Will 2023 be a boom year or a bust for your cluster or company? Based on its work with 500 local media company clients, technology and digital advertising services company AdCellerant suggests these four things to keep your local media business ahead of a recession. Chief Revenue Officer Melissa Sheehan and VP of New Business Development Ben Bouslog presented these suggestions during the recent Borrell Miami conference.
Create Your Rally Cry
To go to market consistently, managers need to align their sales teams and systems around a common goal. “Create that rally cry, whatever it is, and get your team excited,” Sheehan says. “If you get your reps focused on their advertisers’ audience, the conversation is naturally going to go better. It’s harder for a client to say no when they’re missing out on a key part of their audience.”
Once sellers have identified the advertiser’s audience, the next step is bundling the right products together to make the campaign successful. “You talk about that customer’s goals and you align that with the products that fulfill those goals, both in traditional media and digital,” Sheehan adds. That includes coming up with creative that is compelling and has a call to action. Creating a rallying cry for your sales teams ensures everyone uses the same systems and processes and creates accountability and consistency so that every decision aligns with the organization’s common rallying cry.
Double Down On Training
Training produces confident consultants and leads to sales. “It’s not just about product training, you need sales training to have that consultative approach to advertising sales,” says Bouslog. Since digital is constantly evolving, training needs to be a continuous process, not a one-off or once-a-month proposition. To overcome objections from sales reps who push back on selling digital, Bouslog suggests showing them how the ad pie is divvied among all of the different media channels. With online getting well over half of the dollars, the incentive is to expand your wallet share by offering a wider menu of ad channels to clients and prospects.
Prospect Smart
One of the tactics AdCellerant says its clients have had success with is hosting an educational webinar for prospects. The concept is to invite them in and educate them. These can take the form of a Lunch And Learn series that informs attendees about a different digital topic every three weeks, such as how to use email marketing or geofencing. The goal is to generate more appointments for your sales reps. “It’s a natural lead list for those folks that are having trouble with prospecting,” Sheehan says. Other variations on this theme are industry-specific webinars devoted to key categories, such as real estate and entertainment clients. Focus on the industries that are advertising now, including professional services, electronics, home & family, recreation, retail, healthcare, travel, and experiential categories like sporting events, movies, and amusement parks.
Retain and Renew
Offering clients an omnichannel approach that covers the entire sales funnel is more likely to lead to client retention. Campaigns with four or more digital products result in double the retention rate than those with two, according to AdCellerant. “When you do this omni channel approach, you’re covering the full funnel, you’re helping them build their brand, you’re building their awareness, driving interest, and getting those people to convert at the bottom of the funnel,” said Bouslog. Other tips: Be the subject matter expert on your clients, not your product; focus on the metrics that matter; and bring quality results.
