the WOWO listener and the radio station and the station personalities. On a scale of 1 to 10, our WOWO radio personalities score 7’s, 8’s sometimes 9’s or 10’s with listeners on the friendship and trust factor. That’s higher than some of the people you have as Facebook friends, right?
Every other form of paid advertising simply doesn’t rank as high in creating trust. Television could come close if the local personalities could create an authentic advertising message, but that is rare. Newspapers don’t connect and bond, neither do most magazines. Billboards are just signs but rarely do they make a human connection that includes an emotional bond that happens with our WOWO radio hosts.
The answer to the question of what is the very best form of advertising, for all the reasons I just mentioned, I firmly believe in most cases it’s a message on WOWO Radio for local businesses in the Fort Wayne area.
Digital advertising is growing, it’s the bright and shiny object that more and more businesses are pouring money into but as you see, there are plenty of challenges.
And there’s more to your advertising success than just running ads on WOWO.
Here’s what I told my friends last week. In my left hand I held my smartphone which represents digital advertising. In my right hand I held a piece of paper with the WOWO logo, to represent the radio advertising options I offer.
If I had to choose, please cut off my left hand (digital) and leave my right hand (radio). I’m right handed and to be forced to write with just my left hand could get messy.
Fortunately, I can offer both hands.
But more important than what I have in my hands, the radio and digital advertising options, is what’s in my head and heart.
That’s where I have the knowledge, wisdom and hands on experience of the last couple of decades to help craft a marketing plan designed specifically for your success. And that’s the heart of it all.
Want help? Ask me.
by Scott Howard | Sep 13, 2017 | 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
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.
by Scott Howard | Aug 23, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo Sales Tips, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
There is a simple concept that is overlooked by too many sales people, business owners, advertising gurus and marketing wizards that I just have to share it:
Sell To Buyers. Period.
I’m going to break this down in simple terms.
For decades the generic name something that a company manufactured has been a widget. But in recent years the term widget actually is a thing, so I’m going to use the term gizmo, which Wikipedia defines as a gadget, especially one whose real name is unknown or forgotten.
When a company makes those famous gadgets because they love making gadgets, they need to sell those gadgets or they won’t be around very long.
The only people who the company can sell their gadgets to are people who want to buy their gadgets, right?
Sell To Buyers.
Here’s a couple of examples:
My son Josh and his wife have no children. My daughter Abby and her husband have 3 boys including their youngest who is under the age of one.
Who is going to need to buy diapers this month?
My son and his wife with no kids or my daughter with a toddler who isn’t potty trained?
I don’t care how perfect those diapers are that you make and want to sell, Josh and his wife are not Buyers. Abby and her husband are diaper buyers.
Example 2:
My co-worker John is a vegetarian. John is not going to buy bacon this week.
Another example:
Mike is a renter. Mike is not going to buy a new furnace this year.
Now let’s flip this around with a few more examples and remember:
Sell To Buyers. Period.
I bought new tires this year before my wife and I drove 2000 miles for a vacation.
I am not going to be buying any more tires this year.
I own my own home and bought home owners insurance. I will not be buying renters insurance.
My main computer is 6 years old. While it is doing fine right now, odds are I will be wanting to (or needing to) replace in the next 18 months.
Too often the simple concept of…
Sell To Buyers…
… is ignored by people who think they can sell to anyone.
They ignore the most important part of the buying equation. You have to sell to the person that wants to buy your gizmo.
And just because someone fits a certain demographic, doesn’t mean they automatically are buyers.
“No kid” couples don’t buy diapers, but there’s plenty of other couples who buy tons of diapers.
Vegetarians aren’t going to buy meat, no matter what the price, but there’s a lot of bacon being bought by others.
There are simply people out there that will never be your customers, because they are not interested in buying what you want to sell.
And that’s okay.
There’s another group of people who aren’t going to buy what you want to sell because they already bought. You have to wait until the next time.
There is also some of us who could be buyers, but not yet. We’re still in the market and perhaps we will become buyers next week, but at this very moment, not yet.
Then there are those that are ready to buy right now. Today. They are done looking around and shopping. Or a new need cropped up that wasn’t there yesterday. Either way, these people are defiantly buyers. And like I said at the beginning:
Sell To Buyers. Period.
But this is different than marketing and advertising.
You need to place a priority on today’s Buyers.
But you also need to start now building your name and reputation with potential buyers down the road.
Remember the difference:
Sell to Buyers.
Advertise to both Buyers and Potential Buyers.
And don’t worry about the rest.
by Scott Howard | Aug 9, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- My camera
- Chrome web browser
- My Contacts
- Emergency Alerts
- Facebook
- my bank app
- all things Google
- my hair cutting app
- Xfinity Hotspots app
- iHeart Radio app
- LinkedIn app
- Google Maps (duh)
- Facebook Messenger app
- My car insurance app
- Panera app
- Starbucks app
- Google Photos
- Redbox app
- Regal Cinema app
- the Weather Channel app
- Twitter
- Instagram
- YouTube
- Yelp
- a couple of local news apps
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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