Sales, Marketing And Promotion

First, we shall concentrate on traditional marketing and then we will get into digital marketing and promotion. But for successful marketing to occur, companies must be internally organized around common goals and objectives. Marketing efforts follow the four P's of marketing; product, price, place and promotion. The product consists of the actual goods produced for customers as well as packaging the product. If we are looking at media, that would be the content or any of the shows that are being aired. Price impacts the sale of a product and affects competitors who consider what price to charge in light of other prices available in the market. How much does advertising or sponsorship cost?

Place would be the physical location at which the product is actually sold and the steps taken to distribute the product. That would be the radio or television stations or the cable system. Promotion is a combination of activities that promote both awareness among consumers in the actual selling of products and advertising is a major part of promotion. Later on in the second video, we will get into details about not only promoting the content on the station, but to promote a stations image. Successful marketing is a product of carefully planned strategies. There are three common strategies used by businesses to market their products. Segmentation, which is to identify segments of the market not currently served and develop products to meet their needs. To be effective, the segment must be measurable, large enough to be profitable and reachable. Database marketing has refined segmentation strategies. Database marketing involves building files of computerized information on audience members then accessing the information as different needs warrant.

Positioning is presenting the product to consumers in a clear manner. Positioning builds on a clear identity or a brand in the marketplace and establishes differences from competitors. Positioning in the electronic media requires an objective analysis of many factors such as the market, the number of competitors and their marketing strategies and a thorough internal analysis of all areas of the station or the system operation. Now branding will differentiate products goods and services in the marketplace. In branding, both tangible and intangible values work together to create an image of a product in the minds of a consumer. To establish an effective brand, you must have factors such as the packaging, the name, the price, the method of distribution, all working together. Now, electronic media companies have moved away from simply selling advertising time to clients as competition for audiences has escalated, electronic media firms have recognized need to emphasize marketing in order to attract advertising dollars. So it's helpful to learn the difference between sales and marketing.

Expanding selling to marketing means to maintain a competitive position where broadcasters are just to the intensifying competition and shift from a sales oriented to a marketing oriented philosophy. Media managers have to understand clients and their needs. Now, the major difference here is sales-oriented approach focuses on the product which would be advertising time, a marketing oriented approach is designed to help clients meet the goals and objectives of their businesses. In a traditional advertising scene for a television or radio station or a cable system, usually there is going to be a local sales staff with the goal of generating new advertising business. These sales people are known as account executives. How many on the local sales staff? It's going to depend on the size of the market, in a major market like DC you may have 20 account executives and the smaller market, three maybe five. The account executive is a person who usually draws a higher salary. They receive a commission or a percentage of the advertising sales that they have. If you are an account executive you are preparing the sales presentations. You probably have that on your hard drive. You just have to email it or assemble it and then email it to the client or perhaps, provide paper.

Once you have a client under contract you provide service to that existing client and that can include updating the commercial, updating the commercial plan. Sometimes you will assist in preparing the advertising copy and that could be not only the video, but also the audio of a spot. You may be wondering how does an account executive get paid for their job. Well, there is usually four different ways an advertising account executive receives remuneration. Usually it is going to be just commission, maybe 10 or 15 percent of every advertising contract that gets assigned. In certain cases, when an account executive is starting off their career, usually you get a set salary plus maybe five or a 10 percent commission on every contract that you sell. Many times there is going to be a draw on commission situation where you have to meet your advertising goal or your draw. Then after meeting that draw, you get a certain percentage of the advertising contract that you receive. I will give you an example, we will make it smaller numbers. Let us say, you have to sell $1000 in advertising per month as your goal. But $1000 would be your draw. So let's say you sell $1200 in advertising in a month, you get the $1000 for salary plus maybe five, 10, 15 percent over that final $200 as commission. But what if you only sell $900 in advertising? Well, you still get $1000 in salary, but next month your draw and goes from $1000 to $1100 to make sure that you are at a normal level and then after $1100 in that next month, then you would get anything as far as five 10 or 15 percent commission based on any advertising dollars that you sell beyond that $1100. Then the next month you would go back to 1000. Rarely does an advertising sales department person gets a position where they are totally salaried. Many times it's going to be a draw on commission or a straight commission situation of how an account executive is going to get paid. A business that understands the importance of marketing has two related goals for its account executives, to generate new customers or prospecting new accounts and to serve current customers or servicing existing accounts. Once you have a new advertiser on board, it's important to continue to serve them as far as whatever advertising content that they would desire.

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Sometimes it's going to start with contacting clients, either through cold calling, just calling on the phone to ask for an interview, that usually works in one out of every 10 situations. A new account executive might get an established list to establish some sort of salary per month, sometimes you can get a lead on an advertiser by listening to other stations or viewing other businesses advertising in a publication or online. Sometimes just driving around in the town that you are serving as an account executive, you can find a new business opening, and perhaps market your station to these folks. As it says here, selling advertising is one of the most challenging professions in media because there's a lot of clients that are just going to reject you outright. They don't think they need advertising in media. What are some of the positives to becoming an account executive? You do have that job flexibility where you can make your own hours. If you want to work 10 hours a day for four days a week, sometimes you can do that. You can also work from home and you do have potential to earn high five figures, sometimes six figures.

