by Scott Howard | Jan 22, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
I could write a separate article on each of these, but for now I just want to give you a list of 17 ways to increase your business profitability this year. 
1. Raise Your Prices.
2. Offer Additional Services.
3. Offer Additional Products
4. Reduce the Number of Products and/or Services you sell.
5. Develop a Marketing Plan That Makes Sense.
6. Promote Employees To The Level Of Their Competency.
7. Train, Move, or Fire Employees That Are Hurting Your Company.
8. Get Out Of Your Business and Into Your Community More.
9. Spend More Time In Your Business.
10. Ask For Help.
11. Help Others.
12. Empower Your Employees To Take Care Of Customers.
13. Don’t Fall For Advertising Gimmicks to Build Your Business.
14. Be Willing to Try Something Different.
15. Be Honest and Truthful
16. Provide Value
17. Ask Happy Customers to Tell Others About You.
Now you can apply all of these, or some of these, it’s up to you. Some may sound like they are opposites, but they really aren’t.
All of these tidbits (and others) are what I have told other business owners in the past 6 months and I’ll gladly sit down with you to explore what will work for you. Contact me.
by Scott Howard | Jan 21, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Last year I kicked off the new year with a brief series to help you be more successful when deciding how to spend your advertising and marketing budget.
This week I am sharing that information again with some updates.
Today we will go over the last 3 items on this list from a couple days ago:
You need to know who you are from 4 different perspectives:
-
Your insider knowledge of who you are
-
Your current customers perspective of who you are
-
Your competitors perception of who you are.
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Your best potential customers perception of who you are.
Yesterday I gave you a big assignment and it is impossible to have completed it in the past 24 hours because it takes a few days to just do the bare minimum. Read it here.
However some of you want to know how to do the other three (#’s 2, 3, and 4 on the list above) so I’ll give you some help today. Save this in your bookmarks or favorites for future reference so you can do these exercises after you complete the first one.
What is your current customers perspective of who you are? You should already be doing this kind of research by asking your customers about their experience with you. I know a muffler shop that would give you a discount on your next visit if you left them a review. There are tons of ways to do this including an online survey with a service such as SurveyMonkey and others, but guess what? Your current customers are already telling others about you online, if you know where to look.
Besides the social media conversations and rants that occur on Facebook and the like, there are also plenty of review sites where your customers are talking about you. The problem you face is how to get this important information in a timely manner. I’ll tell you how in a moment.
What are your competitors perception of you? Have you ever hired an employee who used to work for your competitor? Ask them. It’s that simple. You can also do some “secret shopping” and send an intern to your competitor and have them ask what they think of you, but that is somewhat complicated and probably not necessary.
The question I often asked when I ask the business owners about this, is why is this important? Depends on the business environment you are in. Sprint, AT & T and Verizon are in a heated battle and all claim to be the best, so they’ll talk smack about each other to keep their customer base.
What are your best potential customers perceptions of who you are? In order for someone to consider doing business with you, they want to feel good about giving you their money. We now have the ability to research nearly anything and anyone that we are considering doing business with by going online. The same information that your current customers are sharing online is being read by your potential customers.
This is why your online reputation is critical. The difficulty is knowing what is being said and having the ability to respond in a timely manner.
I have a solution. I work for Federated Media in Indiana. Specifically for WOWO Radio in Fort Wayne. But I also have the ability to help you with one of the services from Federated Digital Solutions, our online division.
We offer a Social Engagement and Reputation Management Solution that can help you with all of your online reviews and social media activity including monitoring what others are saying about you. You do not need to be in Fort Wayne, or Indiana, just somewhere in the United States for us to be able to take care of this for you. Every client gets a custom quote for this service, because we only want you to purchase what makes sense for your business. Want more information? Drop me a note to: Scott@WOWO.com and we can begin the conversation about how to stay on top of all of this while you continue to run your business.
by Scott Howard | Jan 13, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Today a quick rundown of the advertising options I offer to Fort Wayne area business people. As many of you know, I work for WOWO Radio and Federated Media. 
But what you don’t know is the complete list of advertising solutions that I can offer.
Some involve WOWO and some are completely independent of WOWO Radio.
Starting with the basics: 
- advertising on WOWO radio in the form of commercials that are 60 seconds or less and are pre-recorded.
- advertising on WOWO radio with Live commercials that are 60 seconds and carry the added endorsement of our WOWO hosts Charly Butcher, Pat Miller and others.
