Selling Return on Intermediate Objectives

Posted on by
Reply

Every marketer knows that ROI makes the advertising world go ’round. After all, theprimary objective of every media buy is return on investment, whether it’s measured in revenues, profits or market share.

The corollary, though, is that every publisher knows that proving ROI is

one of the most impossible jobs in media sales. But here’s the good news for both parties: Now media advertisers can measure the next best thing

to ROI: return on intermediate objectives.

Think of intermediate objectives as the stepping stones between advertising exposure and the advertiser’s primary objective. According to market research firm Baxter Research Center, an advertiser’s four intermediate objectives-regardless of media-include the following:

  • Advertising exposure and engagement
  • Audience involvement
  • Preliminary buying behavior
  • Active buying behavior

Each of those objectives, in turn, has four measurable components. These include:

Naturally, every advertiser and campaign are different, which means some clients will inevitably value one objective more than another. A client with an innovative product introduction, for instance, might want higher results on audience awareness; a client with a better-known product might aim for higher scores on improved opinion.

The point, though, is that all these results on intermediate objectives are predictions of ultimate advertising success. If an advertiser succeeds in each intermediate objective, he or she is that much closer to delivering on what the company really wants: ROI. The better the ROIO, in other words, the better the ROI.

 

 

Free Ad Sales Webinar

Posted on by
Reply
FREE WEBINAR
How to Increase Integrated and
Digital Advertising Sales
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
1pm-2pm EDT
Register your entire team for FREE

New Registration

Overview:

Successful publishers continue to develop creative integrated media solutions to meet their clients’ needs. Media brands provide the advertisers with a plethora of options-from print, to digital, to social media, to face-to-face and virtual shows, webinars, white papers, videos and more. The choices and complexities of cross-platform media buys can stymie advertisers and paralyze salespeople. In this session you will learn how to smooth the path to nailing those big accounts.

In this workshop attendees will learn how to:

  1. Sell the benefits of cross-media packages
  2. Expand print sales skills into multi-media environments
  3. Provide salespeople with the ammunition they need to close business
Topics include:
  • How new media has turned traditional marketing on its head
  • Capitalizing on the new sales and marketing funnel
  • The four E’s: Engage, educate, excite, evangelize
  • What publishers need to do to succeed in the new media world
  • How to build and sell the value of your brand
  • How and why media salespeople must become marketing subject-experts
  • What advertisers expect from integrated media  programs
  • Use of research to prove your media’s effectiveness
  • What your media kit and promotional materials must include to empower your sales team
  • How to get your media on your client’s media schedule
  • Using account management systems and social media
  • Q&A

 

  

  

 

How to Increase Digital Advertising Sales with Engagement Analytics

Posted on by
Reply

If I had a dollar for every statistic I see in a typical media kit-and I’ve seen hundreds of media kits-Icould retire tomorrow. With today’s measurement tools, you can call up virtually every detail about online media viewership, from page views and unique visitors to time spent per page and clicks per link.

 

However, if I had a dollar for every number that measured viewer quality, instead of quantity, I could barely afford lunch. To measure quality of viewership, you must measure commitment. You must be able to demonstrate to advertisers that your viewers are engaging, exploring, meeting their needs and prepared to buy. Don’t get me wrong: Quantity of viewership is critical for advertisers. But viewer quality is what creates advertising value.

 

Measuring viewer quality is the purpose of engagement analytics. Engagement analytics is a measurement tool that indicates which part of the website/marketing mix creates the highest impact, draws the highest quality viewers and is worth the greatest marketing investment. It’s the tool digital advertising salespeople need to show why their website will pay off in better prospects for their clients.

 

I learned a lot about engagement analytics from Sitecore, a web content management and online engagement software company. Essentially, Sitecore measures viewer commitment by assigning “engagement value points” to various areas of viewer contact across a website. Psychologically, measuring website interest is a bit like measuring dating interest: Signing up for a newsletter, for instance, is akin to meeting someone’s eyes across a crowded room; asking a question is flirtatious chit-chat; requesting a product demo is like dinner and a movie. Numerically, measuring website interest involves assigning points per viewer action. Here’s an example of what those engagement value points might look like:

 

 Newsletter registration: 25 EVPs
Online pricing quote: 50 EVPs
Request for demo: 100 EVPs

 

According to Sitecore the EVP number is less important than the EVP ratio. In this case, for example, four newsletter registrations are as valuable as one demo request. Naturally, that makes engagement analytics important for assigning marketing investments. Moreover, Sitecore notes that there’s an exact correlation between EVP and revenue. This makes engagement analytics an excellent tool for forecasting revenue.

 

Moreover, this tool enables media companies to plan better quality marketing over a long sales cycle. Obviously, it’s not prudent to pour one’s entire marketing budget into product demos. Instead, marketers can use engagement analytics to determine the overall behavior of high-volume visitors. Media companies can, for instance, find out which entry page led to the longest site engagement, or which key words, images or campaigns attracted the most loyal visitors. All this tells the CMO which marketing methods, over the long term, deliver the relevance required in the marketing mix to capture initial contacts and retain them over the entire sales cycle.

 

For some time I’ve talked about how the line has blurred between sales and marketing, and how media salespeople today need to establish marketing expertise in order to succeed. In my view, engagement analytics is one of those important marketing tools for making the most of your sales call.

 

Do you use engagement analytics to prove your advertising ROI? Send us your media sales story to hberman@helenberman.com and get a FREE Berman on-demand webinar.

 

FREE LIVE WEBINAR: SAVE THE DATE
Wednesday, May 9th, 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time
“How to Increase Integrated Media and Digital Advertising Sales,”
Speaker: Helen Berman
Sponsor: The National Association of Publishers’ Representatives