The only thing I love more than selling advertising is learning new ideas and techniques that I can take back to my customers to help them achieve their goals. I just returned from the Niche Magazine Conference in Austin where 200 publishing folks from small to mid-sized magazines gathered to listen to some of the smartest publishing experts alive gives us their thoughts and ideas on new ways to generate revenue in our publishing companies. I came back with so many good ideas to increase sales I could hardly wait to implement them but then I remembered Mike Bannan, a speaker presenting “20+ New Revenue Generating Ideas”, saying to pick just three good ideas and implement them well. Don’t try to do everything at once. So I’ve narrowed down my extensive list to my Top Three.
Ryan Dohrn, in his session “Extending Online Revenue” showed me
how easy it is to make money on Facebook. By
establishing a Facebook Fanpage and promoting your readers to “Like” it you are
able to build an audience that you can talk to frequently and immediately. Once you have your audience built you
can sell your advertisers a “post” on your page for a day which would promote a
special they are offering. Ryan
says a day is an eternity in Facebook time so one day is long enough. Charge $100 per post. Thirty posts a month – that’s $3,000 –
or $36,000 per year!
Alan Zeichick opened my eyes to the world of “Lead Gen” – a term
our advertisers always say they want – but the details of a successful program
always eluded me. Alan filled in
the blanks with many examples of Lead Gen programs but the one that seems
easiest to implement in my market is the White Paper program. He says you get an advertiser to
submit a White Paper on a subject of interest to your audience. You send an email to your readers
telling them that a free White Paper is available for download by clicking on a
link. In order to download the
paper they have to give some basic demographic and contact information knowing
that their information would be given to the paper’s author. Advertiser pays $30 for every lead
generated. If one hundred people
download the paper that’s $3,000 – or $36,000 per year if you only did one a
month. Boom! I just sold $72,000 more per year with
two ideas.
Finally, Mitch Rouda and Ward Downing inspired me in their
session “Publishing Financials” by reminding me that the best way to sell more
advertising is to be organized and have a plan. Their Sales Projection worksheet is
such a great tool for sales people to organize their prospects, project revenue
in the pipeline and know where they stand three months in advance. This tool is invaluable for Sales
Managers and Publishers as well (email me if you’d like a copy). Mitch also encouraged us to create
“buckets” of revenue and create a Top 50 list of prospects by bucket. For instance, who are the Top 50
Companies spending money online in my market? Create
an online advertising bucket – it is the best way to focus to find the money
you’re looking for.
Three ideas. Twenty
more down the road. I love to
learn!
Happy Selling!
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