Ad Sales Blog

To catch a blogger...

Bloggers have more influence on the web than ever. Many see their influence being as great as paid advertising. But can bloggers be influenced? Last year's Technorati: State of the Blogosphere study shows us the way. When bloggers were asked what content or advertising moves them:

The biggest influence on bloggers is, by far,other bloggers. To catch a blogger's attention, you or your organization need to launch a credible blogor find credible presence on the blogosphere itself. This is good news for content publishers who can create targeted blogs that sponsors may want to support.  

Read the entire Technorati study  

Song of change

Clever, accurate, funny, depressing...

Enjoy!

"Online media is bought on religion or politics"

Susan Bratton’s “DishyMix” podcast came up with up one of the funniest and succinct descriptions of how media gets bought during her interview with media metrics guru, Jim Sterne (photo at left). Sterne is the founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits where online wizards gather to interpret data from online programs and ad campaigns.

In the world on online ad metrics you would think that the numbers would speak for themselves and there be little room for the human element. Wrong. When Sterne talks about how media decisions get made, metrics and all, the human element is still very much present.  

According to Sterne media is bought on either "religion or politics." According to Sterne, “If it’s religion, your CMO 15 years ago was good at buying television. So television gets all the money ‘cause that’s what he knows. Or, she really was a brilliant “search” marketing person, so search gets the focus. She’s the hammer and everything looks like a nail.”

“Politics is where the corporate search guy is going to get more money because he has known the CMO longer or has more power.”

Sterne summarizes, "You know it’s religion if they say, 'You know I’ve always done it this way and it’s worked for me.' It's politics when they say, 'Gees, we don’t have enough resources and this seems like the best way to go."

Click to listen to or download the DishyMix podcast featuring Jim Sterne here

Is the CMO of your advertiser on Twitter?

  One great way to get on the "inside" of an account is to follow key marketing decision-makers on Twitter. Anyone can "follow" anyone with a Twitter account, and by "following" a marketing executive you will receive a steady stream of anecdotal information that can better help you understand and ultimately sell the account.

The question is who in your client's marketing department is on Twitter? I've noticed that most ad managers and people focused on internal functions are often not. Even though Twitter is all the rage most people who start on it do not continue. A recent survey by Nielsen found that less than 60% of Twitter beginners continue after a month. In business, the people who tend to keep Tweeting are ones who find a business benefit. For internal people, like media buyers, once the novelty wears of it can be hard to justify the time, effort, and discipline required to keep up a steady flow of Tweets.

But an insightful Tweeting Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)can attract positive attention for an organization. Since most will assume they are involved in company policy, when their posts generate a positive reaction, it reflects on the company. That is a business benefit.

On a large account you may never meet or call on the CMO, but by "following " them on Twitter you can gain insight into the mind, values, and where abouts of the person setting the tone and direction for an organizations marketing. 

Let's get started. Check this list of CMOs who are on Twitter maintained by by Systemic Marketing to see if you already know a CMO on Twitter. Hey, that's  Zinio's CMO Jeanniey Mullen at #33 on the list. See? I already know a CMO on Twitter. I'll bet you do too!    

Read about the Nielsen report about Twitter newcomers dropping off after a month

See the Systemic Marketing list of CMOs now on Twitter

Sell more media by putting a price on brand equity

For media salespeople who struggle with the challenge of proving the dollar value of a branding campaign this study is a blessing. Millward Brown Optimor, the study creator, does the hard work for us as it examines the "brand value" of the worlds top 100 brands and ranks them.

According to this study, "Brand Value" is the financial value of a brand, "defined as the sum of all earnings that a brand is expected to generate." By isolating revenues only associated with a company brand, true brand value is laid bare. The study is also fun. These are companies we all know and it turns the potentially dull business of ranking brand equity into a horse race. Over previous the year brand equity at Home Depot is down 16%, Pepsi is up 15%, Starbucks down 25%, and BlackBerry up 390%. Goooo Blackberry!!

On a call.

 You can use this study to make a hard connection between brand building and revenue generation. You do not need to go into every detail of the study, use the study to sell the idea that brand value is revenue value. Find a page or two from the study where the well known companies are known to your client. Now turn that same line of thought to your clients business.

