by Scott Howard | Jun 6, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
This article is for the business owner who is regularly being asked to buy advertising and really needs a little help deciding what to do. (Or perhaps a LOT of help.)
Today, we are going to talk about the pros and cons of advertising agencies, advertising sales people and marketing consultants and what you really need for your business. There was a story in Mediapost that touched on this topic and we’re going to get to the heart of the matter for you.
Should You Hire An Advertising Specialist or Generalist?
You see I’m a bit of both. I’m a big picture marketing guy who has expertise in several specialties.
Start with the basics:
Why advertise? To attract and retain customers. It’s that simple.
Then why is it hard to pick what kind of advertising you and your business should be involved with?
Because there are so many options and all these advertising salespeople who tell you their advertising is the best, whether it’s true or not.
So I sell advertising, what makes me, Scott Howard different? Let’s start with a quote from one of my online profiles:
This is the Big Picture of Marketing, Advertising, and Media, down to the tiniest detail.
Combining the tools of today with the timeless, proven methods of the past and creating ideas that rely on honest, trustworthy human relationship principles.
This Big Picture concept is what makes me an advertising generalist. That’s also the term you could apply to most of the advertising agencies that offer a variety of services. But I’m not an ad agency and I have a unique perspective that’s different than most advertising generalists.
That’s also where the ScLoHo persona comes in. This unique perspective is that all of your marketing and advertising needs to be based on Human Relationship Principles or if they are not, you better have a very good reason why not.
Human Relationship Principles are the natural, organic ways we communicate with one another that promotes trust, and good positive feelings. You incorporate that into a marketing campaign successfully and your business will grow beyond what you could ever do with coupons and gimmicks.
I know how to do this because I’ve been a student of this for a few decades and there are hundreds of businesses in Metro Fort Wayne and Metro Detroit that were my real-life laboratories.
Along the way I also gathered intensive insider knowledge and wisdom regarding what could be called Advertising Specialties. These include:
- Print including newspaper, magazine and direct mail.
- Outdoor including the big billboards, the smaller signage, even the ads we see on city buses. Which brings me to …
- Vehicle wraps, promotional materials and company branded attire.
- Television advertising including cable TV.
- Social Media.
- Website design and structure.
- Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing.
- Email Marketing.
- Blogging, Vlogging and Podcasting
- and of course Radio Advertising.
Every one of these specialties I have direct experience in and have served on the board of directors for the local American Advertising Federation to enrich my knowledge and teach others. I have even taught branding at a local university, won awards from both my peers and from independent, impartial judging panels. I am not one to blow my own horn and say how great I am, that is out of character for me, but I really want you to know that since I made the transition from being a radio personality to an advertising and marketing specialist over 30 years ago, I have learned a bunch and am continuing to learn. All I want to do is help you with what I’ve learned.
Some of these Advertising Specialties I continue to do first hand and others I will either outsource, recommend others that I trust or at the very least serve as your marketing coach so that when someone tries to sell you their advertising specialty, you have an experienced professional that knows how it should be done and can help you in the process if it’s really something you should invest it. I, Scott Howard, work for WOWO Radio and we have a whole boatload of advertising and marketing solutions you can buy. The ScLoHo side of me helps you with the things I can’t sell you but can advise and guide you.
So back to my original question: Should You Hire An Advertising Specialist or Generalist? Why chose one or the other when you can have both in one person?
Let’s talk.
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.
by Scott Howard | Apr 25, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Just what do you do, Scott? It’s a question I am asked regularly because I often don’t fit the stereotype of an advertising salesperson. A few years ago, before I was doing the Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast, I wrote about what I do and today, let’s update an article I wrote titled A Peek Behind the Curtain.
When people find out what I do for a living, preconceived images pop into their heads. I am a member of the advertising sales team at WOWO Radio in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The words I have selected to use on my business cards are about as accurate and precise as I have been able to come so far, but they deserve some explanation and expansion.
Advertising Sales and Marketing Consultant.
Yes, I consult with people about their advertising and marketing. However, I get paid when they buy something from me. Radio advertising, Digital marketing services, these are what have actual prices attached to them that people buy.
So I sell stuff, making me a salesperson. But there is often a path that has to be followed to go from Advertising and Marketing Consultant to Salesperson. Not everyone who sells radio advertising and digital marketing services follows this path.
And before I go any further, all of the stuff I sell is provided by the company I choose to work for, Federated Media, which owns several Indiana radio stations including WOWO and a couple of local ESPN stations based in Fort Wayne that I sell advertising for. We also have a digital advertising division that I also sell marketing solutions for.
Back to the radio stuff for a moment and the Advertising Sales and Marketing Consultant stuff.
