by Scott Howard | Dec 27, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
What’s the status of radio broadcasting as we prepare for a new year?
That’s a question I hear in various forms from friends, family and others who hear I work in the radio advertising business.
Last month, I spoke to a marketing class at a local university and did a Q & A about radio advertising and marketing overall, and the question came up.
I talked with a couple family members who I had not seen in months and they asked too.
The good news is, radio broadcasting is strong and healthy, profitable for both the company I work for and for the businesses that advertise with us. The unfortunate news is that the public perception doesn’t match reality. Westwood One, and Edison Research released a study this month that I want to share with you along with some inside information about the station I work for, WOWO radio and the Fort Wayne media market.
First off, advertising agencies and major advertisers overall don’t know the truth about the impact of music streaming services compared to traditional AM/FM radio broadcasting.
A simple question was asked: “Please estimate the audience share of Pandora, Spotify, and AM/FM radio.” The perceptions? Spotify has a 23% share, Pandora has a 21% share, and AM/FM radio has a 36% share.
The truth is Pandora only has a 4% share and Spotify has 2% nationally. Only 6% of people listening to what we call audio are using Pandora and Spotify to listen to their favorite music.
Perception among the people who should know was that these internet based music channels had nearly half the audience and listening to the radio for music was history. Not a chance, my friend. Another wrong perception is that those Pandora and Spotify listeners must listen all day long, right? Wrong again. Pandora get 12 minutes a day and Spotify get 10 minutes a day on average according to this study. Meanwhile radio listeners are tuned in nearly two hours daily. Mindblowing to those who thought that everyone is listening to music online.
But here’s the really important part for businesses that are looking for a place to advertise that will be effective and profitable.
Listening to music at home used to mean albums and CDs. Today, that has shifted to Spotify and Pandora. Now listening to music at home means audio streaming is playing softly in the other room. According to a MARU/VisionCritical study, only 54% of Pandora and Spotify listeners actually pay attention to the ads.Background music like this was never meant for advertising.
So if your business is advertising on Pandora or Spotify you are likely reaching a fraction of the people who you could reach using traditional AM/FM radio, and the odds that they are listening when your ad is one is a tiny fraction of that number, and to make it even worse, nearly half are mentally tuning out when your commercial comes on.
There are actually two versions of Pandora and Spotify. The free version that includes ads and the paid version that is ad free. The study shows that while the ad free version of Spotify is growing the version of these services that your business can use to advertise on, is losing audience. What about Sirrus XM Satellite radio? That audience is still tiny. Only about 1 out of 10 people have Sirrus XM.
Traditional AM/FM Radio stations continues to reach over 70% of adults every single day and over 90% every week.
Two newer forms of audio listening are growing, podcasts and smart speakers. Fortunately WOWO Radio and the other Federated Media owned radio stations have been using podcasts as a standard part of our offerings for out audience.
Miss an interview on WOWO’s Pat Miller program? You can listen later by subscribing to our podcasts. We even have podcast only programs for our radio audiences.
And the smart speaker revolution has increased our audiences because now, instead of a tabletop radio, or stereo system in your home or office, you can tell Alexa to tune into WOWO Radio and poof, it’s there.
I told you I would also share with you some inside information about WOWO and Fort Wayne Media. In August, WOWO radio’s long time morning show host, Charly Butcher passed away unexpectedly on vacation. This was a major blow to everyone as Charly was our anchor and host of Fort Wayne’s Morning News for years and previously was on our sister station WMEE.
Management expected WOWO’s advertising revenue to decline and not make our budget in 2018. Instead of declining, the advertising sales team at WOWO had a record year. This was only possible if the advertising campaigns we ran on WOWO produced results for the businesses that invested their ad dollars with us. It’s not just a tip of the hat to the sales skills of my co-workers, but to the entire staff and listeners who continue to make WOWO radio an important part of their day and support the business who they hear on WOWO.
In 2019, we expect more growth at WOWO in listenership, in our relationships with our listeners, and in connecting those listeners to the businesses that they want to spend money with. As always, I am here to help you become one of those businesses.
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by Scott Howard | Sep 17, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
If you don’t own it, you and your business are at risk. Years ago, my friend Kevin Mullett and I had this discussion and it’s true. Don’t Be Social Media Stupid with Your Business.
Let me explain.
Facebook is the world’s largest Social Media platform and they offer a multitude of ways for people like you and me to start a business, promote and grow a business, even become independently wealthy with a business that lives on Facebook.
The problem is if your business relies only on Facebook, you are eventually going to be hurt.