Ask: How much is your brand worth? What if it were worth more? How much more revenue would come in if it were? How could this happen? The answers to these questions could help you selling a branding program.

Download the FREE 2008 30 page report: http://www.brandz.com/upload/BrandZ-2008-RankingReport.pdf

 If one of your clients is actually in the report, you can have fun on the call by comparing 2008 results to 2007 report.

Download the FREE 2007 28 page report: http://www.millwardbrown.com/Sites/Optimor/Media/Pdfs/en/BrandZ/BrandZ-2007-RankingReport.pdf

Recession clients who most buy webinars, white papers, and social media

When selling media in a recession, results matter. So. sponsorships that generate sales leads can be among the most recession resistant you will sell. A new research report I did for the Customer Collective, “What is Your Recession Sales Strategy.” finds that different kinds of companies buy depending on the kind of company they are. 

According to the survey, which queried a national sample of sales and marketing managers, entrepreneurial companies have dramatically embraced the use of social media for sales prospecting, mid-sized companies and multinationals lead in the use of webinars, while mid-sized companies lead in the use of white papers. Here are the results in detail: 

 

Social media:

According the study, 74.1% of self described entrepreneurial companies report that as a result of the recession they will be using social media for prospecting more often. In addition, 67.3% of small businesses, 49.3% of mid-sized companies, while only 45.9% of multinational corporations will do the same.

 

Webinars:

 Mid-sized companies and multinational corporations lead in the use of webinars sales lead generation.

The study found that 38.8% of mid-sized companies and 36.1% of multinational corporations will use more webinars to generate sales leads because of the recession. Only 28.4% of entrepreneurial companies and 24.5% of small businesses will do the same.

 

White papers:

When it comes to using white papers, mid-sized companies lead the way.

38.8% of mid-sized companies report they will use white papers more often to generate sales leads as a result of a recession while only 24.5% of small businesses, 23.5% of entrepreneurial companies, and 19.7% of multinational corporations plan on doing the same.

 

 

The recession will mean a growth in the use of webinars by multinational corporations and mid-sized companies, growth in the use of social media for prospecting among entrepreneurial companies, and growth in the use of white papers for lead generation among mid-sized companies.

As you look to your own media territories to generate sales leads, factor this in!

More about the Free Customer Collective white paper/survey

Download the study for free 

Is the Golden Age of "web as direct response" over?

The "Internet advertising as direct mail" model, with click throughs the only meaningful metric, has been dealt a blow. This is great news for content publishers, whose advertising sell is based more on relevance and engagement, and less on delivering boat loads of click troughs. 

As I have said many times on this blog, if you are staking your continued online media sales on delivering click thoughs alone you are toast. For online media buyers, there is always a cheaper way to get more click throughs. But media relevancy is making a comeback. The driver? Social media that engages more and more visitors while giving them the power to  block advertising.     

According to recent post on the Harvard Business Review:  

"Early in the Internet era, it looked as if successful online marketing would follow the model of direct marketing. Data profiling and digital media would allow for deeper targeting and more intrusion into consumers’ lives than broadcast marketing. At last, it seemed, marketing would become a branch of social engineering with the marketer firmly in control. Ten years later that view looks to have been quite wrong. What we did not anticipate was that the technology that enabled intrusion would also enable defense against intrusion. From Tivo to Caller ID to social media, consumers have found ways to keep the invaders at bay. Marketers no longer rule the market. They are invited guests. If they are provocative, pertinent and entertaining they get to stay. If they are overbearing there are ways to shut them out."

The article goes on the give a terrific example of how this approach is being used to sell soap. Yup, Dove soap! 

"But some brands are cracking the code of social media and discovering how to thrive in the disenchanted environment of Web 2.0. Consider Unilever’s Dove, which has added $1.2 billion to its brand value over the past three years...

The principle made plain by Dove’s success is that in social networks brands must seek to provoke conversation not to dominate it. The locus of control in the marketplace shifts from marketer to consumer, and success is built on a model of co-created meaning. In Web 2.0, marketers accept that it is enough to rouse, to stimulate, to stir.

