The Truth?

Recently I was doing some exploratory work at a car dealership and was amazed at how they manage inventory, and their internet presence.

They can tell how many people have visited their website, which vehicles they looked at, what links they clicked on, etc.

I mean, this is one slick technology rich business.

But there was one part that stuck out as a fatal flaw.

The final tracking device.

They hand the customer a piece of paper with several options of how they heard about the dealership and ask them to circle one.

At first I thought using pictures and drawing a circle was clever. It is.

But.

It's not accurate.

It relies on a customer to recall something that they really don't care about.

And this type of tracking is highly unreliable.

If you have the technology to track but then end up with a flawed link, then you better find a better way, or at least realize that you're dealing with bad data.

The words of Scott Howard aka ScLoHo

Who and Where are your Customers?

Who are you customers?

While researchers like to group people into demographic profiles, you need to realize that today more than ever, there is so much diversity that you need to be careful with the assumptions you make.

I'm going to share with you the individual profiles of some of my friends and co-workers:

1. Female mid-20's, no kids, no steady boyfriend, works full time, income $24,000.
2. Female mid-20's no kids, getting married next year, combined income $80,000.
3. Female mid-40's step-mom to kids in their 20's, combined income $75,000.
4. Female mid-30's married, 1 12 year old, 1 2 year old, 2 twin new borns, combined income $70,000.
5. Male early 50's, engaged. 1 daughter age 12, one soon to be step-son age 19, combined income $250,000.
6. Male early 50's married, 5 kids and stepkids all in their 20's, combined income $70,000.
7. Male late 60's divorced, 1 son in his 40's, semi-retired, income $30,000.
8. Male late 30's single, income $35,000.

These 8 people have one thing in common. They know me. I am an influence in their lives.

What stuck me was how all but number 7 are lumped into the advertisers sweet spot of Adults age 25-54, yet look at the wide range of differences. And I know that #'s 6 & 7 have more in common than #5 & #6!

Who is in the market for a new car? Well, in the past 2 years #2, #4 & #7 have purchased at least one new vehicle.

Who is living in a house vs an apartment?

House: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Apartment: 1, 7, 8.

Who eats out the most? 6 & 7.

Who is using social media such as Facebook? 1, 2, 4, 5, 6

Who has the newest computer? 7

Who has the newest smartphone? 6

There is a tendency to lump people together by generation and the problem is that you lose out on inviting certain people to do business with you. Or you use the methods of advertising that worked 20 years ago and assume that method will work today.

I urge you to get as much information as possible about your customers and the people you want as customers and then you can begin to find out how to invite them to do business with you.

Media Numbers vs Your Numbers

Last week it was announced that Facebook now has 500 million members.

That's a helluva lot of people.

The radio stations I work for have over 142,000 listeners every week according to the last report we received from Arbiton.

That's a helluva lot of people.

Every week there are over 400 visits to one of my blogs.

That's a helluva lot of people.

But these numbers don't really matter.

I have a choice of watching between 50 and 150 different TV Channels in my home.

I have over 500 Linked-In connections.

I have 550 Facebook Friends and 1017 Followers on Twitter.

That's a helluva lot of people.

But these numbers don't really matter.

What does matter?

Your numbers.

If you are running a business, and you need to, or want to grow, do you know how many more customers you can handle before you have to make some changes, like hire staff, extend hours, etc?

Do you know how to grow by 10% without gaining a single new customer? (Upsell).

Do you know what it takes to retain more customers and recruit them as your ambassadors who will tell others about you which in turn creates more business and growth?

Please don't be hoodwinked by the marketing gurus, advertising salespeople, or social media pundits into spending your money based on their numbers.

Invest in your business marketing based on your numbers.

Need help? Contact me. Click here.

How Radio & TV Ratings Work (Part Two)

First, read what I wrote last week by clicking here, if you have not yet read Part One.

Welcome back.

We're jumping into this with both feet which is why you needed the background info I wrote last week.

Every week, I receive phone calls and emails from advertising agencies around the country wanting information on the radio stations I represent. Usually it is the Media Buyer who is looking for the best way to spend their clients money.

What they are usually looking for is something called Reach & Frequency. That's good. However how they measure the effectiveness is what I question.

(Reach refers to how many individual people the commercial will reach and is based on the size of the radio stations audience and the number of ads that air for the business.

Frequency refers to how often each individual listener will hear the commercial.)

Terms like Cost Per Point and Gross Rating Points are on their list of items to work with.

Arbitron defines these terms:

Gross Rating Points (GRPs)

The sum of all rating points achieved for a particular spot schedule.

