“The Horse’s Mouth” – Reaching Your Audience

Welcome to “The Horse’s Mouth” with Tom McManus, a cool, unique talk show where guests belly up to the bar to discuss business, marketing, and life. No gossip, no hearsay, no BS, just the straight-up truth, right from the source.

Tom’s longtime love of bartending has come full circle since his days as a linebacker on the inaugural Jacksonville Jaguars football team—slinging drinks and talking shop with everyone from high-profile sports figures and entertainers to business leaders, journalists, and community leaders. Tom and guests trade insight and anecdotes, explore day-to-day topics and tackle the hard subjects, all with equal measures of energy, honesty, and laughter. Get the skinny on the real people behind the headlines, straight from the horse’s mouth.

This week, Tom spoke with Steve Strum from Northwestern Mutual, Ken Brady from 1010 XL, Amy Maynor from Beauty for Homes, Rebecca Day from Rebecca Day Music, and Bryan Croft from Holmes Custom.

What is the biggest challenge for you when it comes to reaching your audience?

Steve Strum

The first thing is name recognition. When I call someone and say, “Hi, I’m Steve Strum,” their response sometimes is, “Who are you?” You want to get your name out there where people know you and are familiar with your work. Secondarily is what differentiates your process from the other thousands of financial advisors that are vying for clients. Credibility is huge.

Rebecca Day

I have been in the music business for a while, so I have that credibility but beyond that, I think it is incredibly difficult to break through all that constant noice on social media. You’ve got to have a really interesting story especially as an artist. You need to be able to tell people and connect with people one on one even though you’re on a social media platform.

Amy Maynor

My biggest challenge is time because finding that trust is really huge in the line of work that I do. You are making a lot of decisions that are gonna be lasting. Doing more human interest stories, doing the type of marketing that I find works just takes a lot more time and creativity. That’s in shorter demand when I am working during the day. I’ve had to build it into my schedule. My market is primarily women, and within that demographic and the human interest stories are typically a hit. It helps build that emotional connection. Even in the digital age, people still want to see beautiful pictures and they want to see moving images.

Ken Brady

We want to really benefit the community we live in. We’re local, we are not corporate where decisions are all made down the hall. The biggest challenge is how do we get it all in and make it work? How do we make everybody happy, that’s a jigsaw puzzle that my general manager, Steve, has done a pretty good job of piecing together. We want to keep everyone engaged and happy and make sure that we’re serving the community. Local means topical. So, if if it’s on our minds about Kobe (Bryant) and the tragedy and all that happened, we’re talking about it, but nowhere else can you get the insight we have. When you break that down, it comes down to community. It’s a dying craft because across the country corporate radio, especially very recently, has laid off hundreds of local hosts that keep it local. Eventually, someone’s gonna have to say, “Are you really serving the local interest? Are you worthy of that license symbol?”

Steve Strum

Along those lines, whatever side of the fence we are on, in the end the purpose of media is to be a watchdog for local government. If you have media that’s outside of the area, does that even get picked up?

Bryan Croft

Only five percent of my business takes place here. I have to market beyond the local, and while I made have a hundred different ideas as to how that is possible, what I need is a team behind me that really helps put analytics behind them. It’s all about keeping an eye on the trends and being aware of what is coming up and what is popular.

Read more HERE.