Dove's strategy was to move away from functional claims and to present itself as a brand with a point of view. It advocated that the beauty industry was contributing to the destruction of self-esteem in girls and young women by propagating unrealistic standards. With its Self-Esteem Fund and The Campaign for Real Beauty, Dove placed itself at odds with its competitors. Consumers loved the conflict. They lit up the digital media, generating millions of pass-along clips for YouTube, clips like Evolution and Hates Her Freckles."

See the Dove campaign website: http://www.dove.us/#/cfrb/

Read the whole post on the Harvard Business Review, "How to Build a Brand on the Web? Ask Unilever"

Why ad agency pay matters

I hear many complaints about the young media buyers we meet with at big city ad agencies.

Often the buyers are just out of college and hard to prove real value to when they learned the term "CPM" 6 months ago, and will leave their position six months from now.

But work with them we must. To better understand how, follow the money, their money that is.

As you will see from the following there is strong motivation for them to move quickly from their first low paying positions. Don't take it personally. They want to move up their career ladder just like you do, only for them there is economic motivation to move on because starting salaries are low. How low?

Rachel, the career advice columnist for Media Life, reports;

"They'll start at about what an administrative assistant makes but less than a beginning elementary school teacher. What's different is that salaries can then climb rapidly, and over the course of a career media people as a rule do far better than in past years. One reason why is that media has become a much more competitive and demanding business. Within three years you can expect to take home what a retail store manager might make, and as you gain yet more experience you could be making the salary of a family doctor or even a cardiologist. The challenge is weathering those early years, and it helps if you are passionate about media... I talked to several media friends, and they say that entry-level salaries in the Northeast have been stuck in the $30,000 to $32,000 range for quite some time. And given the economy, that is not likely to change. But it can go up sharply."

So the next time you meet a starting media planner take the time to help them out. They may not be in their position long. But it is worth the investment considering that some will move up quickly the ad agency ladder and become relationships well worth the investment.

Read the whole column on Media Life:

Rachel, what can I make in New York?

Magazines: most credible source of "information about a company"

My 7/8 post reviewed a 2008  Edelman Study that documented how young Americans rated Business magazines as #1 in credibility as a source of company information, and Wikepedia #2.

But as Gregory Kohs correctly commented, the Edelman study is not focused on young Americans, it is a world wide study focusing on business leaders.

While the "young American" finding was interesting, the more important finding is how business leaders, world wide, perceive different media.

Posted here is chart on media credibility as it relates to this broader audience. 

As with young Americans, business magazines were #1 followed by stock or industry analyst reports, then followed by Television.

This is a great report to bring on a call to document the credibility magazine advertising can bring to a marketing program.

Download the entire Edelman study

You've been "optimized" off the schedule

Has this happened to you?

A digital ad agency representing a Fortune 500 corporation sends you an RFP for a two week online campaign. You respond professionally and promptly. Like a shock, word comes back, they are in! The news travels through your organization like wild fire, "We just broke into a Fortune 500 Corporation's digital ad budget!" As dozens of congratulatory e-mails surge through your company the future looks bright. The media runs. The media stops running. There is no follow up RFP. You can't get the media buyer on the phone and she does not respond to your emails. When you finally hear back, the response is one sentence apologizing for the delay in getting back and a mention that your media will not be considered for the future of the campaign. Ouch! What happened?

Here is how someone at the digital agency described the same process:
"We had a three month campaign to buy media for. In the first two weeks we ran three different versions of the creative in several size configurations. We ran ads in a wide range of websites to test the response.

We ran the two week test, then optimized the buy.

Of the three creative treatments, the one offering a free download performed best. Of the three ad sizes the leader board size performed best. We tried 30 different websites and found that eleven performed best so we continued with them and dropped the rest."

On your next call.

Don’t be discouraged by this process. On the surface it may look like media evaluation is out of your control. Not true. While results rule the day, PEOPLE still evaluate the results. Your job is to help your buyer understand why a response from your unique visitor is more valuable, or at least different, from any other. When your respond to an online RFP make sure the buyer understands what kind of response they can expect from your media AND why that response is important for the campaign. Do this at the time of the sale, not later. Selling media is still selling. To be successful, you need to sell the unique value of your visitor and his or her response BEFORE it runs.