Digital Sales


What Makes the World Go Around? Or How to Think About Cold-Calling

What, indeed, makes the world go around? The immutable forces of physics would be one answer. In our more prosaic world, and something I know more about, it’s the creative and destructive forces of the economy. Every day the sun comes up, it’s a new day of opportunity. New products […]


Need for Digital Media Auditing: Fraud is Rampant

The solution of preventing advertising fraud by creating an approved list for advertisers to limit their advertising to will only solve 1/2 of the problem.  Advertising on known sites is a start.  But the traffic to those known sites must be verified to be real.  This is where auditing comes in.  


The Secret Digital Publishing Strategy Hiding in Plain Sight

Email is 1) the strongest consumer connection on the internet short of a paid relationship, and 2) a fantastic way to deliver content and advertising, and 3) by far a bigger opportunity for publishers than social media because everyone has email…it’s required to register for social media.


Brand Safety and Digital Marketing Success: Auditing Needed

The time has come for the legitimate digital press and advertisers who want to maximize their ROI on advertising to organize the 21st century’s digital version of the Alliance for Audited Media.


Not Cold Calls, Smart Calls 1

Your opening lines, whether your prospect answers the phone or you leave a phone message, must be smartly specific to that prospect and that business. When you can cite a specific data point about that business, the prospects ears immediately perk up. It’s a data-driven version of a warm call.


Is Digital Ad-Effectiveness Diminishing?

There used to be “a thing” called “over-exposure” that was thought to apply to some celebrities, particularly in relation to product endorsements. It made sense that if a particular person was seen to be endorsing too many products it would tend to put pressure on their perceived veracity, implying that their opinion could be bought, and perhaps bought cheaply.

Lately — okay for decades — digital advertising’s spread from supporting content to supporting every sort of amusement, game, software application and yes, keeping us in touch with friends, and their friends, and their friends, has so multiplied digital advertising that it, too, is over-exposed.


When is Data Sexy?

Data is sexy when it drives profits. Publishers can profit most by bringing their own data to the point of sale. Sales people can learn to develop custom data sets for advertisers that adds value to the publisher’s impressions, driving greater advertiser loyalty and revenue.


Young People Like Print, Too 1

Last week I wrote about how digital-direct-marketers are using print to drive more and better sales results.  I have asserted for some time in my Hybrid Media sales training that consumers use print for different reasons than they do digital media, and that the two together are more powerful than […]


Have a Hypothesis, Be Humble, Ask Questions like Columbo

The solution to overcoming fear of being wrong, is avoiding the need to be right. Journalists do this all the time by asking first the obvious, then the un-obvious question. Columbo, my favorite disheveled TV detective, would pose two conflicting sets of facts and ask questions trying to resolve them.