training | training for advertising sales marketing

Because the advertising purchase decision process is peculiar, the practice of marketing in the support of advertising requires specialized training.  This seminar, originally developed for the Magazine Publishers of America, covers four key parts of the marketing process: 

• Understanding The Market and your Advertiser-customers,
  
• Defining the Marketing Problem,
  
• Positioning and Building a Marketing Plan,
  
• Advanced Marketing concepts: Joint marketing, Special sections, etc 

Here is a complete outline of the course.
 
Know your Market, Know your Customer – To Grow your Business.
(Skill: Defining the Marketing Problem or Opportunity)
 
1) What is ‘marketing’ of advertising?

• What is the role of “marketers?”
  
• Understanding the potential market of spending you can address.
  
• Understanding what the customer(s) wants.
  
• Defining your customer base to your advantage
  
• Packaging and pricing market specific advertising solutions for your market and market segments.
  
• Communicating with the customer to support advertising sales 
  
• Why is marketing of advertising needed?

2) Introduction to the market for advertising media

• What is the market for advertising like and how is it changing? 
  i) What are the trends in the purchase of media?
  ii) What are the trends in the advertising industry that effect media purchases?
  
• What are the conditions that must be satisfied to make an ad sale?
  i) Don’t advertisers just buy ads?
  ii) Why can’t sales people just sell ads?
  

3) Understanding your customer:  How advertising is purchased (and sold):

• Competitive and economic forces on customers.
  
• Media budgeting in the advertising planning process.
  
• Allocation of media budgets across media choices
  i) Magazines in the marketing mix
  (1) How advertisers and agencies see magazines.
  ii) Understanding the myriad choices available to an advertiser.
  
• Client-Agency-Buying service structure.
  i) The media selection process;
  (1) ‘tools’ used to evaluate magazines (and other media).
  ii) Individual & bureaucratic motivations with in the client-agency structure.
  iii) Influences upon media decision makers; hidden voices;
  (1) Business colleagues, Spouses, Friends and acquaintances

4) Research

• To understand your customers: i.e.; focus groups or research on advertisers.
  i) Advertiser spending patterns i.e.; LNA
  ii) Advertiser/agency opinion research.
  
• To understand the clients’ customers: i.e.; market or industry surveys.
  
• To understand your media: i.e.; subscriber and reader studies
  i)  Proprietary
  ii) Syndicated
  
• Industry media specific research.

5)     Sales Category Strengths/Values/Weaknesses/Opportunities Inventory:

• Advertiser category by category analysis
  i) How do advertisers view/use your media in each important category?
  ii) Where are the emerging category opportunities?
  

Defining the Marketing Problem & the ‘Positioning’
(Skill: A strategic approach to solving the brand-positioning problem.)
 
6) Defining a change in the market that the magazine is addressing.

7) Principles of Advertising Sales;

• What needs to be supported -- with marketing -- in the advertising sales process?

   i) Awareness
       (1) Reminders
   ii) Market confidence in your magazine.
   iii) Positioning: how your magazine compares to the alternative                     advertising choices and to its direct competitors.
   iv) Segmentation; different kinds of advertisers have different needs                      and demand different advertising solutions.
   v) Sales person communications: Sales collateral material
     (1) Media Kits
     (2) Presentations
     (3) Success stories

• Claims that work, claims that don’t work.
  i) Examples

8) Understand your magazine’s situation: SWOT Analysis.

• Circulation
  
• Reader characteristics and interests.
  
• Existing ad sales clients and SOM
  i) Segment analysis of the customer base
  
• Editorial and editorial relationships.
  
• Other relationships
  
• Changes happening (or imminent) in the advertising market.
  
• Analysis tools; Venn diagrams etc.

9) Positioning your magazine

• Competitive Set and peripheral competitors
  
• Segmenting YOUR market for a variety of solutions
  i) Different packages/solutions for different advertisers.
  
• Segmenting THE market differently for a competitive advantage.
  
• Define the market (that matters to advertisers – in a way that favors your title), rule the world.
  
• Positioning Statement
  
• Benefits Statement
  
• Synchronizing your brand message to advertisers with your editorial positioning for readers.
  
  
• Some great successes – and failures -- in the marketing of advertising: case studies: briefly mentioned.
  i) Rolling Stone; the famous “Perception-Reality” campaign.
  ii) PC Magazine; defining and capturing a great boom market.
  iii) Vanity Fair; creating demand where none existed.
  iv) ESPN The Magazine; defining a new market.

10) Recent examples.
 
Creating a Marketing Plan
(Skill; Defining Marketing Tactics and plans; the 1-2-3 punch for success.)
 
11) Developing a Marketing (Implementation) Plan

• Setting budgets
  
• Prioritizing marketing needs
  
• Aligning needs and solutions
  
• Coordinating timing for optimum synergy of plan elements

12)  The Marketing Communications Arsenal; purposes and priorities.

• Your magazine and the comp list
  
• Presentations
     i) Elements of successful presentations
         (1) Market-media-property-package logic
  
• Sales Collateral and ‘point-of-purchase’ advertising.
     i) Includes media kits, premiums, etc.
  
• Direct Mail
  
• Trade Advertising
  
• Public Relations
  
• Consumer Advertising
  
• Events
  i) Trade shows and conferences
  ii) Speakers bureau
  iii) Staging your own events

• Research
  
• Internet.
  
• Reaching the hidden influencer – extending the brand;
    
• ‘Value added’ should add value for media and advertiser.
        
• Sales training – synchronizing your message with the sales force.

13) Developing the plan for optimum synergy between elements: the right targets at the right times with the right message.
 

Advanced Marketing Concepts

14)  Marketing Alliances

• Joint packages w/ titles from other companies;
  
• Special sections/advertorials;
  
• Tie-in/endorsements by key authoritative groups;

15) Cause-related marketing packages.

16) Value added and it’s role.

17) Creating a ‘customer experience’ for advertising customers

Book Notes


Selling the Invisible;
A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith

This little book will help you sell advertising more than any other currently on the market.  Advertisers don’t want to own the spots, or the banners or the pages we might sell them.  They want to own the results of the advertising expenditure.  And because the results are sometimes not immediate, sometimes not close-enough to the point of sale, or often obscured by other business factors, they are frequently invisible. continue