It’s Time to Change the Way You’re Selling to Advertisers

Your advertisers are looking for new and different ways to drive leads, and there is a lot of their middle-of-the-funnel budgets we’re not accessing today. If you don’t want to be leaving this money on the table, you’re going to need to change the way you’re selling to advertisers.

Start with a CNA

The most important – yet often most overlooked – step of your sales process should be the Customer Needs Analysis (CNA) meeting. In your CNA, ask questions to understand your advertiser’s goals and how they will measure the success of the campaign. This information will help you craft the right campaign and promote it to the appropriate channels to reach the desired audience.

You can get hundreds of custom CNA questions specific to 40+ advertiser categories in our Seller’s Guide. Here are a few sample CNA questions to get you started:

• What’s your most popular service or product? Which is the most profitable?
• What is the value of a new customer to you?
• How would you define success for a marketing campaign?
• What information would help you identify someone as a good prospect for your company?
• What has been your most successful way to generate new leads? What hasn’t worked as well?
• Do you have any co-op dollars available for digital promotions?

If you want to deliver the results your advertisers want, you have to figure out their goal first.

Deliver MEASURABLE Results

When it comes to proving the success of your campaigns, you need to be able to show measurable, trackable results. Just like you, your advertisers want middle-of-the-funnel solutions not top-of-the-funnel branding opportunities.

Based on the goals of your advertiser, you can customize a promotion to achieve their results. So just what are today’s advertisers looking for? They want a campaign that can:

• Generate qualified leads
• Grow their email database
• Educate about their products or services
• Increase traffic and sales

But many advertisers don’t realize digital promotions can deliver these type of middle-of-the-funnel solutions.

Success with New Advertisers

Once you’ve changed the way you approach your advertisers’ needs, you open up a brand new world of possibilities. Every single business in your market is within your grasp.

Check out this promotion for a local math tutor, Mathnasium: The Math Learning Center. The tutor was considering pulling their buy with the station because on-air ads just weren’t driving the results they wanted. After talking to them, the station pitched a math-themed quiz bundle with an opt-in and survey questions. The promotion directly resulted in 25 new leads for the tutor and grew their database by over 160 people. Read the full story.

Here’s an example for a lawn equipment store, Oakley Napa Lawn & Garden. The store’s number one goal was to increase their sales. With a sweepstakes for $1,000 tool prize pack, the station attached a bounceback coupon for $10 off a purchase in the store. In addition, they emailed out a targeted follow-up email with another coupon. They increased monthly sales by 20% and secured $30,000 for the store. Read the full story.

(Re)Train Your Sales Team

The media companies who have outstanding advertiser programs will tell you this is not a simple change. It takes time and resources to train your team, and sometimes that even means retraining them to think about the sales process differently.

Get your entire team excited about this huge opportunity. Show your team the success others are driving from creating promotions that deliver results, the importance of asking the right questions and listening to their advertiser, and that this is a HUGE opportunity. They can keep selling traditional advertising, but they need to be thinking of the promotion as the main event, not the sideshow.