Presented by Charity Huff, CEO of January Spring, and Jamie Butow, sales director
Remind me again, what’s January Spring? It’s a Denver-based full-service digital agency that partners with publishers to grow digital revenue, membership, event attendance and subscribers using a proven combination of targeted, programmatic display, social and search.
And a reminder of what your newspaper is selling: It’s audience, audience, audience. You have a powerful message to sell about your relationship with your audience and your community’s businesses.
Your demographics for demos. Your audience, with its diverse demographics in gender, age, etc., can be segmented to target whoever your advertisers want to reach. You can show that you have that dedicated audience.
No one-night stands. Leverage the niche audiences that you have a relationship with to build long-term campaigns. Think in three-month cycles so you can build marketing plans for your advertisers, such as going into the Q4 holidays or the Q1 2021 events, even with the pandemic.
Focus, people! Selling the value of your audience, rather than your product, streamlines the selling process and allows your salesforce to focus on what your clients need and build new revenue.
Impress with impressions. Businesses of course want to know how many people they are reaching. With your O&O and programmatic digital — plus your ROP, niche print, text and more — you can show them exactly how many impressions the campaign is making.
Get creative with your advertisers' investment: The best strategy is always to talk about the quarterly investment and what it looks like monthly so the advertiser understands that the creative will be refreshed regularly.
Deep, man. Always prep for deeper discussions with advertisers — even for your long-standing customers. Get together with them — Zoom if necessary — to talk about who they need to reach. Bonus: It can open opportunities to budgets you didn’t know about.
Know yourself: Before you meet with a client, ask yourself about your goals, why a client would want to meet with you, what are your vulnerabilities in terms of competitive media, do you really understand their business?
You asked: Can you still sell annual contracts? Yes, the sales teams that January Spring works with are selling annual contracts by setting them in terms of what the cost and products are for each quarter. Then you can focus on the packaging and needs of the advertiser. Important: Make it clear you are not running the same ad or message for 12 months — and you can pivot to reach their audience throughout the year.
Bring value. Examine what they’ve done before, what may or may not have worked, and show them information you have to help them market better.
NA in NA (a new age in needs assessment). There’s no longer any need to directly ask the business who they are trying to reach (there’s Facebook and the client’s own website for that), how they are making money and what they’ve got to spend (there’s AdMall and other data sources). Be able to come to a meeting already informed about their business.
Clues from social media. Looking at a potential client's Facebook or Twitter feeds often show what is important to the business in terms of promoting its services, its location, community roots, expertise and target audiences. And be sure to check out their competitors’ social media to see what they are doing.
Making the presentation. Go back to your media kit and start with your base product line and go from there with additional capabilities. Have different levels of, for instance, programmatic impressions at different costs.
“Programmatic” too jargon-y for you? It’s a term of art we understand in the industry but you might think the client can be confused about what it means. Here’s a simple explanation: It’s placing display advertising on the rest of the internet.
You asked: What do you say to clients who say they want to handle it all on digital? A few of your advertisers might be able to handle marketing alone, but the great majority don’t have a 12-month marketing program that includes print and your owned-and-operated website. But they simply cannot do programmatic on their own or, when they come back, event marketing.
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