The cons are these listed here, an uncertain paycheck that can change from month to month depending on how much advertising revenue that you generate. There's going to be a lot of rejection so you must have some thick skin and understand that you did your best try to woo some advertising dollars out of client. But sometimes you're going to have a lot of negative stuff thrown at your face. Just remember that you must believe in your product, you must believe that this advertising you are offering a client is going to be in the best interests of that client. So you need to know your product or your station and your advertising packages inside and out. Understand your competition or what advertising or promotion aspects they have, which you're always going to have width you ready to go media kit to explain your stations content to the client. Have a contract ready because they may be wanting to buy advertising at that moment, of course have a pen to go with the contract, some kind of a calculator, and develop a lot of confidence in yourself and the station and the products you are marketing. From my experience working in media and advertising, I think the most important advertising tip that have would be this one, advertising is not about products, it's about the benefits that people get from the product. What the client wants is more revenue from whatever they're trying to sell.

The advertising that you are offering is hopefully going to be the catalyst to help them reach their goals. Just think about it this way, people don't want a bar of soap, they want clean hands. They do want the bar of soap, but the goal is to have clean hands. The advertising you can offer is the soap and hopefully with effective advertising, the client gets clean hands. What are some of the best ways to convince a client who may be on the fence as to whether or not to advertise? You'd want to deflect any type of resistance. If they offer some kind of negative aspect, try and turn it into some kind of a positive. You want to learn as much as you can about that client or customer, find out as much as you can about their business, their history, what products sell best. So you can talk to the client one-on-one as an informed account executive. You always have to stress value for what this client is receiving. The advertising that you're going to offer, whatever form, whatever platform it is, is going to help this customer grow their business. Pointing out humor in yourself, sometimes it's going to ease the tension in the some advertising or marketing meeting. If you pointed at yourself, which just means poking fun of yourself, that can lessen the stress in the situation. Never get desperate to try and sell advertising to a client who may not need the advertising products that you're offering just to meet your sales goals.

Remember, you're working for the client. Always remember the power of three, the listener, the viewer needs to see or hear that advertisement at least three times in order to act upon it. So when you are developing an advertising package, it's always good to remember how can we get that message out at least three times a day or whatever type of contract you set up, so the customer will remember the message that the client is creating. The amount of advertising is limited to the amount of time available to broadcast all ads, and in this slide, we're going to identify the definitions of what the advertising is. In radio, the amount of time available for advertising is referred to as inventory. Then we get to TV and cable, and the term availabilities is used to refer to the amount of time available for advertising, and sometimes those terms are interchangeable between radio, and television, and cable. But in general, those are the definitions that we have for the amount of advertising in the different traditional platforms. Regarding availabilities in television, several factors make it much more of a variable, the number of available spots or commercials varies according to the day part. In other words, the more viewers the more the cost of the ad. TV spots are usually tied to ratings performance, station guarantees that a certain estimated part of the audience will see the program.

If that estimate is not realized, the station usually provides makegoods or free ads for the client. The reliance on barter that was determined when the program was acquired, sometimes has an effect on the availability of television spots. Barter is going to be simply a trade of air time for goods and services for the station. So barter sometimes will limit the available inventory or availability of television spot time. In cable TV, the inventory is going to be more limited. Local cable advertising is usually confined to one to three minutes per hour. Sometimes you will see local advertisements mixed into a commercial break for a national cable network, that means that you have back at the cable system and advertising account executive selling that local time to local clients. A cable system selling advertising will either employ a local marketing staff or they'll outsource the advertising sales to a company it specializes in marketing insertion advertising to local businesses. Sometimes it'll use interconnects to increase advertiser effect in this, by offering the efficiency of a multiple system purchase and save time by using only one contract. A good example locally would be Cox Communications. Cox could sell interconnects where a client can buy multiple systems around Northern Virginia in Monasticism, and Falls church, and Fairfax, and Arlington, and Alexandria, and the company can use interconnects and have the advertising contract just with a few pages. Here's an example of how a cable insertion advertisement works. Here's a video of a cable network with its programming, then you'll see a couple of ads that are locally sold by that cable system. During that technology, the local ads are placed over whatever network content there is at that moment. Then the network content returns after the local ads are complete.

One of the most important aspects of your job is to offer co-op advertising for clients. Co-op advertising is another category of advertising revenue available for electronic media. In co-op advertising, the manufacturer shares in the advertising cost with a local retailer. It might be a situation where the manufacturer will pay 50 percent of the advertising for a local retailer and the local retailer picking up the balance of the advertising cost. In that case, the local retailer gets 50 percent more advertising opportunity. The money available for co-op depends on an amount of accruals or the dollars credit for advertising for each retailer. Let's take a look at a video which not only gives you an example of what a co-op advertisement would look like, but different situations of co-op advertising for a client including some digital options.