Set Specific Revenue Goals
When you create your promotions and interactive content budget, set an overall revenue goal, as well as individual revenue goals for each promotion type. This will help you to stay focused on all the initiatives that you have planned. Check out this case study to see how creating a line-by-line promotions budget helped WPSD-TV reach new heights with their promotions and interactive content program.
“We built out a line-by-line budget detailing our promotions revenue goals. In addition to the overall goal, we had sub-goals, which are helping us stay focused on a wide variety of promotions.”
Put Together a Cross-Departmental Promotions Team
The best way to establish buy-in for promotions and interactive content across your organization is to involve everyone. Put together a committee including people from the Sales, Marketing/Audience Development, Newsroom, and Operations departments to gain a wider perspective on how promotions and interactive content can work for your company. You can even establish a dedicated Promotions Manager as a team lead, like Record-Journal did. The sales reps will feel more confident in the promotions and interactive content knowing that they have a dedicated resource to tap into with questions or bounce ideas off of. Also, seeing that the entire organization in involved will further demostrate that these are a priority.
Create a Promotions Calendar & Track Your Progress
A promotions calendar will help keep your team on track throughout the year. Also, it helps you align with existing initiatives. If you take the time to plan ahead, you can project and track your revenue to ensure you hit or exceed your goals. Ready to get started? Download your own copy of our Planning Calendar and Revenue Tracker. This is the perfect way to organize your calendar and make sure you achieve your ambitious revenue goals.
Make Promotions a Regular Topic in Sales Meetings
It’s important to show your reps what is happening with promotions and interactive content in your weekly sales meetings, so be sure to report on successes and to review what’s coming up next. You should also brainstorm with the whole team before planning your promotions calendar – allowing everyone to contribute will give you better ideas and make the whole team feel more invested in promotions. Also, look for opportunities to explore specific advertiser categories that are a high priority for your company. Check out our Seller’s Guide to Promotions for a breakdown of ideas for specific advertiser categories.
Train Your Team to Sell Promotions Efficiently
Give your reps the proper training to both sell sponsorships and create custom solutions for your advertisers based on their needs. Being able to do that gives them even more ways to reach their promotions and interactive content goals!
Incentivize Your Sales Reps to Sell Promotions
Establish performance-based bonuses – including additional spiff and contests – for promotions and interactive content, just like you do for all of your other products. Your reps will go where the money is, and if they’re being paid to sell promotions, they will sell promotions.
You have to see promotions and interactive content as a priority in order to establish them as a priority at your media company. Once this starts happening, everyone in your organization will be more likely to see them as a continuing priority and treat them as such.
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Liz is the Senior Director of Customer Success and has an extensive background in media. She is a huge advocate of the power of promotions for every department within an organization, including sales, marketing, audience development, and editorial.