[AQH Rating] x [the number of spots in an advertising schedule] = GRPs

Cost Per Rating Point

The cost of reaching an Average Quarter-Hour Persons audience that's equivalent to one percent of the population in a given demographic group.

[Cost of Schedule] / [GRP] = Cost Per Rating Point
…or…
[Spot Cost] / [AQH Rating] = Cost Per Rating Point

These mathematical calculations can result in some pretty weird advertising schedules.

But my biggest complaint is that it is often short term thinking based on flawed numbers to begin with.

So, when I work with clients who are not represented by an advertising agency media buyer, I use what I call common sense. And usually that common sense tells me that it is best for my client to "dominate a daypart".

Radio Dayparts are 6am to 10am (morning drivetime) 10am-3pm (mid-days) 3pm-7pm (afternoon drivetime) 7pm-12midnight (evenings) and 12midnight to 6am (overnights).

To dominate a daypart, my client should air at least 3 out of 4 hours in mornings or afternoons, or 3 out of 5 hours in mid-days and evenings. This creates a stronger impression on listeners than what some of the crazy schedules I see coming from media buyers, where I will see 5 ads in mid-days for an entire 5 days versus my formula which says you should air 15 times, minimum during that same 5 hour a day, 5 day a week time period.

Please understand that I'm not insulting media buyers. Most have been trained to buy by the numbers and formulas. As a matter of fact, I will often propose an advertising schedule to the media buyers I work with based on the daypart domination that I explained.

I think next week, we'll talk about how to increase the effectiveness of your advertisement, that has nothing to do with ratings. Your comments are always welcome.

How Radio & TV Ratings Work (Part One)

And why it is a flawed system....

This week I thought I'd go further into explaining a system that people think they understand, but most don't.

Radio ratings. Arbitron is the major provider of this information. Television ratings are similar and the company that provides that information is Nielson.

Eight years ago, when I was taking a sabbatical from the advertising world, our family participated in a Nielson survey. People who work in these industries are prohibited from taking part in these surveys.

We received the form to fill out, which asked us to write what we watched each day for a week. The first day, I filled the form out correctly. The next 6 days, I forgot about it. But I watched TV each day, so on the 7th day, I filled out what I probably watched the previous week and mailed the form back.

I'm sure this is typical for both radio and tv rating surveys. Which means the data is flawed. It is not a true, hour by hour diary of your listening/viewing habits, it is a guesstimate of what you probably did on most days.

But in our market, Fort Wayne is currently market # 105 or #106, this is how radio ratings are gathered twice a year, for 3 months in the spring and then 3 months each fall. The radio stations that pay for the results, (Thousands of $$$$$) get the use of the results when they are complied and released.

Our current rating period runs April thru June and we won't get the results until the end of August. Originally these ratings services were used by program directors to measure the effectiveness of their jobs and for bragging rights. But then they became a tool for advertising agencies to place commercials and negotiate price.

This is where things have become really crazy, when we think about it. Remember the inaccuracies of each survey, multiplied by the thousand or so people who fill out a survey, which is then multiplied to reflect the listening/viewing habits of an entire city, or in our case, 6 county Metropolitan Area of nearly 1/2 a million people.

Still with me? Good, here's how Arbitron counts radio listeners using the diary/survey system:

Arbitron counts individual people, called Cume for Cumulative persons. Arbitron also counts when and how long a person listens to each radio station and tallies this number up and calls it Average Quarter Hour.

If you listen to radio station WWWW from 6:10 to 6:35 am each morning, then turned the radio off until after 7am, you and I know that you listened for 25 minutes. However, using the Quarter Hour system that Arbitron uses, you listened in 3 Quarter Hours. 3 Quarter hours sounds like 45 minutes right? Not according to Arbitron.

If you listened for a least 5 minutes, you get credit for listening to that radio station for an entire 15 minute quarter hour. So, from 6:10-6:15 is one, 6:15-6:30 is two, and 6:30 to 6:35 is three Quarter Hours that radio station WWWW gets credit for you as a listener.

And if you listened to WAAA from 6:00 to 6:05 and then WBBB from 6:05 to 6:10 before you listened to WWWW for the next 25 minutes, they get credit for having you as a listener too for that same 6:00-6:15am Quarter Hour. Only if you wrote all of this down on your survey form.

Sound a little crazy? Let's add this up. WAAA get's 1 Quarter Hour, WBBB gets 1 Quarter Hour, WWW gets 3 Quarter Hours, for a total of 5 quarter hours in less than 60 minutes. In our example, you actually listened to the radio for 35 minutes, yet Arbitron counts 75 minutes (5 quarter hours).

Next week, I'll explain how Ad Agencies use this information.

