Leverage a Print Campaign to Win Internet Ads
Hybrid Media is More Powerful Media
Magazine advertising sales people have a big advantage when selling digital ads to their clients.When a national magazine campaign is planned in 2014 and beyond, there is almost certainly a digital campaign coming down the pike behind it. Digital planning comes later because the lead-time to get it into media is far shorter; 90 days for monthly magazines compared to a week or even less for digital. When your magazine wins the business, that win should give your sales person a head-start and an advantage to sell the Internet campaign onto your site.
You and your team have an advantage for two reasons:
- Your non-print competitors may not even know that a campaign is being planned. But your team can assume — until proven otherwise — that a digital plan is in the works.
- Research shows buying media from the same brand online and off is more effective. Provided your sales team can communicate this research, there should be a bias toward adding digital impressions to the print impressions directed to your audience.
Dynamic Logic, the advertising effectiveness research company, is widely considered the best of breed measures advertising effectiveness for major national advertisers. In What Sticks, authored by DLs former President, Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart they pointed out the critical importance of creating a ‘surround sound’ message and delivering it through the same media brand in multiple channels. This idea is so important, let me quote them here:
“Until we discovered this surround-sound marketing effect at work with online and magazine ads, AstraZeneca was following a very logical approach based on the media-mechanics principle that ‘says go for broad reach and minimize frequency duplication.’ It was steering away from buying ads from companies that had both a magazine and online for the same media (such as Prevention and Prevention.com). The reasoning is that a marketer gets too much duplication. However, given the way that magazine and online advertising worked together, in concert, we found more value in using the combination of both.”
Every print sales person, selling online, too, should be following every print sale with an online sale to the same brand. Using the evidence above, which can be further corroborated with other case studies from Dynamic Logic, print sales starts with a head start to win many a digital RFP. But only if your sales team uses it. Digital media buyers can’t be counted on to understand the value of integrated media.
Contact us for a customized integrated advertising sales training course to help give your sales team the inspiration and the skills to grow sales calls, and grow your business.
