‘Not for the faint of heart’: Publishers scramble to make their annual sales numbers

For some, the holidays is a time to feel gratitude and reflect on the blessings of the season. For sellers of media, it’s a mad scramble to do their utmost by Dec. 31 to maximize their bonus if they’re lucky — or make up for lost revenue ground if they’re not.

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” said Tom Morrissy, president of the agency Noble People, recalling his days as former publisher of celebrity weeklies including OK! and Entertainment Weekly.

And the fourth-quarter scramble has gotten more intense with the rise of digital. Whereas print magazine issues would all eventually have a closing deadline, digital is always open for business. The barriers to launching or adding to a campaign are lower in digital than in print. No doubt with all the digital publishers missing or struggling to make their numbers this year, it’s an especially tense time.

“It is a bad year,” said Michael Hess, a longtime seller who now advises sales management through his company, Core 6 Advisors. “Right now, as we talk there are sales managers sitting in their offices crunching numbers on their calculators, and they’re basically saying, ‘Holy shit.’ But you shouldn’t be saying that on November 30. Do we really think Google and Facebook are doing that right now?”

Not likely, but most media companies also didn’t suck up almost all the digital ad growth this year. For them, it’s a frenetic time. A common go-to for sellers at this time of year is to hit up a client that’s already running a campaign with their site, well aware that marketers have budgets they have to spend or risk losing them the following year. It’s called “dump money.”

“It’s always easier for a buyer to put that money into a relationship you already have,” said Matt Rosenberg, a veteran of the agency and selling side, at companies including Taykey and Say Media. “So you’re looking for an existing buyer to heavy up. A lot of times, it’s the client that’ll call you and have some extra money and say, ‘Can you heavy up?’ The money will come to you.”

Those that aren’t so lucky have to be proactive and do their homework. That starts with knowing which clients have a history of dumping spending at the end of the year and following up accordingly.

Client relationships are always important, but never more so than now. This is the time of year to set up lunches and drinks with buyers and clients — under the pretense of sharing holiday cheer, of course. Once the niceties are out of the way, it’s time to ask if the buyer has any money left for the year or budget that can be time-shifted to the critical fourth quarter.

“You’re hoping out of that lunch comes something,” Morrissy said.

This is also where gifting plays a role. Experienced sellers know that a holiday gift is not an opportunity to be wasted. They need to stand out from all the other gift baskets that are sent to the people with the money to spend. For extra effect, sharp sellers will use gift-giving as an excuse to drop by in person, during which they can inquire about how this or that account.

“With a bagful of gifts, you don’t have to have a meeting,” Rosenberg said. “You say, ‘I’d like to drop off client gifts.’ Who’s going to say no?”

It’s tempting as a last-ditch approach to drop your rate, but sellers do that at their peril. Once you go the discount route, it’s hard to go back.

“I hate that shit,” said one publisher CEO, speaking anonymously. “If you’re super worried about your fourth quarter and it’s now, don’t mess up next year because you messed up a quarter. Meaning, go to a client and offer some great deal. Because there is a long-term effect.”

The post ‘Not for the faint of heart’: Publishers scramble to make their annual sales numbers appeared first on Digiday.



from Digiday http://ift.tt/2jAxl4k
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2iuXlSi

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Use Content Scrapers to Automate these 7 SEO Hacks

Image
Everyone is looking to get ahead when it comes to SEO. But that can be hard when your competitors are putting out content that ranks better than yours. There are a lot of reasons why their content ranks, of course. Maybe they have better domain authority  than you do, or maybe they have a larger built-in audience. That shouldn’t get you down, though. There are ways that you can use their content to your advantage. One of those ways is to use a content scraper (also known as a web scraper ) to gain insights into what they’re doing so you can do it, too. The only caveat is that you have to know how to use them correctly. Otherwise, you could be stuck with the wrong data. Here’s what to know. What is content scraping? Content scrapers are automated programs that pull data from multiple websites. Let’s say for a moment that you wanted to see what sort of titles your competitors were using on their blog posts to get the most clicks. You could visit each website individually...
Read more

What 759 Content Marketing Campaigns Can Teach You About Link Building And Organic Traffic

Image
If you want to generate more organic traffic or build links, your campaigns have to perform well. There isn’t any cut-and-dry formula for crafting successful posts or running effective marketing campaigns. There are tons of suggested formulas, tips, and tricks out there. But not all of them are worth your time or energy. And it can be hard to find formulas and elements of a campaign that are actually proven to work, based on data. Luckily, the folks at Fractl examined 759 different content marketing campaigns from 2013 to 2017 that can teach us a lot about what successful campaigns usually look like. Here’s what these 759 campaigns can teach you about link building and organic traffic. An overview of the data Fractl’s Director of Marketing, Kerry Jones , decided to gather data from 345 marketing campaigns  and share it to help marketers improve the quality and effectiveness of their content. A few years later, she tried the same tactic with data from a sample of 759 campa...
Read more

Hack Your Way to 50,000 Google Visitors with these 9 Tips

Image
There’s no single hack for getting huge traffic numbers from Google. Sorry. I wish I could tell you that if you added a very specific keyword to your site or if you optimized your images in just the right way you could net 50,000 unique views. But it just doesn’t happen that way. The reality is that you can’t rely on one technique to bring in unique visitors. You have to approach it using a combination of different strategies. Depending on your budget, some of those strategies might be out of your reach right now. That’s okay. Because over time (and yes, it does take time) anyone can hack their way to large traffic numbers. What does it take to get 50,000 new visitors? The key to getting 50,000 (or 100,000, or a million) new site visitors is to play it safe. I know what you’re thinking. Safe? It’s not something that entrepreneurs or marketers want to hear. Safe means slow. But a slow, steady, multifaceted approach to growth will always win over the quick tricks. Take a ...
Read more