Facebook is your virtual landlord. Except when you have a real landlord relationship, there are contracts that you read and sign. Promises made by both parties and some guarantees for a period of time.
That’s not the way it works with Facebook or any of the other social media platforms.
Facebook can make changes and you have no say in the matter.
Does anyone remember reading the “Terms Of Service” when they signed up? Over 98% of us blindly just click on the checkbox without reading.
NBC news recently featured an article that included this story about a small business owner that relied on Facebook.
Holly Homer, an entrepreneur from Texas owns the Facebook pages for “Quirky Mama” and “Kids Activities.” With over 3 million followers, Homer’s Facebook page had become so popular she hired five employees and her husband quit his full-time medical job to help with the business. Homer showed NBC News a chart of interactions with her Facebook page that shows a decrease in February when Facebook implemented changes to News Feed.
As you can see, she was all-in when it came to running a Facebook based business. And that is where the problem lies. I did some of my own investigating and her Facebook page is Quirky Mama, but her website where she makes money is KidsActivities.com . But Holly is using another short cut that echos the mistake she made with Facebook. Her KidsActivities.com domain isn’t really her own website. Sure she owns the domain, but it’s actually just a sub-website on the Maven domain. Just like Facebook can change the rules, Maven can make changes and Holly will really be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
I know this is sounding technical, so let’s talk in everyday language. When you lease a car, you don’t own that car. There are some benefits to leasing over buying but because you never owned that car, the only value is the immediate value of having that car to use. You can’t sell it, because you never bought it.
If your business is built on someone else’s platform, like Facebook or Maven, in Holly’s case, she and her entire company are at risk of losing it all. Holly says:
One of the Facebook policy changes that kind of went under the radar and it went into effect in February was the branded content policy. And it decreased my income from Facebook by 60 percent, overnight. No explanation.
Facebook cares about Holly and doesn’t care about Holly. They walk the fine line of working for the greater good. Their priorities begin with #1, that’s Facebook itself. Second on their list is their stockholders and then we have the users. Facebook users fall into multiple categories. There’s you and me as a couple of individuals in the total Facebook universe of over a billion active users.
Holly and her business fall into another category. Facebook is free for you and me to use, but not so much if we are using Facebook to promote our business. Holly and other businesses have to pay to get their Facebook posts seen by the masses. Same is true for any organization that Facebook believes has money to spend to promote their message.
In the summer of 2013, I ran the social media department for a $50 million dollar e-commerce company. Our average sale was under $100, so we had a lot of customers to make up that $50 million each year. That summer, I saw Facebook make a change in their algorithm that reduced the number of people my Facebook post were reaching by 75%. Fortunately, I knew what to do, move some of my budget around and spend a little more.
Facebook is constantly making changes. All you can do is figure out how to adapt. But there is something else you really need to do too.
Own your own online presence. If your only online presence is a Facebook page, Instagram account, Twitter handle, LinkedIn account, Snapchat account, or a free WordPress or Blogger website, prepare to lose it all.
That was part of the lesson I learned from my conversation with Kevin Mullett in 2011. I had made a name for myself with a few marketing blogs that were hosted free on Google’s Blogger platform. They are living there, you can find them if you Google ScLoHo.
However in 2011, I also bought my own domain and website hosting service for ScottHoward.me It’s where all of my content lives. I update every week still with a new story and article like this one.
Facebook and all the other social media platforms have a purpose still. They are being used simply as a marketing tool, not a place to host a business. Websites were around before social media. A website without any publicity is not going to get any visitors. Use social media as a tool to draw people to your website if you want, but please don’t confuse the two.
One more item from the 20 year old in my family, Jake. He posted this on Facebook the other day:
Hey friends and fam ,
I will be deleting my Facebook account or at least the app because I have been really wanting to change my daily habits and my phone is not a good one .. so I will not be on here for at least a couple months but I hope each and every one of you continue to strive to be the best you can be each and every day.
Jake is Gen Z. He’s in college. He and others of his generation don’t care about or even trust Facebook anymore. This is a another warning sign. I have advertising partners on WOWO Radio that use WOWO to drive traffic to their website.There are other ways besides social media to drive people to your website and we’ll talk about that soon. In the meantime please remember this: If you don’t own it, you and your business are at risk.
Want help in figuring all this out and creating something more stable? Let’s talk.
by Scott Howard | Sep 9, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Ready to get rid of your staff and replace them with robots, apps, or some other form of technology? Hang on a second and let’s consider The People Process.
As usual, I get my ideas for the articles I write and podcast episodes I produce, from a number of sources. Recently I read about an upcoming event I may attend, that will feature a discussion on The Robots After Your Job. This is part of a larger discussion group that will have future events. In Fort Wayne it is hosted by a friend of mine, John Richards.
