Getting Paid For Your Work

Getting Paid For Your Work

by | Oct 1, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Recently a friend of mine who is in the advertising business was lamenting about how he has “challenges” getting his clients to pay him in a timely manner.

I rarely have this problem and I thought this would be a good topic for an article and podcast.

No matter what you do for a living, there is money involved. What I am about to share with you is how I work and will give you some insight on expectations I work with in my world, so if you and I ever work together, you’ll know how the money side all works.  For those new to the idea of paid advertising this is part of the conversation I have with them, because, well they don’t know how it works.

We are all in business and we need money for our businesses to stay alive.

You should never be sheepish about asking for payment due to you, however you need to have the discussion before you agree to do the work.

In my note to my friend, here’s what I shared about my experiences of getting paid:

If it’s a new company or one that is new to advertising, they prepay monthly with a credit card we keep on file. If they have established credit for advertising that we can verify, then we extend credit.

For Example:

Advertising that runs in September. If it is pre-pay, we need payment before September 1st.

If Credit is extended, then it is due within 30 days from us sending the invoice. Invoices for ads that ran in September will go out not later than October 1st. We expect payment before October ends.

Some organizations get 60 days because they are a third party biller, like an ad agency that bills their client and that adds an extra 30 days for them to get their money and then cut us a check.

Anyone that is in danger of going 90 days gets a phone call, an email, a text, a message somehow, someway by the 75 day mark to make arrangements to get the old payment paid before 90 days.

I have two clients that are always in that last category. With one, I send him a reminder and a deadline and he emails me his credit card payment. The other one, I visit and they hand me a check.

Sometimes, the owner and the bookkeeper are not on the same page and so if I need to get the owner involved, he makes sure I get paid so we keep his ads running.

In my 16 years of doing this in Fort Wayne, I have had very few losses, sometimes it was due to unfortunate circumstances on their part like a divorce that tied up their funds.

This is the professional way of taking care of business. Do it with a firm smile and expectations up-front when you start the business relationship.

You started your business because of a passion and I bet that passion was not hunting down a paycheck.  But like taxes and payroll, this also has to be done, or you will not have a business.

Do you have any questions about advertising and marketing that you don’t know who to ask?  Ask me.  Email me at Scott@WOWO.com

You can also get my free Sound ADvice Marketing and Business Tips weekly email by filling out the form below.

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Digital Burnout

Digital Burnout

by | Sep 24, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Do you ever get annoyed at advertising?

I did an informal and unscientific poll of friends and strangers recently and discovered that the answer is Yes.

This is nothing new.  As long as there have been advertising, there are reasons for people to dislike it.

Music radio stations that play too many commercials in a row, that’s an annoyance.

TV ads that are just plain awful, usually it’s the locally produced ones that look and sound bad.

In the digital world there are a couple of irritants I discovered too.

One is the number of times we are shown an ad when we are online.

There is a practice called remarketing that is as old as digital advertising, that is part of the culprit.

When you visit a website, it places a tracking pixel, or “cookie” on your computer and adds you to their database of website visitors.

Then when you are visiting other websites, you start seeing ads from that website you just visited.  The reason is statistics tell us less than 10% of us buy the first time we visit a website.  So to remind you of that website you were visiting and the stuff you may have bought but 90% of the time, the stuff you didn’t buy, these ads that follow you around online.

It’s a neat concept from a marketing standpoint but it has become an irritant. A recent survey said that if you are still sending ads to people who visited your website a week after they were there, you are annoying 85% of the people you are trying to convert to customers.

Nearly half only want to see your ads for 24 hours and after a couple of days, you are just creating a bad vibe for your company.

One company has taken this seriously.

Proctor and Gamble which spends between 6 and 7 billion dollars a year in advertising announced this summer that going forward, they are reducing the number of times a consumer sees the same digital ad.

I know that there are multiple ways to track our online actions and one that seems to be missing involves connecting the dots between visiting a website and making a purchase.

If the digital marketers could get an alert when we make a purchase so they stop bombarding us with ads that are wasted, because we already spent our money on what you are still trying to sell us, everyone would be happier.

I know the technology is out there to do this, it just needs to be implemented.

If you are currently doing or are considering digital ads, talk to me first.  There are better ways to invite people to become your customers and buy your stuff without annoying them to death.  Drop me a note Scott@WOWO.com.

By the way, you can subscribe to this weekly ScLoHo Media and Marketing Article update that I share on my website, you can also subscribe to the podcast version which is pretty much the same weekly content that you can listen to in 10 minutes or less.  I also have a separate email business tips newsletter called Sound ADvice that you can get by filling in the information in the box below.  All free and yours just for the asking!

 

 

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Do You Provide Meaningful Touches?

Do You Provide Meaningful Touches?

by | Aug 21, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Maintaining a good relationship with your customers is critical to your lasting success.

Roy H. Williams in his article on Advertising Oversimplified covered this:

  1. Most customers are repeat customers or referral customers. Mass media is the most efficient way to maintain top-of-mind awareness among these groups. In addition, it will bring you new, first-time customers.

  2. Your plan to stay in touch with your customers through social media and email blasts is based on the assumption that your customer is willing to open, read, listen to, or watch what you have to say. Is this actually happening? And if not, why not? (HINT: The Subject Line gets people to open it. The content, itself, gets people to share it.)

I get direct mail pieces from a couple realtors and other business people I know and I also get some emails but most of them get deleted or tossed without being read.

