So you’ve mostly been a print publisher up until now. Maybe you’ve added a couple new revenue streams like a special edition book and a sponsored event or two. You know it’s time to really put some focus on digital ad sales. But where do you start without getting overwhelmed by the vastness of all things digital?
Lucky for you, the niche publishers who attend our annual Super Niche event are full of practical strategies for creating digital revenue for their magazines. Here’s a handy how-to so you can kick off your sales team with a dynamic digital bang.
Six steps to diving into digital ad sales:
- Create a straight-forward, easy path. If you sell a complicated product with many options, select one for your audience and create a landing page (with a clear call to action) specific to that audience. Advertisers can always customize later, but giving them an “easy button” starts the conversation.
- Develop incentives for the sales team. You want to create an incentive plan for your sales team that provides a bonus for selling online. Use total number of units sold rather than ad dollars to increase volume and keep the numbers simple and easy to track.
- Start by taking advantage of existing resources. Assign a sales person now to call people who send in press releases to your editorial team. If they have a limited budget and are just looking for press, sell them an option into one of your e-newsletters.
- Allow exclusive advertisers. For example, on a certain day of the month, allow an advertiser to occupy ALL the ad spots on each page of your entire website.
- Offer video to your advertisers. It’s huge! You can create videos for your advertisers as part of a digital bundle. As an up sell, make it available on your site, on their site, and on DVD (for offline mailing). Or you can post short videos to answer common questions and give your advertisers the opportunity to be a thought leader/resource/expert. Remember to keep it simple.
- Triple up. You can sell sponsorship of your digital edition AND also the email blast releasing the digital edition to your subscribers. And offer to tweet their link out to your followers too. Don’t give it all away for free!
Bonus tip: You can also send your salespeople to one of our Camp Niche sales trainings this fall —before they fill up!
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About this blogger: Diana Landau is the Content Wrangler for Niche Media. A former sales director and corporate marketing hack, she has now found nirvana in writing and wrangling quality content. Diana is a food, wine, art and SF Giants enthusiast…who sometimes gets carried away.
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Niche Media has the best events, education, and training in media! Our super niched-out events & content give target-audience publishers in the B2C, hobbyist, B2B, city & regional, and association markets the tools they need to build revenue, audience, and more.
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