Media Selling. Warner Charles Dudley

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Название Media Selling
Автор произведения Warner Charles Dudley
Жанр Кинематограф, театр
Серия
Издательство Кинематограф, театр
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781119477419



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customer burden of solutions

      Solution selling requires a deep understanding of a customer’s business, customer problems and challenges, customer strategy, and a customer’s competitors, all of which require asking customers a lot of questions. This process of discovery and investigation consumes a great deal of a customer’s time, which business customers are less and less willing to give. Furthermore, in the age of Internet disruption, many customers are unaware of some of their more pressing problems and especially of the opportunities available in digital media.

      Also, advertising agencies purchase the majority of national media advertising by using a highly formalized request‐for‐proposal (RFP) process, although because of programmatic buying, the use of RFPs is declining. You can see examples of RFPs at http://mediaselling.us/downloads.html. Agencies email RFPs to media salespeople and expect proposed schedules emailed back that meet the criteria specified in the RFPs. Face‐to‐face selling is kept to a minimum because of the vast number of media outlets, and only salespeople from large media brands such as Google, Facebook, ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN, BuzzFeed, Huff Post, or Snapchat, for example, can get personal selling time with major agency buyers and planners, who are neither interested in nor have time for solutions‐based selling approaches; they only want to know the price, the medium’s ability to deliver impressions to a specific target audience, the social‐media support a schedule will be given, the appropriateness of the content, and the responsive service they will get. Effectively selling media to agencies requires conversations with agency planners and buyers before an RFP is crafted in order to affect the scope of the RFP so that it favors in some way the medium being sold. On the other hand, if a buy is being made programmatically and no RFP is going to be issued, effective selling to agencies requires educating the agency planners and buyers on the benefits of your medium so they will consider putting it in a media plan and buying it.

      Local businesses that place ads in media, such as on radio and television stations or in local newspapers and magazines, are typically interested in solutions to their marketing problems and, thus, are willing to take the time to share information about their businesses with salespeople. Local advertisers will usually answer discovery questions and will be grateful for help in crafting solutions to their marketing problems and in navigating a complex and fragmented media environment.

      The salespeople for the American‐Statesman newspaper in Austin, TX, also sell on a cross‐platform basis. Over 20 percent of the American‐Statesman’s total revenue comes from the digital edition of the paper and from two other websites, Austin 360, a things‐to‐do website and Ahora Si!, a Spanish‐language version of the newspaper. The American‐Statesman also offers an advertising agency service to its clients, similar to what the Zimmer Radio and Marketing Group offers.

      These two media companies are bucking a trend of local radio and newspaper advertising revenue decline by offering cross‐platform, full‐service solutions to local advertisers. The Zimmer Radio and Marketing Group and the Austin American‐Statesman are partnering with local businesses and helping both themselves and their partners grow.

      The rise of the consensus‐based sale

      This need for consensus requires that for major media investments salespeople must call on and persuade multiple levels of client and agency personnel, which, of course, means an investment of a great deal of time and effort. This need for consensus also means that salespeople should be adept at and comfortable with establishing and maintaining relationships at multiple client and agency levels if the situation calls for it.

      Increased risk aversion

      On a local basis, many media outlets such as the Zimmer Radio and Marketing Group and the Austin American‐Statesman are partnering with clients and delivering full‐service ad agency buying, designing, creative, and optimization functions in order to reduce their client’s apprehension in placing cross‐platform advertising.

      Greater demand for customization

      A one‐size‐fits‐all solution is no longer a viable approach to selling in general, and particularly in the media. When selling media, every advertiser wants to feel special and that they are not only different from other businesses but especially different from their competitors. An offer for each customer must be customized according to the client’s unique business goals and strategies and framed according to the unique personality of the decision‐making individual.

      Customization means that every sales call, every proposal, and every presentation has to be crafted differently and, of course, it takes time to do in‐depth research to understand a client’s industry, goals, strategies, creative approach, and personal needs. Also, one critical part of the customization process is analyzing a multitude of data available on a client to find insights that might help a client get better results through its advertising efforts.

      New approach 1: Serving the customer

      Facebook does not have a sales division; it has a partnership group. The difference is that a pre‐Internet‐era media sales department handled transactions, but the Facebook partnership group works with advertisers and marketers to educate them on the best way to use Facebook’s ability to micro‐target consumers on a wide range