John and his wife Kim once owned a successful chain of local coffee shops, called Higher Grounds. Among the most memorable conversations I had with John during his coffee shop days was his commitment to his craft. Higher Grounds grew to multiple locations in Fort Wayne and dominated the local coffee shop scene for quite a while before Starbucks came to town. They dominated simply due to the number of Higher Ground coffee shops they had along with their own roastery. More than anyone else and yet here we are and the only sign of the Higher Grounds Coffee brand is in a few gas stations.
John’s commitment to his craft was an anti-Starbucks commitment. Most people are unaware of how automated the process is at a Starbucks. At Higher Grounds, John insisted that his barista’s learn how to “pull a shot”. That is the process of brewing a shot of espresso that is used in most coffee shop drinks. John insisted that it was a skill worth learning instead of letting a machine do it by pushing a button.
While I appreciated John’s insistence and dedication, I recall challenging him to visit his different Higher Ground Coffee Shops and order a White Mocha, or what ever his favorite coffee drink was, and compare the taste. I knew from experience that even though the Higher Grounds name was on my White Mocha coffee cup, the taste was different at each of his stores because of the slight differences that each barista would do in making my drink.
The commitment to individuals learning a skill was far from a standardize, automated process that could churn out the same beverage every single time.
As I mentioned, Higher Grounds Coffee Shops are no longer around, and it is for other reasons besides the story I just shared with you. Businesses change for numerous reasons. Starbucks did come to Fort Wayne and while they opened more stores than any other coffee shop in town, we still have a few fantastic local coffee shops I visit regularly.
Starbucks has learned one of the lessons of Ray Kroc when he was building the McDonald’s hamburger empire. Brand Consistency. Last year when I visited my son in South Carolina and my daughter in Colorado, Starbucks got my White Mocha Coffee money, because no matter which Starbucks I visited, my White Mocha tasted the same.
Let’s circle back to the topic I started this conversation with… The People Process. While it’s true that automation and technology will continue to replace people’s jobs, it doesn’t mean people are not needed. We just need people to help us differently than a few years ago.
Here’s a quote from the article I was reading:
Among jobs identified … as high risk for automation are cashiers, wait staff, office clerks, restaurant cooks, bus drivers, receptionists, construction labor, bookkeepers, accountants and auditors.
and here’s more:
Among the jobs at the least risk for automation are nursing assistants, home health aides, elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers, human resources specialists, registered nurses, management analysts, software developers, physicians and surgeons.
Even in those professions I just mentioned, there have been tremendous technology advances, so even if the job title sticks around, the actual work is changing.
When I look at the business world from my advertising and marketing perspective, I see how we as humans crave the ability to interact with other people at times. Some companies are doing a decent job of transitioning their staff from one task to a new one. I visited one of the McDonald’s in my city where I placed my order from a kiosk instead of talking to someone behind her computer screen. I can punch in my order as well as a paid order taker. But here’s how the kept the People Process alive. Instead of standing around waiting for them to call my number, I got to take a seat and the former order taker was now delivering my food to me with a smile.
When you incorporate technology advances in your business, keep in mind that there are somethings that will create a difference and make a lasting impression on your customers and the most valuable ones involve this People Process.
It’s part of your overall marketing. Want help on sorting out what could be a good step forward versus a disastrous step into oblivion? It’s part of the services I provide. Let’s connect and talk.
PS: After I wrote this, I discovered something else about the coffee business you can read here: https://medium.com/s/story/the-real-reason-coffee-at-starbucks-tastes-bitter-and-burned-b4ab8ab81919
PSS: And here’s a cool story on how some companies are successfully using apps: https://medium.com/marketing-and-entrepreneurship/10-examples-of-how-brands-are-using-chatbots-to-delight-customers-31ff9066b650
by Scott Howard | May 24, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
As we head into the unofficial summer season of June, July and August, the three months between Memorial Day and Labor Day, I want to address a headline I saw again and give you an insiders perspective on The Decline of Mass Media.
Why talk about it now? Well, television viewing habits in years past were different during summer time, with the major networks showing summer reruns instead of new episodes. But hang on because I’m getting ahead of myself.
What is mass media anyway? Perhaps traditional media is a better term. Television, Radio, Newspapers and Magazines are the traditional media that have been the mainstay since the 1950’s and before.
Newspapers are continuing to struggle. Lay offs and shut downs have been occurring for nearly two decades, due to the rise of the internet. One story I read this month blamed the owners for cutting staffs.
