Selling Behavioral Targeting Campaigns

As newspapers across the country continue to rollout Yahoo!s APT platform, strategies are starting to emerge for selling BT (Behavioral Targeting) campaigns to local businesses. Because the APT platform allows local newspapers to sell BT campaigns on both the Yahoo! network and local news websites, too many newspapers are confusing the sales process. Here are a few things newspapers need to consider as they move forward with their BT sales efforts:

1. Only Yahoo! Can Provide Sufficient BT Inventory Initially.

While it’s exciting that newspapers can now track the behavior of their site visitors using Yahoo!s tools, the road to building BT inventory on newspaper web sites is a long one.  Newspapers that expect to have sellable BT inventory within weeks of launching the APT platform are setting themselves up for disappointment.

Regardless of the higher page views that news sites often enjoy, the economics of BT inventory is dependent upon unique users,  something that “local” newspapers have in limited supply. BT inventory can only grow so much as the on-line user community grows and newspapers have limited themselves by being the “local” source for information. While it’s true that users can be members of multiple BT categories, the value of the target decreases as the number of categories they are part of increases. BT sales efforts need to be focused on Yahoo’s BT inventory first.

2. Contextual Advertising Still Rules On Newspaper Sites.

In their zeal to market new BT campaigns locally, newspapers may neglect their real strength which lies in contextual advertising. In contrast to BT opportunities that are limited by online users, there are an infinite number of online user interests which contextual advertising can take advantage of. 

By “contextual” we also include targeted section campaigns which are becoming more effective when combined with topic specific advertising messages. These campaigns offer advertisers the ability to communicate with the newpaper site users by messaging different offers to the same user at different times rather than segmenting and classifying users into targeting categories.

3. Agencies Understand BT.

Just as many agencies jumped on the bandwagon of local search, the same has happened with BT. In fact, agencies have been marketing BT campaigns for the past 4 years to their larger accounts. The cost of BT programs has generally been very high though, so they have not been able to provide solutions for lower tier clients.

The Yahoo! partnership allows newspapers to create lower cost entry points for BT which should attract more agency interest. Purchasing BT campaigns direct from Yahoo! can cost as much as $25,000/month. Agencies can buy Yahoo BT campaigns from newspapers for as litttle as $2500/month. Newspapers need to reach out and create custom packages for agencies in their local marketplaces.

“The Word Is Alive”

6 Steps For Selling Local Search Products To Businesses

Step 1. Choose The Right Prospects:

Search engine marketing (paying for keywords) is not for every business. With effective small business packages ranging from $150 to $2000 per month, the cost is significant for small businesses. You have to ask the ROI question when approaching a small business. How much revenue does the average sale generate? If you’re a flower shop or a dry cleaner and your average sale is $25, it’s going to take a lot more clicks to get a return on your investment. Use a 2% conversion rate to determine if an advertiser will make enough money to cover the cost of the campaign. If it costs $150 for 50 clicks ($3 per click) and you are getting a 2% conversion, each customer costs $150. It’s true that repeat business might result in future payback but prepared to explain that when selling to business owners with small ticket items. Paid local search campaigns are better suited to businesses that are selling high ticket items or service organizations such as home improvement services, legal services etc. Here’s a list of industries that tend to have a higher ROI on local search campaigns. Pick a category and go after it.

Step 2. Lead In With The Major Players:

Forget the name of your product, program or SEM company. Businesses have never heard of you. Lead in with “Google” and “Yahoo”. Remember, as an SEM salesperson,  you’ve “partnered” with these companies. Let your prospects know that first and you’ll be more likely to get the appointment. Try cold calling 10 businesses by telephone and you’ll see that there’s a genuine interest in marketing on Yahoo and Google. Most businesses may not know what “SEM” or “SEO” stands for but they use the major search engines every day.

Step 3. Print Search Results Before The Appointment:

Conduct a local search for the business you’re going to see and print out the results. Try searching for at least two keywords or phrases for the business. For example, if its a flooring company in Los Angeles, search for “carpets Los Angeles” and “tile floors Los Angeles”. It’s also good idea to run searches in surrounding cities, especially if the prospect comes up high in the organic (free) results when you run the first search. Put the printed results in a folder to take with you on the appointment.

Step 4. Prepare Sample Keywords & Geotargets:

This is a “suggested” list of keywords and geotargets (cities, areas etc.) that the client can use to start the campaign. 10 to 20 keywords and 5 cities would be ideal. The easiest way is to think of words that consumers might search for when looking for the clients products or services. There are also some on-line tools where you can pay anywhere from $269 to $599 per year to find effective keywords see Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery .  It’s a significant investment, but for the seasoned salesperson it’s well worth the cost to ensure the success of a campaign that can result in repeat business. The search engines themselves also offer free alternatives. Check out Google Suggest or Overture’s keyword selector tool (currently under construction). Once you have the list print it out and put in the same folder with the search results generated in step 3.