Passion Partners

My Childrens world is not the world that I grew up in when I was their age. When I was a child we had 3, then 4 then 5 television stations to choose from, a morning newspaper and afternoon paper, maybe 8 radio stations at the most that were local and that was it for local media and advertising choices.

I am back in my hometown and my oldest daughter also lives here. If she had cable, she would have access to hundreds of television channels, but she just has regular High-Def Digital which gives her access to a dozen channels. There are still 2 daily newspapers, but she gets her news from other sources. Radio stations? 20 plus in our town. Then there's the Internet which didn't exist when I was her age.

And now that I'm in the media and marketing business, I am aware of dozens of other mediums that business owners can use for advertising.

I also know that most business owners are clueless about what they should do to generate new customers, retain the ones they have and how to generate positive word of mouth. This is also true with a lot of non-profit organizations. And sadly, this is also the situation with most advertising agencies and internal marketing directors.

So, this week I have formally formed a business to help, ScLoHo Marketing Solutions. My passion is to help businesses make smart marketing decisions. This includes everything internally, externally, evaluation of what direction to head for growth in the future and in the present.

With experience dating back to 1986, working with 100's of business owners, finding the common threads of success and failures, and with a keen understanding of advertising and human behavior, I can help. And this is not a solo project, as I have partners that I will call on to subcontract some of the work depending on what the marketing project is. I know that I am not an expert in all areas, but I have a network of experts who will be working with me.

It all boils down to Passion.

You have a passion for the work that you do. You have become an expert in your field, whether that is health care, transmission repair, or whatever your field is. You need a partner to help you spread the word using all of the tools that are available today, and using timeless relationship principles. And you also need to find and fix the "leaks in your boat", that are causing you to lose customers and clients.

Currently ScLoHo Marketing Solutions will concentrate on businesses and organizations that are based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as I am retaining my role with the group of radio stations that I have been with the past 6 years. I will work with only a select number of clients, and you must be committed to the process which will be developed based on your current and future needs.

I am not a "yes man". I will tell you the truth. I may tell you to fire your sister. Or at least help her find a position in your company that fits her passions and makes your organization stronger.

Now, more than ever, you need help. Contact me to see if you qualify: Scott@ScLoHo.net

Before you spend any money on Advertising...

Along with the paid work I do, I also consult a couple of non-profits in the area of marketing and advertising. I've discovered that there is a tendency to look at the advertising options being offered without having a strategy in place.

By a strategy, I mean things like, determine where your future growth is going to come from, picking a target market that needs what you have to offer, and also decide what makes you unique in the eyes of your customers and clients.

(On that last one, it must be stronger than, "we care and we provide good prices and service".)

Then, once you are armed with a direction to go in, you can look at the advertising options that you have been presented and see which ones fit.

Anything else is like hopping on the highway without having a clue as to where you are going. You can drive real fast (spend lots of money), but never reach your destination. If you need help, contact me at scott@scloho.net.

Changes and Stability

It was 22 years ago that I made the switch to the advertising side of media.

Some of the changes over the past two decades include:

We are exposed to more advertising messages than ever before. So we become consciously numb to many of the ads and it takes something out of the ordinary to get our attention.

There are more demands on our time as the two income family is now the norm. So there are less housewives than ever before as even those that take a break when their children are born, return back to work within weeks, not years.

We have more choices for where we get our news, information and entertainment. In 1986, we had cable, but not 200 channels. The internet was not an option.

Our telephones were at our desks, or on the wall, not in our purse, pocket or belts. And we were not expected to be on call 24/7.

Personal Computers did not exist in most offices. Email, Instant Messaging, Blogs, Social Media sites, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Google have all changed the way we live our lives.

With all these changes, there are still lots of things that have not changed.

People like to buy, they don't like to be sold.

People will tell others about a good deal. People will tell LOTS of others about a bad deal.

Reputation matters.

We buy based on emotion, not logic. Even the most logical, unemotional people do this.

So to summarize, technology will continue to change, human nature remains predictably stable.

If your advertising is contrary to human nature and emotion, (like the screaming furniture sale tv ad I saw this week), then your chances of success are minimal.

Use the power of human nature and predictability as a guideline as you consider your advertising and marketing and you will not be disappointed.

Trends around us

Part of staying on top of trends is to be observant.

Notice patterns.

Be curious.

While relaxing on the 4th of July at a B & B, there was no television in our room. But there was free wifi.

This is the second time this summer, this has happened, no television in our room. But there was free wifi.

No problem, because my wife and I brought our laptops and we can watch tv or movies or anything else this way.

More and more folks are placing greater importance on Internet Access than Television.

So my advice to you is to do what we learned as little kids crossing the street:

Stop.

Look.

Listen.

You may be discovered what you'll find.