The Denver Post cut the newsroom from 184 journalists to 99, according to the story. Other cuts at other newspapers were also harsh. 73 reporters down to 10 while another paper went 45 to 12 journalists. Locally in Fort Wayne, the afternoon paper ceased publication, and instead gets one sheet in the morning paper and an online edition. I saw friends of mine in the newspaper business in town leave either on their own or due to cutbacks. I was once tempted about 8 years ago to work for their online division but am grateful I stayed put.
The company I work, Federated Media sold the one newspaper they owned a couple years ago because it was nearly impossible to be profitable.
When I say the internet is the reason for the decline in print, it’s really a combination of things related to the internet.
Accessibility for one. 20 years ago most of us owned a desktop computer with a dial-up modem at home, if we had a home computer. 12 years ago laptops took over as the primary personal computer device. And did you realize that the first iPhone debuted in 2007, ushering in the smartphone revolution?
Online Content is the other contributing factor. No need to wait for the morning paper to check the weather or the score. Newspapers have tried to replace their dwindling subscriber numbers with paywall subscriptions, but the math doesn’t work. If you don’t have the readers, the advertisers will also go away and the decline has been going on for too long.
Declines in the magazine publishing industry are similar. What seems to have survived in print is specialized publications. Smaller but targeted readership than mass media.
Another way the internet has changed the media is the television industry. The New York Times featured a story that I read online about the future of broadcasting: Why Traditional TV Is in Trouble.
Here’s a few quotes:
Ratings are on the decline, especially among young people, some of whom don’t even own televisions. It’s hard to keep up with the many devices and apps people now use to watch shows. And there is a host of material from Silicon Valley that is competing for viewers’ attention, including Google’s YouTube, Facebook and Netflix. It all adds up to a precarious situation for broadcast TV.
Advertising on TV has long been the best way for marketers to reach a large number of people at one time. And it is still a formidable medium. But cracks are showing.
and:
The hottest shows on TV networks — which command the highest ad prices — are attracting older viewers, which is a challenge for brands that want to reach millennials and teens. For instance, this season’s top-rated show, the revival of “Roseanne,” has a median viewer age of 52.9 years. The network show with the lowest median age is “Riverdale” on the CW, at 37.2.
The TV networks will be able to survive by reinventing themselves much like radio stations did when television became a media force last century. But the local TV stations? My advice if you want to reach anyone younger than Baby Boomers, good luck. All of my kids are in their 30’s and none of them are watching broadcast TV, some don’t even own a television. They get their video content online. Even my wife and I watch just as much video content on something other than a TV or if we do, often it’s days later and the local ads are not even seen.
So what is taking the place of traditional broadcast TV as a mass media?
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, to name a few. Alternatives to cable like Sling, Hulu and Roku. These are all offering the best of both worlds for advertisers. You get to reach people watching video content but you get to target your ads to specific audiences, one of the technical marvels of the internet.
Here’s a quote from a newsletter I received from Google:
More than half of 18 to 49-year-olds in the U.S. either don’t watch a lot of TV or do not subscribe to TV. But that doesn’t mean TV content and TV screens are on their way out. In fact, the TV screen is the fastest growing screen for YouTube content, with 70% growth in the last two years.
Let me address the radio broadcasting industry too. It was the first broadcast mass media and WOWO radio, the station I work for is over 90 years old. There are two categories of traditional broadcast radio stations these days, and I’m not talking about AM and FM. The two categories I am referring to are talk based programming and music based programming.
Radio broadcasting started out with network radio shows from NBC, CBS, ABC and the Mutual Broadcasting System and eventually they evolved to what we have today.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, there are 37 radio stations within close listening range. Some are duplicates of the same programming on different signals, like WOWO 1190 AM is the same as WOWO 107.5 FM, so let’s say there are 25 separate and individual choices. This is also a way of targeting your advertising. The best local radio stations keep an emphasis on local content, stuff you can’t get by listening to Spotify or Pandora.
Federated Media has 6 stations in Fort Wayne, four are music based, two are talk. I work for the talk stations, WOWO and our ESPN affiliated station. Both offer a combination of local and national programs. There are specific characteristics of WOWO listeners that help me determine if advertising on WOWO would be a good idea. Want to reach grown-ups? Let’s talk. Want to reach teenagers? I’ll connect you with someone who works for one of our music stations.
Not all radio stations and radio broadcasting companies are the same. Overall radio listenership has remained pretty steady for the past decade. Over 90% of everyone age 12 and older listens every week. However smart radio stations and companies are staying ahead of the trends that we see going on around us.
