by Scott Howard | Aug 29, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo Sales Tips, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Today, I have a few key tips for anyone in the business of sales, which is not limited to people who sell for a living, but nearly all of us. The three words I want you to remember is: Help People Buy.
This month, the company I work for, Federated Media, experienced a tragic loss with the unexpected death of Charly Butcher, the host of Fort Wayne’s Morning News on WOWO Radio. Charly began his career with Federated Media in the 1980’s on WOWO’s sister station, WMEE. His life touched countless numbers of people as made evident by the stories and tributes.
One story I heard from my coworker Tracy was how a car salesperson was struggling with a sale but then Charly stepped in to Help People Buy:
We were at a remote at Fort Wayne Subaru and they just got in one single BRZ sport coupe in bright red that was stunning. This guy about 23 was looking at it with lust and the sales person just could not close the deal no matter how hard he tried. Charly went to the guy and said “I tell you what…you buy this car now and I will put you on the air live on Monday to brag about it. You can tell all your friends you will be on WOWO Monday morning.” The guy agreed to it on the spot and sure enough he got his 5 minutes of Fame on Charly’s show that Monday. We had a happy customer, happy sales person, happy manager and Charly was so proud of himself.
I’ve recently told you about my most recent car buying experience, which was filled with unnecessary sales pitches, because by the time I went to the dealership, I already decided exactly which car I wanted and all they really had to do was take care of the paperwork.
Today, I’m going to share with you another bad buying experience I had.
The afternoon after attending Charly Butcher’s funeral, I needed to visit some funeral homes for a brother-in-law who was just transferred to hospice care. Yes, it was a dreadful week, but sometimes you have to plow through it to get things done.
I visited 3 places and told each exactly what I was looking for:
I am here to get price information for direct cremation for the upcoming passing of my brother-in-law who is likely in the final week of his life. I am getting this information for my wife who will be making the decision of who we use. No public funeral or additional services are needed, just the bare bone basics. A family memorial will take place in a few months out of town.
That was the story I told all three funeral homes. From what I said, if they were listening, they would know that I am looking only for their price and I was not going to be buying anything today. I told them I was price shopping only.
So what happened?
At funeral home number one, I get what I am looking for, the bottom line price, in writing, but first the guy shows me his powerpoint on who he is, how many funerals they have done over the past 10 years complete with the standard bar chart.
He was not listening to what I said, he was stuck in selling mode. I redirected him to get the info I needed and left.
Funeral home number two was worse. Two guys, teaming up to sell me, after I told them exactly why I was there. They even asked questions about my wife and I that had absolutely nothing to do with why I was there. Like, “how long have you and your wife been married?” I almost walked out. In the end, I got the answers I wanted and a bad taste in my mouth to never do business with these two salespeople.
Funeral home number three was actually the best. When I told him the same story I told the other two, he actually listened and told me that they are not the least expensive for cremation services. I appreciated his honesty instead of his sales pitch and we talked more. I learned a few things that made me want to transfer some of my own business to them in the future.
I learned a few lessons that day about the sales process that I am going to apply to my work, and hopefully you can apply these same lessons in your company:
How to Help People Buy
- Listen first to find out what they think they are shopping for so you can focus on what they want.
- Ask questions to clarify what they are looking for as an end result.
- Answer their questions first, then ask how else you can help them.
Funeral home number two, almost had me walk out in the middle of their sales pitch, can you imagine having a potential customer come to you and then walk out because you were too salesy?
I bet it happens more than we realize.
By the way, I wrote a piece about Charly Butcher and his impact with WOWO and the community, but did not create a podcast for that article because it contains a few videos. I invite you to read and watch by clicking on the link to this article on my website at ScottHoward.me
Here’s the link: https://www.scotthoward.me/remembercharly-butcher-of-wowo-wmee-fort-wayne/
by Scott Howard | Aug 23, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
The topic for this week is: Make it Easy. I’ll start with some questions.
How easy is it for someone to do business with you?