- advertising on WOWO radio with embedded sponsorship mentions that are 10 seconds long and are live during our prime time radio shows.
- advertising on WOWO radio with special features that we create just for you.
Expanding on the basics with WOWO:
- live remote broadcasts from your location of a radio show on WOWO
- live remote call-in commercials from your location
- advertising to listeners to WOWO Radio’s digital audience, those that listen to our streaming services on their computer, or mobile device hear different ads than what listeners hear when listening to WOWO 1190AM and 107.5FM
- advertising messages placed on our website at WOWO.com
- advertising messages reaching our social media followers on Facebook and Twitter
- email campaigns that can be targeted to listeners to just WOWO or include our entire Fort Wayne area database that includes listeners to our other Fort Wayne radio stations
- embedded ads in the WOWO NewsTracker video on YouTube that is shared on social media and our website.
- participation in the events that WOWO hosts thru our Federated Entertainment division which will include two more job fairs in 2016
- advertising messages sent via text sponsorships of various opt-in text services for our listeners
Besides WOWO Radio, I also offer many of the same advertising solutions for our local ESPN sports stations.
Beyond WOWO Radio, I have plenty of Digital Marketing options from our Federated Digital Solutions division.This year I have advertising partners that are not using WOWO Radio, just our digital solutions. I have an entire team of professionals that work hand in hand with me to create the very best: 
- responsive website design and development along with Search Engine Optimization.
- lead generation solutions including Search Engine Marketing commonly known as S.E.M. and P.P.C. drive customers from sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo to you.
- the very latest Custom Audience Targeting that uses display ads to qualified people to keep your message in front of them in a very technologically sophisticated manner.
- similar to Custom Audience Targeting with display ads, I can also handle your Video Audience Targeting which plays your video ads to qualified people.
- reputation management and Social Media Engagement services that will include the most appropriate social platforms for your business.
As you look at this list of advertising options, it could be overwhelming unless you are a marketing director of a major company. But that’s where I come in.
Instead of asking you what you want to buy, I work hand in hand with you to determine what we need to accomplish.
Then, I will work with you to see which of these advertising and marketing options are the best for you and your business now, and which ones we should also consider in the future.
You don’t need to know the ins and outs, pros and cons of all of these options. Use me as a resource and we’ll help you get to where you want to go in 2016.
by Scott Howard | Nov 13, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Tuesday I was meeting with an advertising partner and were we looking at some data I gathered from Google Analytics.
Not sure what Google Analytics is? Take a look at their site. Or I can give you a layman’s overviews.
Google Analytics is a free service from Google that you install on your website that can tell you all kinds of things about people who visit your website. What pages they visit, when they visit, where they came from, and so much more. If you sell stuff on your website, you can track it too. Just take my word for it…install Google Analytics on your website now.
Back to my meeting on Tuesday. This advertising partner has a website but we are not doing any digital online marketing for him, yet. We just helped him set up Google Analytics 2 months ago. That’s when we tripled his radio advertising.
I see you scratching your head. Hang on.
We are actually tracking the response to his radio ads with Google Analytics.
How? The call to action in his radio ads is to visit his website. No phone number, no storefront, just his website.
WOWO radio has been his sole source of advertising since May. He previously did some newspaper and some targeted direct mail and those methods worked for him, but not to the degree that advertising on WOWO has worked this year.
When I showed him some of the findings that I discovered with Google Analytics, he was very happy and wanted to know more. So next month when we meet, I’ll share with him more information about people visiting his website. We both recognize that there are some limitations to any tracking system so he is also asking people how they found him and is tracking those responses as well.
Unlike some people who sell advertising, I want to know as much as possible about the effectiveness. I want to work hand in hand with you to make sure the money you are spending is an investment, not an expense. We’ll talk more about that next week.
by Scott Howard | Oct 28, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Your reputation matters. It always has. Even before social media and the entire web.
People will talk about you, good or bad. Look at this survey:
This world wide survey shows that if you and your company provide a good job, more than half will tell friends and family about you. Less than 20% would share it on social media. (I don’t have the data but when someone screws up, people can get very vocal on social media.)
Just because you don’t hear about it directly (21% in the above chart), people are talking about you. We call it Word Of Mouth when it’s good. And when they are talking bad about you, we call that your worst marketing nightmare.
Give this some thoughtful consideration and if you need help, reach out to me.
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