For years, radio stations like WOWO offered a way for you to listen via the internet. Go to WOWO.com and click on the listen now tab and you can stream WOWO on your computer. There are plenty of apps that offer access to radio stations like WOWO, and some people listen to WOWO via the WOWO app itself.
2018 however is the break thru year for Alexa and Google Home smart speaker systems. We are seeing a resurgence in radio listening simply by telling the smart speakers to play WOWO and poof, there’s Pat Miller in the afternoon or Charly Butcher in the morning, in your kitchen, just like 40 years ago when I was a kid and my parents had clock radios in their house.
One last way radio stations like WOWO are staying on top of the trends is podcasting. WOWO and our other Federated Media stations share both content from our live shows online in podcast form, but also we have some podcast only shows that are available via iTunes or what ever your favorite podcasting player is. Podcasting is huge and we can connect businesses to podcast listeners too.
The title of this today was The Decline Of Mass Media. As I’ve laid out what’s going on in print and broadcasting in response to the web connected world we live in, I hope you see as I do, these are exciting times. The traditional mass medias that are adapting are going to done fine while the others struggle and will be a mere shadow of their former selves.
Fortunately, I get to work with a company that continues to be on the leading edge and I get to offer advertising and marketing solutions that work using WOWO radio and our digital marketing division of Federated Media.
Want to see how I can help your business grow this year and next? Contact me.
One final piece that I’m going to share because it was posted on LinkedIn by Ben Saurer, WOWO radio’s General Sales Manager that demonstrates how WOWO truly is a leader. Ben’s job is to hire, coach and lead an advertising sales team. Quite frankly, most media companies struggle with this, but as you will see, WOWO is different, in a good way. Here’s what an excerpt from what Ben wrote:
All my people earn above the industry average. Client retention is high. Everyone on my staff is generating more revenue than last year. We’ve had ZERO sales staff turnover in 2+ years while having our market’s largest sales staff. People perform and like working here.
Remember the story I shared about the newspapers cutting their staffs to try and save themselves from going under? Completely different story here at WOWO.
by Scott Howard | May 3, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Do job titles matter? I work for WOWO radio and a few years ago, our parent company, Federated Media began calling their advertising salespeople: Integrated Marketing Managers or Integrated Marketing Specialists or some other variation. The keywords are Integrated Marketing and it’s being used today to describe something that has been going on for a long time.
Integrated Marketing is simply the coordination of multiple marketing messages and outreaches that work together in harmony. For years this was a role of Advertising Agencies. Businesses would pay Ad Agencies to do all the advertising creative, buying advertising schedules and telling business owners what to do to be successful with their advertising.
Sometimes that works. Often the folks in an ad agency have talents and skills that the coffee shop owner, or boat builder, or carpet cleaner lack.
Ad agencies create the ads that we see and hear on a national scale. Some that come to mind are McDonalds, Home Depot, Google, car insurance ads, those are created by advertising agency professionals.
On a local level, most companies don’t have an advertising agency to do that work. Instead they rely on someone at the advertising outlets, like the TV station, the newspaper, the radio station to do the creative work. That might work out, but each of those individuals are only working in their advertising medium.
Or there are some advertising agencies that specialize in only one or two advertising mediums. Online, especially social media marketing has been the kind of boutique agencies that have popped up in the past decade. Some are pretty good, but most are pretty bad. The online world is constantly changing and the changes that Google makes to their algorithm, or Facebook to their news-feed, are out of our control.
But let’s get back to the subject of Integrated Marketing and job titles. The reason the Integrated Marketing Specialist or Integrated Marketing Manager job title has been adopted by several of my co-workers at Federated Media is because we actually do have the ability to work with more than one advertising platform and build marketing campaigns that are integrated across multiple mediums.
Right now, this month, I am running a few campaigns for different advertising partners that I call a Hot Leads program. I am using Email, Facebook, Text messaging, Radio ads on the air with WOWO and ads online. We gather names, contact information and a few specific questions for my advertising partners that will help them connect with people who want to be contacted by these specific advertising partners. This is truly an Integrated Marketing campaign.
However, I don’t recommend this to everyone I meet with. It’s not always appropriate, or the best marketing approach for the objectives we need to accomplish.
So my business card does not say Integrated Marketing Manager or Specialist. Instead I use terms that are very specific to what I do. Advertising Sales and Marketing Consultant.
I took a deep dive into that last week and you can read or listen to what I said if you wish.
My approach is to simply work with you in the way and manner that is most appropriate. I’ve been doing this since my youngest daughter was born and she’s now 32. I can help you sort out the jargon and advertising insider terms that others use to try and convince you to buy their stuff. And if you want an Integrated Marketing Specialist, I’m your dude too.
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