My role as an Advertising Sales and Marketing Consultant is to work hand in hand with you to help you create an appropriate plan to accomplish your goals. Depending on the complexity of your business and the goals, it can be a simple process, or complex. I usually meet face to face with you and we talk. My style is casual but my process is deliberate.
The questions I ask and our entire conversation have a path that we take as we explore the possibilities.
Here’s a few more things that you should know:
I do not sell to everyone who wants to buy from me. I am looking at creating long term business relationships and we need to be able to work well together.
I do not attempt to sell to everyone either. Like I just said, I am looking at creating long term business relationships and we need to be able to work well together. Some people are not a good fit for buying something from me right now. Some times they never will be. However, I will still function as their advertising and marketing consultant, even if it is to simply offer some insight and direction.
I only want to work with people that want to work with me. And when I say work with me, I don’t mean just hand over a pile of cash. I mean I want to work with you and continually look for ways to improve your business marketing and advertising efforts.
I don’t want to sell stuff to people who don’t want to buy it. But we may have a conversation where you tell me why you don’t want it. Still I promise not to hound you and annoy you.
Why?
Just like you, my time is also valuable. I am only looking for people who want my help with their advertising and marketing. There are more people out there who I can help than I have time to help, so why waste my time and yours if you don’t want my help? Just tell me and I’ll respect that.
I have my criteria for my ideal advertising partner and I’ll lay that out for you in the near future. However, I also work with others who don’t fit perfectly but there are enough positives to outweigh the negatives and we work well together too.
By the way, there are differences between me and my co-workers at WOWO & Federated Media. We are not identical in our methods and insights. I look at things differently than my co-workers and they do things different from me. Neither is necessarily better, but each is different.
In the year ahead, I will be taking on a few more advertising partner clients, if you want to see if I can help, contact me.
by Scott Howard | Apr 18, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
One of the weirdest things I sometimes hear from business owners is, “we are busy enough, we don’t need to advertise to get new customers.” Sorry, but you ALWAYS need new customers, and today, I’ll tell you why.
I had a conversation recently with a new business owner about the reality of his customer retention. This young man is smart, has advanced degrees in the medical field and has been in his profession for awhile. However he is also a new business owner who just celebrated his one year anniversary.
From all indications, he has made some good choices during the past few years. He knows about his competition since he used to work for them. He bought an existing business that had 4 decades of history in the neighborhood.
He even advertises, mostly continuing what the previous owner was doing, but I uncovered a couple of items that he was unaware of, that as a business owner, you should know.
While he had some understanding of what areas of his business were more profitable than the others, he hadn’t taken the time to figure out a Return On Investment formula that is important if you are going to spend any time or money on advertising. As we talked about some of those figures, they were eye opening to him.
But when I told him that he is likely losing 20% of his customers each year, his jaw dropped.
This was something that had never occurred to him.
(By the way, he’s not the one that I quoted at the beginning of this piece, that was another business owner that I visited last month that I don’t want to work with. That guy will likely be out of business in the next 5 years or sooner.)
Back to the bright young business owner. I shared with him some simple facts of doing business that I wrote about a few years ago. Here’s what happened to the customers you no longer have:
Some have moved out of town.
Some have died.
Some simply don’t need what you are selling.
Some have found an alternative.
It’s the last one that should concern you the most.
You need to find out what that alternative is and why it became an alternative for your customers.
You also need to find out why you are losing customers.
No matter how many new customers you have coming in your front door, if you can keep them from going out the back door, you should see your profits increase.
This is true of nearly any business that is at least a year old, and something you should plan for.
There are ways to attempt to decrease the percent of customers you lose each year and that involves taking a strategic look at your marketing plan, not just advertising. This is one of the fun things that I really enjoy doing and I am good at.
When I help you develop a Marketing Strategy Model, I will ask you questions that you may have never thought of. I may also tell you to do somethings that you might find go against the flow of what you think needs to be done.
Some of the things I have told others is they need to raise their prices and stop using discounts. That is not applicable to everyone, or all the time, but that kind of advice made sense to the advertising partners I work with that followed my direction and have made positive changes in their operations. They actually did lose a portion of the customers, but it was the ones that were the most difficult to work with and they replaced them with customers they enjoy working with.
This 20% rule also applies to what I do in my business. Since I joined WOWO radio in 2013, I have worked with over 100 companies. Each year most of them continue but some don’t and for various reasons.
Last year a long time advertising partner that I worked with for 10 years had health issues and decided to slow down. Actually losing 20% of their customers for the next few years was a good thing.
This year, another advertising partner is being affected by regulation changes in their industry, so we are on hold for now.
What this means for you is that I always have time to consider adding new customers. Depending on your needs, you could be what I call an advertising partner, which is the highest level of my involvement with you, or, at the other end of the spectrum, we don’t work together to help your business grow.
It all starts with a conversation, usually face to face and if you want to see how this works, contact me.
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