I even have a weekly marketing email you can subscribe to free using the form below for Sound ADvice.  

As business people we are told that we need to be doing something to maintain that connection, but is what you are doing the right thing for your individual customers?

Even if you are doing the right number of “touches” with your email or direct mail…

Are they meaningful to the people on the receiving end?

I’m not suggesting you drop everything you are currently doing unless you see no value in it at all.

I am suggesting that you also add a personal touch, the kind that is not “mass media”.

Every once in a while, I will contact some of my advertising partners with a note, a phone call or an article that would be of interest to them.

When I did this with a Financial Planner friend of mine, she asked me how I found the article I sent her because it’s from a publication written specifically for people in her field, not the general public.  I told her my research secrets and she got a greater understanding of how I am looking out for her interests, not just selling her advertising.

Like I said, I don’t recommend stopping all your mass media advertising and only focusing on personalized one-at-a-time marketing; that proved disastrous for an old friend of mine who thought word of mouth alone would be the way to go.  He had to shut his doors after he tried that experiment and his business had a 25 year history.

Do both.

Mass media reaches both your current and future customers.  Personalized messaging can be used to retain that relationship.

Want help? Contact me: Scott@WOWO.com

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Are You Creating Happiness?

Are You Creating Happiness?

by | Aug 14, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

We’re going to cover three of the 20 points of Roy H. Williams Advertising Oversimplified:

  1. Regardless of how you win them, it is costly to win a first-time customer. Getting that customer to come back a second, third, or fiftieth time is cheap and easy if they had a good experience the first time.

  2. Advertising is a tax we pay for not being remarkable. So be remarkable! This is what generates word-of-mouth. You’ve got to impress your customer. If you don’t, your competitor will.

  3. Companies that celebrate their victories have happy employees. So find things to celebrate. Happy employees create happy customers.

Did you notice the common theme of Happiness in those three tips?

Advertising is the paid form of connecting and inviting people to spend money with you. It’s what you do with that connection that determines the value you get from that advertising.

It used to be that in order to be noticed, you had to be remarkable.  Standards have been lowered because overall service in many fields has declined.  If you go thru the drive thru and they give you the correct food and charge the right amount in a reasonable amount of time, that can now be considered a win because of the number of places that can’t do those three things at once.

Keeping your customers is also a win.  Do you know the Lifetime Value of A Customer in your business?

It can be eye-opening and I can help you figure this out.  It is well worth the exercise.

It all boils down to having the right front-line employees.  No amount of marketing and advertising can fix a bad business and a bad business is often a people issue starting with the inside operations.

If you allow me to help you with this, I’ll be glad to.  Contact me: Scott@WOWO.com

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Are Your Employees REALLY Working?

Are Your Employees REALLY Working?

by | Jul 6, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

An old business owner joke goes like this; a reporter one day asked the CEO of a major company, “So, how many employees are working in your company?”  The CEO replied, “approximately half of them”.

 

It’s funny, but the problem is, it’s not necessarily a joke!  Today with the ever-expanding network of digital and social capabilities, the problem is getting worse, not better.

 

A fortune.com article stated that the average worker spends a full day of the work week doing things other than, work!  Paying an employee for 8 hours and getting only 6 hours of quality time is troubling, at the least.

 

According to an article posted by thebalancecareers.com, the most significant reasons why workers waste time were:

 

35% were not challenged enough

32% felt that there was no incentive to work harder

30% got no satisfaction from what they do, and

23% were just downright bored.

 

It’s no surprise that motivated employees with clear expectations get more done than those that simply show up and do what they “think” should be done.  The trick is, how do you keep them motivated?

 

I have a list of  “10 Leadership Tasks to Inspire Performance”  that suggests it starts with hiring. Hire on attitude and effort, you can train them on the skills required. Task #4  on the list suggests you have “clear expectations”.  Most people appreciate clear direction and boundaries and will “respect only what you inspect”.  Make sure they understand that doing non-work-related tasks are not tolerated, and you can bet the time wasted will be far less.

Now there is a fine line or grey area between wasting time on the job and taking a break.  It really depends on the requirements of the job and clear expectations set at the beginning.  Most employees don’t want to be micro-managed but they may need some help and guidance at first. 

In our company, we strive to use a coaching instead of managing set-up.  Because of the different roles people play, some have more flexibility while others need to follow procedures to the T.  Our on-air staff at the radio stations have to be on time.  As a former radio personality who sometimes worked non-traditional hours, I know how important punctuality is.  Same with meetings.  Time is a valuable resource for everyone.

Yet sometimes brainstorming, research and creativity can’t be easily measured or monitored by a time clock.  The coaching model of employee management takes into consideration the individuals work style along with the requirements of the job and finds a way to make it work. 

You may wonder what does any of this have to do with media, marketing and advertising that I usually write about.

Here’s the answer:

Your staff are a huge part of your marketing.  The customer experience can turn a first time caller or visitor into a life long customer, or it can create such a negative experience that you lose their business forever.

Even if I can bring you enough leads and potential customers through an advertising program to make you a millionaire, unless you treat them right, you will go broke.  And when I say you, I mean your entire team.

If you would like a copy of the “10 Leadership Tactics to Inspire Performance”, click here. 

I also invite you to subscribe to my Sound ADvice marketing newsletter for tips on running a better business, you can subscribe in the box below.

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