How easy is it for someone to get an answer to a question?
How easy is it for someone to find you online?
How easy is it for someone to call you?
How easy is it for someone to pay you for goods and services that you offer?
How easy is it for someone to pay you a compliment? Either in person, or online?
I could continue asking similar questions and I’m sure you could come up with a few more that are just as important for you and your business.
Here’s the take-away I want you to have: Make It Easy.
No matter what the question, do what ever possible to make it easy for people.
Advertising can bring people to you. What happens next is up to you. The WHOLE BUYING EXPERIENCE is part of your marketing.
I understand that there might be some pretty complicated things that need to go on behind the scenes that will Make It Easy for your customers, but sometimes it really doesn’t need to be complicated at all.
Recently I was talking to a business owner who wants to let people know that despite the fact he has a couple dozen employees and managers that work for him, the real person that can solve their ultimate problems is him.
So we created a way to Make It Easy for anyone to reach him. A special phone number that accepts phone calls and texts that rings directly to his personal cell phone. When you call, you talk to the owner, not his manager, not an answering service on the other side of the planet. You get the guy in charge, the one who can make everything Easy.
Some companies empower their front line employees to take care of everything. Instead of having to “ask a manager” or “go up the food chain” to resolve something, the actual person you or I talk with takes care of it, then and there.
A couple more stories to illustrate how this Make It Easy process works. For years my wife and I have had cable TV, Internet and sometimes phone service from one of the two big national companies and every year we saw our bills climb just because they could raise the prices. One year my wife spent 3 hours on the phone with customer service and was able to knock our bill down a little but it went back up a year later even though we dropped some of their services.
This summer I was convinced to cut the cord and go with internet only because I finally figured out all the other pieces to the puzzle to watch what we wanted via internet streaming and over the air local channels.
Our current internet provider wasn’t going to budge on price, so I tried to buy from their main competitor. I attempted to do it online and over the phone. Even using the online chat feature was a nightmare. I nearly gave up until my friend told me exactly who to talk to in person at a local store front location.
I walked in and asked for her by name and she knew who I was because my friend had contacted her earlier that day. Within 15 minutes on a Monday afternoon we had everything set up for them to come out 3 days later to install and start internet service. Plus the price was lower than what I was paying the other company, and lower than I was able to find online with this company. This woman was an expert in the Make It Easy department.
The other Make It Easy story is a follow up on what I shared recently when I upgraded our homes heating and cooling system. We were eligible for a rebate from our electric company with the new system and I started to fill out the paperwork online, but never completed it. In the meantime, a check for $300 arrived from the electric company. Turns out the heating/cooling company took care of that paperwork for me, and I forgot that they were taking care of that for us. They really won in my book in the Make It Easy department.
My work as a marketing coach and consultant and advertising sales person with WOWO radio and Federated Media Digital includes doing what ever I can to Make It Easy for my advertising partners. Last week I updated a couple items on a clients website, not because they paid me to do it, I was just doing it for them to Make It Easy.
Go back over that list I started with and review the questions about how easy is it for people to do business with you and then add a few that are particular to your business, and take action. If you want my help in reviewing those questions and coming up with answers, let’s talk.
You can email me, text me, message me, call me, find me online on social media by simply looking for ScLoHo, that’s me. That’s my commitment to Make It Easy for you!
by Scott Howard | Aug 15, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Time to introduce myself, again for some of you that I’ve known for awhile, and perhaps for the first time if you are unfamiliar with this website and podcast.
This is episode 75 of the weekly podcast titled, The Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast.
Launched in early 2017 as a request from a couple of the managers at Federated Media in Fort Wayne, Indiana, they were asked to create a sales and marketing oriented podcast and they asked me if I would consider doing it.
See this ScLoHo thing has been around for quite awhile. On the ScottHoward.me website are over 13 hundred articles I have written, edited and published since 2011 and the Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast is simply an audio version of most of the articles I have created since March, 2017.
