Presented by Charity Huff, CEO of January Spring, and Nitosha Ramirez, director of local sales with January Spring
Today’s focus. How to put together the right pricing and packaging with a focus on ROI and value selling. January Spring is a digital agency that works specifically with publishers to help them take digital to market.
Charity Huff said it: Advertisers are finding it increasingly hard to reach their target customer, using the media mix that worked pre-COVID. She's hearing this across the board. That’s why so much revenue and so many advertising dollars are shifting to digital. The prediction for 2020: around 60% of all ad revenue is going to go to digital.
Six ways to develop a sustainable digital business:
Skyrocketing digital numbers. Citing stats from TownNews, Charity Huff said visitor sessions have skyrocketed 48%, unique visitors have increased 40% and unique page views are up 44%. She said: “We should be capitalizing on that increased audience and increased audience engagement. Get your advertisers in front of those coveted readers … and do it digitally as that’s the best way right now to reach folks.”
Where are the eyeballs and traffic coming from? Mobile usage was up 215% from March 2019 (eMarketer). The average U.S. adult will spend 23 additional minutes per day on their smartphones in 2020. So, educate your advertising clients on why they must be advertising during this time.
Charity Huff said it. “Helping your advertisers have a really strong mobile strategy feels like a smart thing to do.”
How are you helping your advertisers stand out? Newspapers have a lot of different products in their toolbox; it’s a matter of how you put it together for your advertisers.
The bread-and-butter digital offerings. Nitosha Ramirez says these tactics with programmatic display will help clients get their bang for a buck:
Charity Huff said it: “Your pitch needs to lead with digital." If it can lead with your own newspaper's digital offerings, that’s even better because it’s your audience that is so important and should be the anchor to anything you are doing with your advertising clients.
A multi-media success story. Sandi (a senior account manager with a media company that January Spring works with) is finding great success — even in the face of COVID — with multi-media advertising programs. Her proposals always include a multi-media offering (combo of print and digital solutions) with three different exposure plans to choose from: a Dominate Exposure Plan (the most expensive of the three options), a Competitive Exposure Plan and the Present Plan. In a number of cases, clients are choosing the “Dominate Exposure” program.
Nitosha Ramirez said it: "Every business has an allocated marketing budget, but under that marketing budget, there’s a print budget, their Google budget, maybe their social budget, a display budget … there’s all these different budgets that fall under their marketing and advertising budget. We have their print money. So now, we have to figure out what they’re doing on the digital side and what we could do differently to help them and assist them." She said the intimidation on the part of some sales reps is understanding digital, what that consists of and how we fit into the puzzle. "But we have to start asking for those budgets and asking for those dollars or we’re not going to get them.”
ROI. It’s important to stay top of mind during a person’s buying cycle. Think of your client’s industry. What is their buying cycle? Understanding the purchasing cycle assists your client with their marketing strategy plan. And, frequency is key!
The six sales funnel stages. Awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation and purchase.
Our presenters offered tips on calculating digital campaign recommendations, adding: it’s all about frequency. Also, run the numbers; learn your client’s closing percentage and help them find their Return on Investment. Know how much every client is worth to them!
So, what’s hot right now? Landscaping, HVAC, roofing, painters, carpets and flooring, custom closets, solar, destination management companies, CBD, private schools, custom home builders, elective healthcare (cosmetic, dentists, optometry), wealth management, mortgages and finance, health and human services, and economic development/Chamber. Charity Huff’s advice: Ask for six-, nine- and 12-month contracts.
Case studies are a powerful selling tool. See several examples in the PowerPoints. Charity Huff will dig into these deeper in Part 3 of the Digital Selling series, and show you how to put these together and use them as a sales tool.
Charity Huff’s call to action for sales reps: Put together the right kind of multi-media mix and then show the client how you are going to help them grow their business.
Connect with our presenters:
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