Step 5. The Presentation:

Don’t forget the folder! Take your time educating the client about local search. It’s helpful to show a generic search results page while explaining the difference between “Paid” or “Sponsored” results and “Organic” or “Free” results. Don’t be afraid to explain to the client that they can go directly to the search engines themselves and engage in the bidding and tracking process that your service provides. After they realize how much work and time is involved, they’ll appreciate the service your solution provides. Even if they’ll be paying $1 to $2 more per click, the hands on service and attention they receive will be well worth the investment. Lead into your search results pages (from step 3) by explaining that there could be local consumers right now searching for their products or services without knowing that the client exists. Hand the search results pages to them. You’ll find that most clients will take their time perusing the list for their competitors. After you’ve gone over your packages and pricing you can close the presentation and open the relationship with your suggested list of keywords to kick off the campaign.

Step 6. Follow Up:

Most sales executives will drop the ball here. Local search programs provide detailed reports, including keywords searched and clicks generated  on at least a monthly basis. The best programs will include customized landing pages with unique call in numbers which allow the campaign to be tracked from the click through to a call from the consumer. If these are not available you need to insist that the client track the source of incoming calls and sales. After 30 days of data you can make adjustments to the campaign, fine tuning the keywords and geotargets for better results. Effective campaigns will run for at least 90 days so you’ve got plenty of time to make adjustments if the campaign seems to be under-performing initially. If everything goes well you’ll be increasing the package at the end of the first 90 day run.

Here’s some other documents that might be helpful in your efforts to sell local search:

Nielsen Report On Local Search

Local Search Advertiser FAQ

“The Word Is Alive”

4 Steps For Selling On-line Banner Campaigns To Print Advertisers

The Pareto Principle applied to sales presentations tells us that 80% of the sale comes from 20% of the presentation.

Many small business owners are not web saavy so you can present yourself out of the sale if you’re not careful. As always, be sure to let the client talk as much or more than you in the process. If you allow your interactive sales presentation to become a lecture you’ll end up with an educated non-customer. After you uncover the pain, here’s 4 key steps to presenting on-line banner campaigns to print advertisers.

Step 1. Lead in with demographics:

Lead with demographic information about your on-line visitors. This makes a great transition from a print presentation. Ask questions like: “What kind of customers would you like to have more of?” or “Where do your best customers come from?”. Often time the answer is “referrals” or higher income “buyers” looking for quality and service as opposed to “shoppers” looking for price.

It’s no secret that on-line users, especially on-line newspaper readers, are cream of the crop consumers. Use visuals with bullet points to show the attractiveness of the on-line user to an advertiser. Mention the the advantages of the newspaper demographic over other media types if you identify that as a concern for your client. Click here for some graphs comparing the household incomes for users of competing media types. On newspaper websites you’re actually reaching the “cream” of the cream of the crop. Click here for a sample on-line demographic one pager.

Step 2. Show Samples And Specs:

Most print advertisers are accustomed to paying more for color so be sure to show them some attractive color banner ads from other advertisers in their industry. You may need to search the web to find them but it’s time well spent. Even if you don’t have a laptop available to demo the animations, a color print out works just as well. Better yet, you can prepare a spec ad for them in different sizes. Seeing their business advertised in a color animation is sometimes all it takes to get the contract. Click here for a list of sample banners across different industries.

Step 3. Show Traffic Reports:

The best thing about internet advertising is that it’s measurable. Make sure you show your client that they can know how many people saw their ad, how many responded, what day of the week, what time of day, where they were located. All of the information in a standard DoubleClick report is impressive to a print advertiser. We can only speculate the reach with print campaigns which are often only measured by phone calls. Bring a sample report from another advertiser with you or show them a report on-line if you can. These reports are a natural lead in to the closing step next.

Step 4: Offer the Trial Run.

“You know Mr. Advertiser, with all of these reports available to us, many of my advertisers will run a 90 day trial campaign. We can place different banners in different sections over a period of 90 days and then analyze the data to fine tune the campaign going forward.” Then you pull out your list of available sections and match up their products or services with the best on-line section -Preps, Sports, Health, Main News etc.

I’ve had far more success selling a “sponsorship” with guaranteed minimum impressions at this point than getting into the CPM discussion. $1500 per month for a home page Leaderboard with a guaranteed minimum of 50,000 impressions is 3x more revenue than a $10 cpm. CPM’s are on their way out anyway as I mentioned in my post on “Selling On-line Advertising for Newspapers“.

“The Word is Alive”