The history of ScLoHo however is much longer that that.
And before we dig into that history, I want to clear something up about what ScLoHo is.
ScLoHo began as an email address and grew into an online moniker, identity and nickname. I even registered a marketing company with the ScLoHo name. ScLoHo is a made up word that takes the first two letters of my first name, middle and last names and mashes them together. Scott Louis Howard becomes ScLoHo. Look for me on Twitter, Instagram and nearly any other social media site that I am on as ScLoHo. Before launching the ScottHoward.me website, I published over 10,000 articles on ScLoHo branded blogs starting around 2005.
So ScLoHo and Scott Howard, that’s me, are synonymous.
I began working in the media world as a teenager when my high school launched a radio station. After school, I landed my first full time job on the air in Marion, Indiana at WBAT, followed by WIOU in Kokomo, WMEE in Fort Wayne, WKSY in Columbia City, WZWZ in Kokomo, and WXIR in Indianapolis. At all of these stations, I worked on the air as a disc jockey and radio personality.
Life changed when I turned 26. I crossed over to the advertising side of the radio business. I was impressed by the philosophy that the Crawford Broadcasting Company had regarding the relationship between the listeners, the radio station and the advertisers. I moved my young family to work for WMUZ in Detroit, one of a dozen Crawford stations at the time. My job was to write and produce advertising campaigns.
I loved the challenge and learning that occurred during my 8 years at WMUZ. I also did fill-in work in the afternoon and spent about a year hosting WMUZ’s morning show in Detroit. My first venture as an advertising salesperson was also at WMUZ.
The philosophy that I learned related to the trust factor we as people have. WMUZ was and is a commercial Christian radio station that has a special bond with their thousands of weekly listeners. Listeners trust the WMUZ radio personalities. Those personalities often talk about their advertising partners and so that trust factor is passed along to the businesses that advertise. WMUZ listeners trust that the businesses that advertise on their station are trustworthy.
My job was not just to create effective advertising campaigns, but to screen out the bad businesses from the good. I carry this philosophy today as I consider which businesses I want to work with at WOWO radio in Fort Wayne.
In the mid 1990’s, we decided to leave Detroit and return to Indiana. I worked on the radio again in Fort Wayne at WBTU, WFWI, WGL and WAJI. Between 1995 and 2003, along with some part-time radio work and voice over production I was doing, I took a few blue collar jobs too in the printing business, the plastics industry and even automotive.
2003 was the year that I returned to media and marketing full-time in Fort Wayne when I joined a group of radio stations in the advertising sales side of the business. I spent 8 years rising as high as one could advance at that company before I was lured away to work for a website development company and later manage the social media for a $50 million dollar internet sales company.
Kevin, Ric and me. Picture snapped by my friend Ryan Recker.
I also served on the Board of Directors for the American Advertising Federation/Fort Wayne Chapter for 7 years. I taught personal branding seminars, guest lectured at a local university, was featured in some national publications including the Wall Street Journal, won a few awards and have had a lot of fun. I have consulted and coached businesses doing newspaper and magazine ads, billboard advertising, social media and all kinds of internet marketing, along with television and event marketing. More recently I was featured on an international podcast for broadcasters to share what it takes to be successful in broadcasting.
I only share all this with you because I want you to have confidence in the Scott Howard dude a.k.a. ScLoHo, that I’m not just hear to sell you stuff. I am here to help. I’m here to teach, to consult, to advise, to coach and even guide you through the process of marketing you and your business.
Human Relationship Principles are the heart of most successful marketing and advertising efforts and I can help you employ them with your business, organization, or event.
I have learned a lot from a lot of people and continue to learn more and more every week. If you have any marketing or advertising questions or answers, I’d love to talk with you.
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 | Jun 28, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Over the next few weeks, I’m sharing with you a formula for advertising success that I was reminded of recently. Last week it was The First R in Advertising Success (part one), and today The First R in Advertising Success (part two).
This is part of the 3 R Formula; it goes like this:
Right Message + Right Audience x Right Number of Times = Success
Last time I talked about the content of the Right Message, today, a different angle on the right message, and I’m going to call it the style and length of the Right Message.
Using Human Relationship Marketing Principles in your advertising will give you an advantage in the impact your advertising has. I’ll use examples from the radio world, since I work for WOWO radio in Fort Wayne Indiana.
Most radio ads are a minute long and recorded with a music background. The person writing the commercial has 60 seconds to fill and they sometimes use that time to throw in way too much information. TV ads are usually 30 seconds long and with the power of visual and audio, they do the same thing. We’ve all seen or heard a car commercial that has 3, 4 or 5 different cars and or trucks in one commercial, right?
Problem is, that is way too much information to cram into one commercial and it violates a rule of ONE MESSAGE PER MESSAGE. That rule is not a law, that’s why it gets violated all the time and the only consequence is response and results are less than if that rule ONE MESSAGE PER MESSAGE was followed.
Maybe you really don’t need all that time to get your message out. Copywriters are notorious for filling an ad with extra junk because they have a full minute to fill up. Or the business owner tells them to include their business hours and free parking and other stuff that takes away from the real message.
When I joined WOWO radio in 2013, I noticed that we had something that others on the WOWO advertising sales had not been using as an option for advertisers. Well, some were using it, but not very much.
It became my secret sauce recipe and within about 18 months, others started doing it. The popularity of my secret sauce led to us having to keep track of the special radio advertising format because we were getting close to selling them out!
Here’s what I’m talking about and how it became my secret sauce.
Live News, Weather, and Sports sponsorships on WOWO.
Weekdays from 5am thru the 6pm newscast, Monday thru Friday, we have a total of 188 opportunities for a business to be mentioned in an “embedded” mention by the local newscaster or program host. These mentions are 10 seconds long and it’s surprising what you can say in those 10 seconds. It has helped me to focus on the ONE MESSAGE PER MESSAGE concept.
I have some radio advertising partners that only do this type of advertising because they only need to get a very specific message out without much explanation that would require a longer message.
In 2013, when I started selling my secret sauce, these sponsorship messages were priced at $20 each because we had plenty of them available. Compared to the price of $100 for one 60 second commercial, if the message only needed 10 seconds, I could get 5 times the exposure.
Prices for my secret sauce have risen since then due to the popularity. $40 or more is the common price during weeks that we are 80% sold out of these live sponsorships. But still, that is a great price that allows me to expose your business to more people than if we used the same total dollars with 60 second commercials on WOWO.
Here’s how the Human Relationship Marketing Principle works with these ads…
Because WOWO is a news and talk formatted radio station, our listeners tune in to hear what our news and talk hosts are saying. For example:
WEATHER BROUGHT TO YOU BY A TO Z COINS AND JEWELRY, IN THE NORTHCREST SHOPPING CENTER NEXT TO FIVE GUYS. DID YOU INHERIT A COIN COLLECTION AND DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT? TAKE IT TO A TO Z COINS AND JEWELRY. OPEN THIS MORNING AT 9.
A-Z gets an implied endorsement of the radio station because it’s a trusted radio personality talking about them.
None of our other Fort Wayne Federated Media stations offer this live, embedded advertising messaging to the degree we do at WOWO radio.
Before we wrap this up today, I’ll share a little about the other form of live advertising messages I offer with WOWO that was the gold, no, make that the platinum standard.
Live Endorsement and Testimonial Ads. These are done by our WOWO personalities Charly Butcher, Pat Miller and Rick Wolf and are a full minute long. They have the endorsement power of not just WOWO, but also the hosts. These are the most expensive ads you will hear on WOWO but the Return On Investment makes them worth it. They also include a form of exclusivity that I’ll share with you in the future. Or you can contact me and I’ll fill you in on the details.
All of this talk about having the Right Message is extremely important, when you deliver it to the Right Audience. That’s our subject the next time.
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